UNION FLAG - 400 YEARS OF CALCULATED INSULT
Left, the union flag of 1606. Right the flag after Ireland was added in 1801. Gradually the flag flattened to become the design known today. No attempt was ever made to add Wales.

We don't need union flag rejig
- just ditch it and keep
our Welsh Dragon flying
England's union flag is 400 years old this year. It was first formed from the crosses of Scotland and England with Ireland added almost two centuries later. Wales was always expressly excluded, yet the Welsh are expected - indeed, ordered - to fly this insulting rag from all public buildings in Wales.

Inevitably, the anniversary has led to calls for the flag to be redesigned to include Wales, with some very weird designs being suggested.

I have a simpler solution. After 400 years of this continuing insult it's time for the Welsh to say enough is enough and ditch the union flag altogether. Refuse to fly it anywhere in Wales.

We don't need the union flag or a redesign because we already have a flag of our own - the Welsh Dragon. That and that alone is what should be flying from Welsh public buildings.

There are those with rose-tinted glasses eager to explain that no insult was intended - that when the flag was being designed in 1706, to reflect union with Scotland, we were excluded for the simple administrative reason that officially Wales was deemed part of England.

This is a gross distortion of the historical truth. Any close examination of that era's political attitudes will show that the Welsh were a hated people.

Why Wales was excluded

The Welsh had flocked to Henry Tudor's banner in the hope if he took the English throne - which he did at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 - he would end England's harsh rule of Wales. They were to be cruelly disappointed.

The Tudors, along with Wales's so-called "great" families, needed to appease the still-strong English nobility and they did so by quickly rejecting their own Welsh roots and reinventing themselves as English. They underlined their commitment to England by leaving in place many of the draconian measures through which England had ruled Wales for centuries. It's why Henry VIII, in one of history's biggest betrayals, tried to destroy Wales, its language and culture once and for all by making Wales part of England. .

That Wales survived this attempt at genocide speaks volumes for the character of the Welsh.

Contrary to sanitised accounts of his reign, Henry VIII was a cruel king, who cracked down on the growing dissent across his realm by having tens of thousands of people executed. Many of the executions - judicial murders - were carried out in Wales, where dislike even hatred of the Tudors was spilling over. Even children were strung up.

The Stuarts came to the throne in 1603, union with Scotland just three years away. The hatred and mistrust of the Welsh that the Tudors had fostered was still a potent force and it was clear that the Welsh, stubbornly adhearinjg to their own language and culture, had not been assimilated into England.

So, what better way of reinforcing Wales's status as a non-people than to remove Welsh symbols from the royal coat of arms - which is why England's three lions are there twice - and keep the Welsh off the newly-designed flag altogether.

It was a calculated insult that has been allowed to stand for 400 years, supported by every English monarch ever since. The flag marks the Welsh as an inferior people.

Redesign would be a sop

I have no doubt that the English monarchy would not hesitate to authorise a redesign if they thought it would help bolster their crumbling position in Wales. They're an unprincipled bunch that will do anything, say anything to keep their lucrative grip on Britain.

But it would be for all the wrong reasons - just a sop. As such the Welsh should have no truck with the idea. We have the Welsh Dragon - let's keep it flying.

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