Quote Originally Posted by MacMillan of Rathdown View Post
Hi Peter,
It is a rule of heraldry (and flags) that you never put "colour on colour". Heraldicly speaking there are four primary colours: Red, Blue, Green, Black, and two primary metals: Gold and Silver. Colours are always placed on metals so they can be easily seen (the reverse is also true with metals always placed on colours for the same reason).

There is a big problem with placing red and green next to each other, or on top of each other, and this is due to how the human eye "sees" the spectrum of colours-- red and green in combination confuse the eye and are really hard to see. If you doubt this, look at a series of red and green stripes; after a few moments the stripes will appear to "move". (If the stripes are yellow and black and begin to move there is nothing wrong with your eyes; you are merely staring at a tiger.)

As I mentioned in my post above, the government did experiment with placing the Welsh dragon in the centre of the Union flag in the 1950s, but abandoned it due to overwhelming public displeasure in Wales at the thought they were some how being "marginalized" within the United Kingdom.

What was it P.T. Barnum said? "You can please some of the people some of the time and the rest of the people the rest of the time, but you'll never please all of the people all of the time..."
That is interesting, and something I am not very knowledgeable about. But as I showed in the photo earlier in the thread, a Welsh regiment has already used the green dragon on the St Georges cross on the old union flag.

Peter