Category talk:National symbols of the United Kingdom

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Heraldry and vexillology

Category:National symbols of the United Kingdom is within the scope of the Heraldry and vexillology WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of heraldry and vexillology. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.Heraldry and vexillologyWikipedia:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillologyTemplate:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillologyheraldry and vexillology articles

Symbols by what criteria?

How are these chosen as symbols? Or, symbols to readers of which newspaper? (The symbols of England as so categorized now look to me rather like the symbols as they might have been chosen by the editorial staff of the Daily Express forty years ago.) I'd have guessed that the Notting Hill Carnival and "chicken tikka masala" were more symbolic, but as I haven't a clue of how to measure symbolism I'm not going to add them. -- Hoary 00:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, this category looks grossly over-populated to me. National symbols are things like flags, national anthems, national flowers (thistles/leeks/daffodils etc) and the like. If Frogmore, Manchester, George VI, Thomas Hardy or strawberries are admitted (or indeed Ben Nevis, which was recently added before being swiftly removed by me), the category is going to be hopelessly POV. The sub-categories for England, Scotland, Wales and NI have got it about right - let's pare this parent category down to the minimum. --Blisco 11:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I see that an anon with some kind of agenda has added most of the entries here. Under what criteria George VI and the Queen Mother could be considered the "father and mother of the nation" I don't know, but I shall revert all these additions. --Blisco 12:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are various problems here. Symbols of the nation to its inhabitants, to visiting tourists, or to whom? Symbols of the nation in the sense of things that are ubiquitous and instantly associated with it (like freestanding red postboxes), or singletons and often associated with it (like Stonehenge) or abstractions (like Shakespeare) or again things and people manufactured/intended as symbols (flags, monarchs, etc.)? Even if the people busily categorizing things/places/events/people as "National symbols of [nation]" have no particular "agenda", the result is likely to be unsatisfactory. -- Hoary 13:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The solution is to restrict the category only to flags, national anthems, and items that have a long documented history of being a national symbol (e.g. John Bull - or does he just represent England?). That way there is at least a chance of keeping the category neutral and verifiable. Trouble is, the UK as a whole doesn't have very many of these. --Blisco 14:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I looked in the England category too. To me, these aren't national symbols, they're nationalist totems. The kind of jingoistic kitsch that's celebrated in the last night of the proms by those who go in for that sort of thing. How about chicken tikka masala or fish and chips? To me, those are symbols of Britain, not symbols of British alcohol-fueled jingoism. -- Hoary 15:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]