flag-burning

[danohu]

palmer1984 just posted a meme that touches on flag-burning. I've always been bewildered by the (mainly American?) objection to burning flags. But if you accept that flag-burning is Bad and Wrong...

How do True Patriots care for their ageing flags? Are they stored indefinitely? Given heroic burial (cremation presumably isn't an option)? Is there a patch of desert somewhere, where old flags fly until they disintegrate completely?

The military are big on flags and big on rules; they must have some baroque procedure for getting rid of the old ones.

Also: I've only come across the obsession with flag-burning in an American context. Are there equally small-minded patriots in the UK and elsewhere?