BBC reports that the police and suggesting that Flag-burning could become crime:

Police chiefs are urging the government to make flag-burning a new criminal offence, as part of a drive to crack down on Islamic extremists and others preaching violence and religious hate, the BBC has learned.

The proposals also include action to ban demonstrators from covering their faces to avoid police scrutiny, and tougher powers to arrest demonstrators seeking to inflame tensions.

It might be funny if the call didn't come a few days before half the country goes out and burns a token Catholic, or, as Lewes sometimes does, an effigy of the Pope.

They seem to find it significant that the call has come from the country's most senior Muslim police officer. So bloody what?

Maybe we should have a National Flag Burning Day tomorrow just to assert our liberties. Some might want to burn a blue flag with some gold stars on it, AA members might burn a Green Flag. It could be any flag. It doesn't need to be personally significant. Perhaps you could burn a flag from somewhere you went on holiday and found your hotel half built and had your wallet stolen. Maybe an old apartheid era South African flag. It doesn't matter.

But do it with a balaclava on. Remember those? I had one. Nothing to do with hiding my face, but Aberdeen was perishing when I was a first year infant school pupil and it seemed like quite a fashionable thing at the time.

Jeez - when will these people learn that if we curb our freedoms, the bastards are winning. We do not "pledge our allegiance to the flag". It's a piece of cloth for God's sake. And I resent the police videoing perfectly peaceful demonstrations, like people coming out to protest their pension cuts - you end up with a "file" and a mugshot for complaining that Gordon Brown's shafted you!