Saturday 31 May 2008

The contest is over.....?

Today in the Dorset Echo were two new designs for a flag of Dorset. In my personal opinion, neither were suitable - one being far too complex and all the detail would be missed at distance - the other - meh.

Most importantly though, was this statement:

"Thank you to all our readers who have sent us their submissions in our hunt to find a flag for Dorset.
Our search is now over and we will be sending the flags we have received to the county council, so it can consider whether to adopt any of them as the official Dorset flag."


This is completely out of the blue. I know that last Friday(23rd May), Sally Northeast indicated she was going to take the advice of the newspaper editors and I know that this week she has been on holiday. I thought they were going to release a second press release with the criteria for a flag submission etc. It seems not.

Whilst this may seem good news, it is the second sentence that bothers me - the second bit:

"...so it can consider whether to adopt any of them as the official Dorset flag."

The council may consider none of them appropriate. If this were to happen, I should expect a public vote - I know our flag is approved of by the Flag Institute, unlike many of the other designs. So it should be appropriate. There's still nothing stopping us making is the unofficial flag of Dorset.

On the other hand, who selects the flags? Using what criteria? What if they select something wholly inappropriate? I think many people think they'll be getting a vote. We just don't know as we were never told.

There will also be a few people who will legitimately point out that DCC may not have the authority to do this.

The article is here:

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/search/display.var.2309961.0.latest_ideas_for_county_flag.php

The plot thickens....

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