***An Helghyer would like to point out that there is no way of confirming whether the following is legit.***
Earlier this evening Olympic Torch bearer Andrew Ball contacted An Helghyer with the following statement:
“Hi I’m actually the andrew ball in question. the met police officer was not in the wrong at all. It is important that the olympic flame is not overshadowed by a political message of any sort. With this in mind Locog, who organised the run, have a zero tolerance on any writing. The met police officer therefore saw the writing and took it off me, making the judgement that “oh there’s writing, let’s not take a chance” and NOT “that’s definitely a political message, let’s remove it”. he said the flag was fine but the writing was not, as he was not to know if it was political – which it wasn’t.”
An Helghyer would like to thank Andy for getting in contact.
The words on the flag were Cornwall/Kernow but we can clearly see, from the video evidence, that the officer was not acting off his own bat.
It seems LOCOG have a zero tolerance on a lot of things.
An Helghyer 
May 24th, 2012 at 5:24 am
That seems to make more sense because if police were expected to make a snap judgement on whether certain writing displayed was admissable then there is the potential for a lot deeper controversy.
May 24th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
That’s what I was wondering. I saw something written on the flag and thought it was related to that.
May 28th, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Quite frankly even if if was a political message the met shouldn’t have taken the flag. We are supposed to live in a free country(whichever country that is) but it seems that freedom only goes so far. Dissent is criminalised, repressed and where possible ignored. Don’t protest or even wave a flag near an Olympic torch, don’t set up a protest camp and whatever you do don’t make a fuss within a mile of parliament or they’ll have you. This Olympics has seen people uprooted from their homes, unofficial Olympics symbols removed, town centres cleansed of anything that doesn’t fit with the corporate designs of the likes of coke and Samsung and now flags taken from people. All this to please a few corporate sponsors and of course ‘benefit the economy’. I wonder which thin slice of the economy will get the rewards and who will be left out in the cold? As for the Met maybe they should stick to what they are good at such as shooting unarmed electricians, taking bribes from journalists and the odd racially motivated Stop and Search.