Cornish flap over the sale of English flag in England.

The point (as is usually the case with such proposed boycotts) is if you personally don't want to buy the article in question, then... don't. But once you start using the burning of national flags (even virtual ones) to somehow "prove" that point, then you've lost the moral argument:

Cornish nationalists calling for a ban on the sale of English flags before the football World Cup scored a spectacular own goal when their Internet campaign was hijacked by supporters of the Cross of St George.

The campaign was launched in responses to the red and white goods which have cropped up in stores around the country ahead of the tournament which starts next month.

Some Cornish nationalists called for a boycott of stores selling the flags, including Tesco, describing it as a "foreign flag here" which "can be quite insulting to some".

Their site on the social networking site Facebook – under the title of "Get rid of English World Cup flags out of Cornish stores" and depicting a Cross of St George on fire – had generated little interest.

However, it has now been taken over by supporters of the English flag and attracted some vitriolic abuse littered with Anglo Saxon expletives.