Australia Day and the annual flag debate

So it's Australia Day today in the land down under.

A day to celebrate a bunch of bread thieves being dumped on the shores of Botany Bay so that instead of dying and rotting in prison hulks on the Thames they could hang about on sandy beaches in chains and get eaten by a bewildering variety of poisonous bitey creepy crawly things. And in the meantime they can set about doing their bestest to wipe out those pesky uncivilized native types just to fill in their spare time.

Huzzah!

And of course, a day to once more resurrect the annual debate about removing the Union Jack from the Australian flag.

Well, almost every year anyway. I remember it being a "hot issue" back when I was a teen. I remember reading one of those big arsed coffee table style reference books about the glorious history of Oz that my old man had that showed it had been an ongoing thing ever since they decided to make a flag that was all our own as opposed to just flying the Union Jack - sometime around '56 from memory (and no, I'm not gonna look it up right now).

Almost every year someone pops on the telly or the radio or both and says, "We needs our own flag and our own identity!"

Then someone else comes along and says, "You rebel scum!" asthmatic wheeze "What would we do without the Mother Country and the Queen and what about all those people who fought and died for that flag? Huh? Huh? HUH? And oh, yes, I am your father!" asthmatic wheeze

So...

a) what does the mother country and Queenie actually do for Oz these days - try getting a work or residents visa for the UK as one of HRH's loyal subjects and see how far ya get; b) there's a fuckload of people who helped build and make this country that had fuck all to do with good ol' Blighty - not to mention the folks who were camped hereabouts before old Blighty even knew the place existed; c) Yeah quite a few Aussies died under the Union Jack, but those who died serving under the current flag died in wars that were fought at the behest of Uncle Sam - oh, and a couple of stabs at "police actions" in Bouganville (a chance to try to be truly British and stomp on those cheeky damn natives) and East Timor.

And for the rebel scum...

Dontcha think it'd be a smart idea to actually ditch the monarchy thing and become a republic first before you start worrying about a piece of cloth?

While I am, as you can guess, in favour of being a republic, to be honest I don't think the flag is something that needs to be all that high on the agenda. For that matter, there are more urgent things to sort out than ditching the royals too.

Happy Australia Day!