'People shouldn’t be defacing road markings' - Your Letters: August 29

As someone who was born here in the UK and has been going to work since the age of 16, I can understand the anger people from similar backgrounds have towards the current state of this country and the world.

The painted on roundabouts and road markings in this country are a marvellous invention that facilitate safe travel and transport whether you’re on a bus or in a car.

Yet recently people insist on going around with red paint marking the markings with a cross in an act of frustrated patriotism.

I can fully understand why - but people shouldn’t be defacing the road markings, thus holding up everyone’s essential journeys to work, to school, to the shops, etc. because we all need to be somewhere!

Vicky Bartlett, West Midlands

POST FLAGS ARE JUST NOT NEEDED 

As an English woman, I have been educated in the symbols and emblems of this country. 

You only have to take a walk down an average road where I live in the Staffordshire town of Cannock to know you are in England, on an English street. 

It is a uniquely English experience. 

If you are not sure, then look at the pound in your pocket with the Kings head on it. 

We do not need to be reminded of where we are by the flag of St George strapped to every lamppost.

Personally, I find such demonstrations of English identity oppressive and menacing.

They are more in tune with the kind of thing you would see  in a weak totalitarian state than in the England I know and love. 

The England that I know is open, welcoming and curious about the world. 

We play by the rules of the game because we invented most of them.

Normally when there are moments of National pride on display there is also hope, optimism and joy.

We should think of the success of our England football teams or the Coronation and other big royal events. 

But these flags have no joy or celebration but a marking of territory, it is sinister and thuggish.

If we do need to bolster our national identity with this kind of display, then it is not our borders that we need to protect but our moral boundaries.

What does it mean to be English in 2025? 

These displays of seemingly national pride and identity do not represent me as an English woman, and I believe that they do not represent us as a nation.

Clare Davies, West Midlands

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