BOSSES at Welwyn Hatfield Council were left red-faced this week after being caught up in a flag farce ahead of England’s opening World Cup game against the USA.

Last Thursday, the Welwyn Hatfield Times asked the council whether it would be taking a leaf out of the book of PM David Cameron, who pledged to fly the flag of St George over Downing Street for the duration of the tournament.

At around 9.45am last Friday, we received a reply, which simply said: “This is a council that flies the Union flag and will continue to do so.”

This naturally prompted further questions and the council was then asked to confirm how many flagpoles it has at its Campus East offices and whether there was any reason why the England ensign could not be flown simultaneously to its Union counterpart.

A couple of hours later, a new statement was forthcoming.

It read: “Welwyn Hatfield Council is 100 per cent behind the England football team in their quest to win the World Cup.

“We are flying the flag of St George alongside the Union flag for the duration of the World Cup.

“The council flies the Union flag in support of many causes, our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan among them.”

Following this apparent U-turn, your local paper asked for an explanation.

And here it is: “Before a decision could be made to fly the cross of St George in support of the England World Cup team, we needed to investigate whether it was possible to raise two flags on one flag pole.

“It was found that this is possible and the two flags were raised at around 10am on Friday morning to coincide with the start of the World Cup.”

An example of the power of the press? Or more a case of the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing?

We’ll leave it up to you to decide!