THE public will, rightly, regard any flags proposal linked to an illegal loyalist paramilitary group with an appropriate degree of scepticism.
In the latest plan, a UVF-linked group describing itself as the East Belfast Community Initiative said that loyalist organisations in east Belfast, north Down and Newtownards had agreed a 'protocol' on when "legal flags" would be flown.
On the one hand, it is to be welcomed that some semblance of self-awareness exists within the ranks of the loyalism about just how contentious flags can be among the wider community.
Yet on the other, the protocol's aims appear to be particularly modest.
They amount to a pledge that flags won't be erected until June 1, and that they will be removed following Ulster Day on September 28. All flags are supposed to be removed by October 7 "at the latest".
This still amounts to a period of more than four months.
A further weakness of the loyalist initiative is that 'historical' UVF flags, which commemorate the role of the group with that name in the First World War, will still be displayed.
But many will neither care for nor appreciate the distinction that loyalism attempts to draw between the 'historical' UVF formed in 1912 and the paramilitary group which murdered and injured so many during the Troubles - not least because it continues to be involved in crime and control of loyalist districts.
Details of the flags protocol came days after UDA and UVF flags had been first erected and then quickly removed along a stretch of Ravenhill Avenue in south-east Belfast.
UVF flags were erected in the same area last year in an attempt to intimidate residents in a new religiously-mixed housing development.
At that time, Emma Little-Pengelly, the DUP MP for South Belfast, was criticised for a less than emphatic response to the problem, which included the questionable claim that residents did not wish to make a fuss.
Ms Little-Pengelly is believed to have been involved in the development of the new flags protocol, which she described as a "welcome unilateral move".
This perhaps underlines some of the absurdity around the flags issue; with various public bodies, including the police, apparently powerless to intervene, it is left to the illegal paramilitary groups themselves to decide when and how flags are flown.
Further, the idea that people should somehow be grateful when flags - which should never have been put up in the first place - are removed from public property, could be argued to represent a lack of ambition and vision about developing shared spaces.
On the 20th anniversary of the referendum which emphatically endorsed the Good Friday Agreement, people deserve better.
