Thanks Pip (Slow day for you too? :-) )

I can see your reasoning now and, although I disagree with it, it is a huge improvement on the thinly disguised insults and sneers that some people use in place of reason. What I disagree with is that it is 'excusable'. Racial stereotyping should not be excused, even if made in jest. For all the reasons that Paul mentions above plus the fact that it does nothing at all to improve the strained relationship that the two countries have had for countless years. Who oppressed whom and when is in the past and although we should learn from it we should leave the past hatreds there.

It's only a short step from 'OK for an Englishman' to 'Bastard Brits' and a bombing campaign. OK - I know it is extreme but when enough people begin to think that the Englishman has no soul then it becomes OK to treat him as something other than a human being with feelings. Just as when enough people believed in 'Thick Paddies' and 'Heathen Blacks' it became OK to enslave them. Should we not learn by those mistakes and try to stop being hurtful?

OK, I am by no means perfect and cannot help making the odd hurtful remark either unthinkingly or in the heat of the moment. Trying to justify it only makes it worse:-(

Good to see you the other day btw - When Dick was on of course! Maybe we we should have said he was OK for a Southerner;-) Out of interest, the song you did, Bonny bunch of Roses, is done by Bernard Wrigley to a completely different tune - Sounds very much like a slow version of Salmontails. Have you heard that one?

Cheers

Dave