Flying Monday June 22, 2009.

Today is one of those days on which I am stumped to find a flag in my collection that I can relate to this day in history, so I have an excuse to fly what I like, and have chosen a flag I have not flown before. I bought it a couple of years ago on EBay, and it is a nice quality flag, of good durability, reasonably heavy, so I hope for a fair wind.

The flag is that of the Queens Award Industry, Export Award, and individual categories have been known in the past as The Queen's Awards for Export, Export Achievement, Technology, Technological Achievement and Environmental Achievement.

The award scheme has now been superseded by The Queen's Awards for Enterprise.

This is an awards programme for British businesses and other organizations who excel at international trade, innovation or sustainable development. They are the highest official UK awards for British businesses. The new scheme also includes an award for individuals, The Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion.

My career as an accountant was spent almost wholly in insolvency work, and it was always said that a Queen's Award gave a year’s flag waving, followed by liquidation. There is inevitably some truth in this. Business failure is a simple fact of life and more businesses fail in their first few years that succeed. This is even more the case amongst those who have the daring, skill, and knowledge to push the boundaries in commerce and industry.

Sadly I never found out to which business this flag belonged.

This Queen's Award for Technological Achievement was awarded in 1979 to the Department of Chemistry, Hull University, for work on the synthesis of liquid-crystalline materials in the 1970's which brought forth the first commercially viable liquid crystal materials for use in LCDs.