Beautifully put McGrath,

I agree wholeheartedly, except in as much as our pasts are shadowed in similar ways, whether it be with regard to anti semitism, slavery, subduing the colonies or other spurious excuses for barbaric militarism.

Ultimately of course this serves to strengthen your point with regard to smugness.

Being Irish, one of my sources of national pride was that on the one hand we have never gone a conquering and on the other, we have never had slaves.

We butchered ourselves fairly comprehensively in the civil war, and the troubles up north hardly need referring to, but generally as a people we were always on the side of the underdog. We've never been bullies.

There is a certain smugness in that knowledge as one grows into a trendy young right on adult, but the reality is that now Ireland has a bit of cash at their disposal, and we have been required to open our doors to refugees and asylum seekers, we have suddenly become very defensive.

I have heard uncles and aunts, who I had previously seen through rose tinted specs, talking about "them" and how they "come here and bring their crime with them" etc.

The first step is to blame the face that don't fit for problems that have always been there and to pretend they are new ones that didn't exist before the arrival of jonny foreigner.

Alf Garnet'isms suddenly abound where having something in common with the downtrodden used to reign supreme.

You're doing great Wolfgang - we're all learning something.