Rant of the week: Casual xenophobia

Whoever said hooliganism was the English disease had obviously never heard the good folk from ol’ Blighty talking about the French...

Or the Germans, the Italians, the Australians and those fortunates from the other colonies - just what is it with the English and casual xenophobia?

It’s bizarre to think that the utterance of the odd sly comment about race, religion and gender are all frowned upon but taking someone to task about their country of origin is deemed perfectly acceptable and in most situations considered funny.

Anyone who has born in England, like I was, was raised on a diet of Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes, the crude observations on foreign motoring of Jeremy Clarkson and the historical nationalistic misconceptions of Blackadder.

Everyone form these shores knows the old adages about Scots being tight with money, Irishmen being stupid, anyone from the Mediterranean being greasy and Austrlians being criminals.

The real question is that while we taunt the krauts with two World Wars and one World Cup are we making fatal mistakes?

Are we breeding the divine right of an Englishman into future generations? Mocking other countries for age old conflicts that will soon die form memory?

Maybe as a nation we suffer form illusions of grandeur.

Britain was once had a ‘great’ empire with a naval fleet the envy of the world but while the influence of the small island has died it seems in many ways the infernal arrogance still lives on.

Casual xenophobia is surely the national disease - perhaps this is the reason nationalistic slurs just roll of our tongues.