"Your argument amounts to saying that its alright to insult someone if you hate the bastard - but not alright for the bastard to use the same word to describe himself!"

Not quite - I'm saying that when used by people who are not English, the term"Brit" doesn't necessarily have any more or less pejorative content than the term "English" but that when used by English people of themselves, it implies that the English are a lot more unpleasant than they really are.

It's an odd term, because most of the other terms we've had in this thread are very rarely used by people of themselves. And I feel that there's a way in which the English are being tempted into identifying with a dangerous and unpleasant national, and that this is linked with this term.