I am usually pretty tolerant, even of oxymorons, but I can't stand bigots, which, it goes without saying, no Mudcatters are. My understanding (although I come from south of Watford and don't count) is that:-

The bit of Yorkshire that sounds a bit Geordie is Teesside, where the Wilson family and Vin Garbutt come from. It's the part of the world where railways were born and Stephenson ran the Rocket from Stockton to Darlington. It's now promoting itself as Tees Valley, which includes Darlington, which used to be in County Durham (where Jez Lowe comes from), the Land of the Prince Bishops.

Geordies come from North of the Tyne (at least Anni Fentiman who comes from Gateshead, south of the Tyne, says she's not a true Geordie. Neither Tyneside nor Wearside (Sunderland) is in Yorkshire.

The UK of course has an established Church (but only because Henry VIII wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon, and had to become the Defender of the Faith and break from Rome to do so)and there are interesting debates going on as to whether discrimination on the grounds of religion should be prohibited as well as gender and race. There's also a fairly big row going on at the moment because a highly rated faith-based school in the North East (Emmanuel - I think it might even be in Gateshead) has been teaching Creationism, and our eminent scientists have been going spare and saying this should only be part of the bible teaching not the science course. A friend of mine, who teaches psychology, and is a churchgoer, moved to Canada (Monckton) and found that she was being denounced from the pulpit for being an evolutionist.

There's also an argument going on about whether our Government should fund Muslim schools which educate girls differently and to a lower academic standard than State schools.

But nobody ever argues that children in English schools should be taught English folk music. Or morris dancing.

Kitty