\n<\/p>\n
Gary Neville has revealed he removed a union flag from one of his Manchester development sites because it was being \u201cused in a negative fashion\u201d, as he urged his followers to question what it means to be patriotic.<\/p>\n
In a video posted on Friday, the day after a deadly attack at a Manchester synagogue, the former footballer turned property developer said he believed that \u201cwe\u2019re all being turned on each other\u201d, attributing much of the blame for the divide to \u201cangry, middle-aged white men \u2026 who know exactly what they\u2019re doing\u201d.<\/p>\n
He described driving down Littleton Road, in the Salford neighbourhood, and seeing \u201cprobably 50-60 union jack flags\u201d on that stretch of his journey. He then compared that with his return drive through the parallel road, Bury New Road, where the Jewish community were \u201cout in the streets, defiant, not hiding or in fear\u201d.<\/p>\n
Neville, who has built a vast property empire in Manchester since retiring from football in 2011, said he took down a union flag being displayed on one of his building sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cFunnily enough on one of my development sites last week there was a union jack flag put up and I took it down instantly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people might be watching this and thinking: \u2018Gary you\u2019re not really patriotic.\u2019 I\u2019ve played for my country 85 times, I love my country, I love Manchester and I love England.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neville, 50, said that in the years he has been building in the city, he had never seen union flags at the current rate and questioned why this was the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe union jack flag used in a negative fashion is not right and I\u2019m a proud supporter of England, of Great Britain, of our country and will champion it anywhere in the world as one of the greatest places to live,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think we need to check ourselves, check ourselves and start to think about bringing ourselves back to a neutral point because we\u2019re being pulled right and left and we don\u2019t need to be pulled right and left at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sky Sports commentator has frequently voiced his opinions on political and social issues, including that people should \u201cdetest\u201d the poor working conditions for migrant workers in Qatar and NHS staff in the UK, and criticising Boris Johnson for \u201cfuelling\u201d racism and hatred when he was prime minister.<\/p>\n
In his LinkedIn video, Neville commented on the diversity of football, saying that he played with people from across the UK and from around the world. \u201cWe were a beautiful team, united as one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n He said he blamed Brexit for its \u201cdevastating effect\u201d on the country, and said the \u201cmessaging\u201d of division was becoming \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAll these idiots that are out there spreading hate speech in any form and abuse in any form, we must stop promoting them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must stop elevating our voices towards them and it needs to stop now and get back to a country of love, of peace, of harmony and become a team again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gary Neville has revealed he removed a union flag from one of his Manchester development sites because it was being \u201cused in a negative fashion\u201d, as he urged his followers to question what it means to be patriotic. In a video posted on Friday, the day after a deadly attack at a Manchester synagogue, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4510,4241,9076,1570,6514,15715,2719],"class_list":{"0":"post-26132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-fashion","9":"tag-flag","10":"tag-gary","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-negative","13":"tag-neville","14":"tag-union"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}