I'm sorry, I just don't understand where you are coming from WAV. You do a lot of shouting about English culture & heritage, but refuse to aknowledge how England came about in the first place. You seem to have this vision of England being a frozen bubble in time, made up of the bits you like, taken from history, some where vaguely between 1100 CE to 1930 CE.

I was born and brought up in London. I've spent all my life in England and I dearly love the place. But the England and the culture I grew up in appears wildly different to the english culture you keep harping on about. More to the point, you keep trying to tell me what is and what is not my culture.

Whilst I appreciate that you wish to promote parts of my culture that have dwindled, you do it in a blinkered and frankly offensive way. I see little difference between your denial of the evolution that brought England to it's path through history and that of what used to be called the National Front, who also seemed to think that at some point there was a race of Englishmen and a specific culture that is English and that nothing should be allowed to detract from or change this artificial construct.

Make no mistake, I am no apologist for being English, I do think that people should be proud to be English and I don't see why it should be the 'politically correct' bone of contention that it has become. But whilst I defend the right to be English with pride, I see no reason to allow someone with such a narrow viewpoint dictate to me what it means to be English.