‘An Irish Lodge band came past with a long notice carried by six people that said English out of Ireland. This was not far behind our own police. I said to the American that if this was in England the police would arrest them for some terrorist offence.’

No, it wouldn’t result in anything of the sort, unless it led to some sort of unrest or public order issue. You just made that bit up.

The view expressed is a legitimate political stance, though of course there are many who would disagree with it. Where have you ever seen someone arrested under anti-terrorist laws simply for expressing such a view publicly? Whilst Adams and McGuinness were denied publicity for many years, their more moderate Republican, and admirable Irish nationalist counterparts such as Gerry Fitt and John Hume were always allowed to express their views.

As far as parading our flag is concerned, there are numerous reasons why we don’t do so in the way that the Welsh, Scots and Irish do.

Firstly, historically, those nations have typically found themselves and their nationality oppressed by the English, and have felt the need to re-assert their national identity as a result.

The Englsh have had no such need – firstly, we’ve not been the oppressed in the way that our neighbours have, secondly, we are historically far more of a mix of peoples – you’d be much harder pushed to define ‘Englishness’ as compared to ‘Irishness’, ‘Welshness’ or ‘Scottishness’. We’re more complacent about it because we have had hundreds of years of constant threat.

Finally, in recent years, our flag has been ‘dumbed down’ by its misuse by assorted football hooligans, right-wing racist bigots and other morons – people are a little wary of waving it in public for fear that they will be associated with such low-quality people.

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I’ve never read such a load of ill-informed tosh in all my life. You have the freedom to say this stuff but everyone else should know you’re just making stuff up. Ridiculous.

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Complete and utter nonsense. If you were ever at a St Patrick’s day parade in New York as you suggest then there is only one reason any Americans could form an opinion of the English being crazy and that would be from listening to you.

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Yep, we can’t use abbreviated terms for people unless they don’t mind it’s called politeness.
Yep, we don’t celebrate kicking people out of our country, we pride ourselves on being welcoming and knowing what is and what isn’t ‘cricket’, it’s called manners.
Yep, we don’t parade around celebrating events of generations ago, it’s called perspective and moving with the times.
Yep, we don’t wave flags around needlessly and saying ‘We Beat You’, it’s called avoiding unnecessary provocation/rudeness and spending our lives permanently up for a pointless scrap.
Call us suckers all you like, but a man’s as big as the problem that gets to him and if the problem that gets to him is not dressing up funny and having a good enough reason to get merry without an feeble/nasty excuse, well, boo and indeed hoo.

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