What a peculiar Tory conference backdrop, Part 2: What do the flags mean?



In a post during last year's Conservative Party conference - What a peculiar Tory conference backdrop - I reported being baffled by what the leafy suburbs that kept moving backwards and forwards behind the speakers ware supposed to be telling us.

This year's backdrop (above) certainly looks slicker, but two aspects of it have got me as stumped as i was last year.

One is that the blue striped background (especially when appearing in close-up behind a speaker) reminds me of the Greek national flag, raising the possibility that the subliminal message is something along the lines of: if we don't do what we say, we'll end up with as big a financial mess as Greece.

The other is the question of why the Union Flag on the right is split up into tatty-looking fragments? Is this supposed to be telling us something about the broken society, or what?

Whatever the answers, the main distraction is essentially the same as last year, namely why are they taking the risk of diverting our attention away from what's being said by posing such intriguing mysteries for us to think about when we're supposed to be listening?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the second flag in 'tatty-looking fragments' is in fact the Union Jack pasted onto the Tory party logo (the sketchy tree, normally in blue and green).

Max Atkinson said...

Anon: If you're right and it's supposed to be the scribbled tree, there are problems with that too - as explained when I recommended the Tories to replace it with a bluebell - http://bit.ly/9o6amz

Hadleigh Roberts said...

The theme of the conference seems to be "...in the National Interest..." so I suppose the flags, particularly the Union Jack, are to remind us that they are together for the fatherland.