All penguined out.

Graham Bound is quite right to suggest that a new coat-of-arms is long overdue for the Falklands in this week's Penguin News, but one with wildlife? If I see another crest, logo or company name with a penguin or a goose on it, I am going to kick a kitten. It beggars belief that when choosing a company name, so many resort to the predictable postcard images of penguins, seals and the like. One can only imagine what goes through their mind: "Well, the Falklands has a long-standing association with Antarctic explorers and global navigators, we could name our company after one of them to reflect an indefatigable spirit and a willingness to succeed above all” “Ah yes, but King Penguins have the cutest hatchlings ” “That’s settled then, call the registrar general!”
Besides, we’re hardly graced with the kind of graceful majestic wildlife you’d want on a crest down here, are we? An eagle or lion? Definitely. But a waddling bird whose habitat smells like a KFC employee’s crotch and sounds like a donkey being slaughtered? Surely not.

Arguably the albatross is both graceful and majestic, but the problem with albatrosses is that you need to see one up close, or at the very least see it in a photo with a human, to appreciate it in all its glory. Put it on a crest and people are going to start asking why you have a common seagull on there, for that is all an albatross is without perspective: a seagull.

One only has to take a single step into one of Stanley's (overpriced and tacky) souvenir shops to realise that short of slapping a pair of hotpants on them and whoring them out to Taiwanese jiggers, we have exploited penguins and other wildlife as far as we can. As I see it, the only advantage to come from putting a penguin on our crest is that we’ll no longer be mocked as a nation of sheep-shaggers, but penguin-shaggers. And I say advantage as we’d no doubt receive international kudos for overcoming the inherent logistical difficulties of penguin shagging; they are extremely slippery and the wings aren’t half difficult to get a good grip on, nothing like a sheep where the fleece affords no end of sturdy handles… one would imagine.

Of course, this poses the question of what can be put in the crest instead, and as Graham points out, traditionally coats of arms are indicative of industry in a particular region. Again, he rightly goes on to argue that a squid engulfing a tourist is probably not what we’d like to see (not on a coat of arms, anyway), and with the much-maligned sheep out of the picture, we’re left with philately or the civil service; hardly sinew-stiffening stuff. If we were going to have a true reflection of industry in the Islands though, then the moustachioed Mr Monopoly would be a shoe-in, perhaps with Cable and Wireless and Stanley Services logos either side.

So, penguins and industry are out of the running, leaving trusty self-determination. Unfortunately, self-determination is something of an ethereal concept, so putting it on a small crest in a way that makes it immediately obvious would be somewhat challenging; as a general rule, if you wouldn’t expect to see it in a game of Pictionary, it shouldn’t be on a crest

For my money, I think that we should have a monthly or yearly rotating crest, like the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. People could submit their suggestions anonymously to an internet site for the rest of the population to vote on. One year it could be a guitar with a Johnny Cash Lyric as the motto, another year it could be a teaberry bun, Mike Summers atop a white steed a la Napoleon, an empanada and a bottle of Exportacion, a ball of tumbleweed rolling across West Falkland…

The possibilities are literally endless, and the enormous financial cost of replacing government stationary every year would be by far outweighed by having a truly representative and democratic national emblem.

We’d probably still end up with a fucking penguin though.