Put out more flags - Telegraph Most of us have no flagpole in the garden. That was one reason it was so silly of Gordon Brown to encourage us to run up the Union flag in the pursuit of Britishness. Yet nothing is so viscerally encouraging as a brave flag billowing in a fresh breeze - when it belongs to a sympathetic power. So it is good to hear Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, backing bona fide efforts to introduce well designed, locally popular flags to the flagstaffs of old England (other nations having their own arrangements). Until the law was relaxed, planning permission could be demanded, for heaven's sake, just to let a flag fly. The Flag Institute (a body, paradoxically, of unflagging energy) is on hand to ensure that no county, soke, part or hundred abuses vexillogical lore. Just one more improvement and we'll all be happy: patriots must stop flying the Union flag carelessly upside down.