suggesting that a repat. to England can never again be English is not racist but it is at least bordering on bigotry.

Nonsense. Eric didn't say you could never again be English - he said that, as far as he's concerned, you are English, as well as being an immigrant ("If you're brought up in a different country you're culturally an immigrant regardless of what it says on your birth certificate. That doesn't stop you being English in my book, but it sounds like it does in yours.")

You are what you are - your life in Australia made you what you are, just as my life in the south-east of England formed me. You're English now, just as I'm Mancunian now. It's not a problem.

Perhaps an Irish reader or two may post on how those returning from America or Aus., e.g., to the "Celtic Tiger" might be treated if they made similar efforts to these

If they took up hurling, played the bodhran and lived on champ and tatties, all the while proclaiming the virtue of Irish traditional culture and questioning immigration? I think they'd be a laughing-stock, actually.