What is a flag worth?

I was astonished to see this robust scaffolding structure at the top of Oxford town hall. The building is two ample and one slightly more modest storeys high, probably 25m in total, and the scaffolding (as you would hope) continues down to ground level. That's a lot of poles, a lot of clamps and a lot of boards.

What the workers are doing - you can see one of them bending over in the bottom layer of scaffolding - is cleaning the peeling paint off the old wooden flagpole, presumably so it can be repainted so that it doesn't rot and fall on some hapless passer-by.

I don't know how much this is costing but more, I suspect, than I pay in council tax in a year. The job probably doesn't need doing very often, and I would guess that every other time the work has gone to some daredevil steeplejack with ropes and crampons and a head for heights. I don't begrudge the workers the safety of this structure but it made me wonder whether the flags that fly above the building are really worth it. I rarely notice them, though I'm sure they are not as quirky as the ones I used to enjoy over Lambeth town hall when I lived in the People's Republic of Brixton. But I shall make a point of looking up more often in future.