Letters to the Editor

Despite adding a CC licence to my blog and making it very clear in a post devoted to the topic, the local hack has lifted material from Plashing Vole twice in the last four days. Cue a letter to the editor. What will happen? Mr Rhodes will doubtless write another splenetic article. 

Dear Mr Harrison or Ms Hancox (I don’t quite understand why clicking ‘Keith Harrison’ on leads to ‘Claire.Hancox’),

My name is Plashing Vole. I’m an E+S reader (congratulations on the WWFC/Bettison story: a proper scoop) and an academic at the University of The Dark Place. I also write a blog called Plashing Vole (plashingvole.blogspot.com), which covers academic life, literature, politics and popular culture. Now and then, I mention Peter Rhodes’ column, most often because I disagree with it. 

More often, he mentions my writing: I have lost count over the past few weeks. He rarely credits me and usually distorts what I’m saying, usually through being rather selective. While I’m flattered by the implication that my views are considered newsworthy on an almost daily basis, I would like to draw your attention to the terms and conditions of my blog. It is written under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivations licence. In short, this means that while ‘fair use’ and ‘fair comment’ custom applies, any use of my copyrighted material must be a) credited and b) not altered or transformed. You can find the UK Copyright Service’s definitions of fair use here and of fair dealing here. 

Mr Rhodes is aware of this. As an almost daily reader of my work (the analytic tracking service I use is a mine of fascinating information), he will have seen the blog entry I posted about this, and the licence icon underneath each article. And yet today’s column includes another reference to me - uncredited. 

For instance, he recently attacked my account of the Wolverhampton riots (from two years ago: how much time does he spend trawling my site?) as not being very supportive of the Chamber of Commerce, not a body to which I have any responsibility. Through selective quotation, he made it sound like I’m some kind of distant, ivory tower type. In fact, I live 200 yards from the E+S building and my own front door was kicked in during the riot. My interpretation of events might not be to Mr Rhodes’ liking, but your readers might like to have known that it was written from personal experience.

I have no wish to stop Mr Rhodes mining my blog for his material (though sometimes I think it’s so extensive that I should get the byline and commission) but I would like you to acknowledge the source as a matter of good practice. My students fail essays through over-reliance on single sources and failure to acknowledge them properly. 

Finally, for a man who wrote a whole column about ‘Why I Dislike Twitter’, he seems to spend an inordinate time on it and the web ’sashaying through cyberspace looking for yet more comments and conversations’ as he puts it, judging by the amount of my material which appears in his column, let alone the comments made on my blog and those of others who have commented on my work which he has recycled. Even the quotation from ‘an academic’ he cites in support of his position is in fact taken - without acknowledgement - from the comments section of my blog discussion of students’ news sources. This is, at the very least, ironic. 

Sorry to ramble on like this. In summary: I’m very happy for Peter to carry on lifting my thoughts. I’d just like him to acknowledge the source - perhaps providing a link on the web version - and provide enough context to give an honest impression of what I said, as per the terms of my licence. 

Yours,

PV

What a piece of work is a man

Firstly, a word with Mr Peter Rhodes about 'news values'.

I made a passing comment recently about my university restructuring its departments, resulting in a Faculty of Arts. People have been referring to it as FArts, which isn't very funny but is fairly predictable. My preference would be for the more accurate Faculty of Arts and Humanities, but I'm just not that bothered.

Although I can't link you to his column in the Express and Star as it isn't considered worthy of webspace, Mr Peter Rhodes thought that my comment was a) worth repeating (without payment) and b) 'whistleblowing'. Then again, he does think that the term 'school lunch' is bourgeois political correctness. Unless he's joking. I can no longer tell these days.

Whistleblowing is when you reveal dangerous, illegal or unethical activity in the workplace. It's worth column inches. I'm very pleased that Mr Peter Rhodes is a regular reader of Plashing Vole, because he might learn something. Not because I'm particularly well-informed, but because he's even less well-informed. It's just a shame that he feels it's important to recycle lame fart gags rather than reconsider whether, for instance, supporters of equal marriage are 'fascist', as he claims (clue: fascists put gay people into concentration camps and make them wear pink triangles, rather than legalising marriage between same-sex couples).

Anyway, that's as much space as Mr Peter Rhodes deserves. But I'm afraid I'm going to upset him again by telling you all what I did in class today.

The first class of the day was a two-hour lecture on Shakespeare, with me as the boss's minion. Or lovely assistant, depending on how myopic you are. An introductory session, we spent a lot of time talking about the cultural blocks around having a rich and dynamic relationship with Shakespeare. We talked about the way Shakespeare has been appropriated by the state and cultural authority as in some way emblematic of Englishness and Britishness. For instance, this 1944 Olivier version of Henry V was clearly part of the patriotic propaganda drive:



But it needs some editing to make it Glorious Brits versus Evil German Scum. Principally, the lines in the next scene in which Henry orders 'every soldier kill his prisoners' are cut - we can't have a king of England, or English people, committing war crimes (even though they did, and do, quite a lot).

We talked about Shakespeare as a businessman, as perhaps being Catholic, perhaps being homosexual, of definitely being a creation of each age. There is no Shakespeare, we said: there are Shakespeares. There's the man churning out bums-on-seats material and negotiating the political vicissitudes of a dangerous period. There's the uncouth dullard who slipped into obscurity for 150+ years after his death,  to be revived in cut-down versions and tragedies with happy endings (really: in one popular staging, Romeo and Juliet wake up and live happily ever after). There's the prophet of Empire (the Victorians saw The Tempest as justifying Empire as a means of civilising the brutes and the anti-Imperial Shakespeare, such as the Irish seashore version I saw this summer which played The Tempest as an examination of the evils of invasion and colonisation. There's Straight Shakespeare and Gay Shakespeare, all working off the sonnets, and there are Conservative and Lefty Shakespeares. Most of these send the guardians of conservative culture off the deep end, but they're all there in the texts, waiting to be uncovered. That's why Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) are so fascinating. Yes, you end up less certain at the end of the course than at that start, but I consider that an intellectual victory.

Our point was that you could easily do a degree in Shakespeare Studies without even opening a copy of the plays because in the absence of authorial intent, all texts and especially plays, can be read (or not read) in a variety of ways. Shakespeare didn't leave manuscripts, didn't do interviews in the Sunday papers, didn't arrange publication of the plays (the cash came from performances, and he co-owned a production company). There's no Authorised Version, only varying texts cribbed from actors' notes and friends' memories. Hence the Shakespeare Industry, which puts him up on a pedestal. World's Greatest Playwright. Timeless. Immortal. Always Relevant. Englishman of the Ages.

All crap. This stuff gets in the way of close, informed readings of the texts. Resistance to Shakespeare is often a result of this patronising guff, most often found in education ministers' speeches and little-Englander editorials in the Daily Mail. Once you've cleared all this cultural undergrowth, you can start reading the texts: asking how (and whether) they work on stage and on screen, what the cultural context was, what perspectives are being privileged and which are being silenced. I'm with Derrida: the author's dead. His opinion no longer matters, but the words he (probably) wrote do, and so does the relationship the reader and audience have with those words.

What we want to do is strip away the unthinking hierarchisation of Shakespeare v other authors, English Literature versus Others (such as MacAulay's assertion that a single shelf of European literature was worth 'the whole native literature of India and Arabia') and get back to texts and contexts. Down with Great Men. This is what the know-nothings refer to as Cultural Relativism and Political Correctness Gone Mad. We need to do this: there's nothing intellectually stimulating or informative about constructing league tables of playwrights. You can't compare The Frogs, Hamlet and Shopping and Fucking in qualitative terms: what you can do is compare technique, staging, setting, their relationships to each other and their contexts and learn things through those comparisons. This isn't controversial in my world, but there are plenty of reactionaries (most of whom haven't seen a play since they were the Third Ass in their primary Nativity) who think this is treason, subversion and filth.

As an encore, I went straight into a class which pulled apart the concept of universal morality based on utilitarianism, Bentham and Mill's formula which problematically relates ethics to a complicated calculation of pleasure, pain-avoidance and consequences while covertly relying on very subjective ideas (we don't agree on what constitutes happiness, nor on how to acquire it). We successfully demolished conventional bourgeois morality in one two-hour slot and thus it was a day well-spent.

Peter: if you're lacking material for next week's column, you're welcome to turn up at any of my classes.

A Moron Writes

Now, I have had occasion to take Mr Peter Rhodes to task before (and here). He is, you'll remember, the thin-skinned local columnist whose work reads like something Jeremy Clarkson would produce if he'd sustained massive brain injuries in a particularly horrendous car crash. Reactionary, deluded, ill-informed and lazy.

Yesterday, Mr Rhodes turned his attention to the cultural sphere, not his natural stamping ground. In particular, he decided to mark the passing of Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney in his own inimitable way.

Kipling was a great poet. So were Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth and Yeats. People queued to buy their latest works and learned to recite them by heart.
 But when Seamus Heaney, who died last week, is hailed as a great poet, it assumes that poetry is still a significant force in society.
 It is not. Poetry is no longer great.
 The days are gone when a poet like Yeats could declare of the 1916 Easter Rising “a terrible beauty is born” and shake the foundations of the Empire.
 Most of us can recite a few lines from the great poets but how many of us know a single couplet by Heaney?”

This of course bears all the hallmarks of the big fish in a small pool. Mr Rhodes cannot recite 'a single couplet by Heaney'. Therefore Heaney can't be a good or important poem. Case closed. OR, Mr Rhodes is a cultural vacuum. OR, to be more charitable, the general public has many competing demands on its attention and doesn't have the same relationship with poetry that it did before. It's certainly true that schoolchildren aren't forced to memorise huge screeds of poetry these days (though Mr Gove intends to change that).

I recently spoke to someone who did learn massive chunks of 'great' poets' work in school. He can still reel it out, but as he said, all they did was memorise: they never learned why these poems were meant to be great, how they worked and what they meant. It was just empty data.

This, I suspect, is where Mr Rhodes' thesis falls apart. He can't define 'great' because he can't get beyond memory. I suspect that he merely means 'famous', i.e. what he learned in school. Those other poets he cites are Georgians and Victorians whose gentler work infested the anthologies without close examination: if Rhodes was around in their day he'd be screaming blue murder about their political and sexual subversion, particularly Byron. His casual list simply betrays his superficial understanding of their work. Even Kipling, supposedly a Pillar of Imperialism, actually questions and undermines the racial and social underpinnings of that Empire.

Did Yeats' poem 'shake the foundations of Empire'? I doubt it: though about 1916, it wasn't published until 1921, and expresses terrible doubts about the consequences of this specific Rising, which he generally supported. What shook the foundations of Empire was the Rising, not the poem. By 1921, Ireland's exit loomed (Civil War and Independence arrived in 1922, and neither the UK Government nor Michael Collins ascribed it to poetry's effects). 

How many people know a single couplet by Heaney? In Ireland, several million. In the UK, many, many more than poor Peter knows.

(PS: he's not even original. The Telegraph already ran a piece by a man who won the Bad Sex in Literature Award claiming that Heaney is 'no good', mostly because he wasn't a right-wing British imperialist).

Rhodes: bang to rights

One of my favourite writers can be found over at Days of Enlightenment. He's an Eeyore-ish character: grumpy, depressed and misanthropic. The only person he find more disappointing than the broad mass of humanity is, well, himself. It makes great reading.

Today, he has managed to break through the miasma of self-criticism to spend a few minutes contemplating the output of Peter Rhodes, the world's worst local journalist, in pursuit of a forlorn plea for love thinly disguised (like a decent Renaissance sonnet) as a rejection of the romantic chase:

talentless, self-Googling, weasel-faced, regional hack Peter Rhodes; a woman-hating, over-the-hill-that-never-had-a-gradient, bullying, benign tumor of a man spouting half-baked toytown reactionary opinion so uninspired that it makes you think that maybe Littlejohn isn’t so bad after all. To be fair, I shouldn’t knock Rhodes. He provides a valuable service for which I am eternally grateful. Namely that I often think the person I hate most in the world is myself. Then I remember that pointless prick is still breathing and things don’t seem quite so bad after all. So thanks for that, Pete.

'Day's is usually a gentle sort. He reminds me of Moley in The Wind in the Willows: shy, retiring and a thoroughly good chap. He's worth devoting a few minutes of your time to.

Rhodes Watch: the Mantel issue

My thanks to ally and reader @Bruno_di_Gradi for alerting me to the magisterial contribution of Peter Rhodes (the poor man's Littlejohn) on the Great Hilary Mantel Debate.

The rest of you can now stop pontificating. Peter knows the score. It's simple. Ugly clever women will always be jealous of pretty ones.

Now Peter's a threatening kind of chap, so I couldn't possibly speculate that he hasn't read the London Review of Books transcript of Mantel's thoughtful lecture. But he's certainly wrong: Mantel is kind and sympathetic towards Kate Middleton: her major point is that the media (and that includes Peter) place impossible and contradictory demands on royal women. (I have read it: I subscribe to the LRB because I prefer to experience new ideas rather than depending on What I Reckon, which is why I'll never be a star columnist on a local rag).

And not simply royal women. Let's have a look at Pistol Pete's language shall we? Firstly, he seems to have a problem with women 'of a certain age'. That's right ladies: let's have a cut-off around 35. After that, you should keep your mouths shut and pop on that burqa. As for 'frumpy', well we can't have 'frumpy' women expressing opinions about 'slim, gorgeous chicks'. They're not qualified even if they have produced 'brilliant literature'. Because obviously your genes and prevailing male standards of beauty are the sole criteria for whether or not your opinion is valid. 

But two can play this game:

Gorgeous pouting Peter Rhodes (42-48-42): not being 'frumpy' or 'of a certain age' is allowed to comment, despite never producing any 'brilliant literature'.

Perhaps if Peter woke up looking more like a commentariat hunk (Giles Coren, perhaps, or Owen Jones), he wouldn't be quite so dyspeptic, lazy and bigoted.

Or perhaps not.

Oh, and Pete: that Austen opening that you nicked – she was being ironic. It's in Mrs Bennet's voice and isn't meant to be taken seriously. But you knew that. Didn't you?

Rhodes: the next chapter

The offending article

Peter's still a little miffed:

"This morning I updated the piece to make it clear that I don't think poor suffering Pete is a racist, just an ill-informed reactionary know-nothing. "
No you didn't,. You removed the offensive words and apologised because you got it wrong and were frightened to death  about the consequences, like a little boy caught with his catapult next to a broken window. As you put it in your email to me: "OK, hands up: my satire was too broad in this case and I apologise."
Today, inexplicably, you dig yourself into a deeper hole by posting "comments" suggesting I am lying about my CRE award.
As one who presumes to teach media studies, you really should be more thorough. I am astonished that both you and your emailers are so hopeless at using Google. It really is very simple. You type in "Peter Rhodes" and "Commission for Racial Equality" and there it is.
And if that is beyond you, you can take it from me that I won first prize (Regional and Local Newspaper category) in the 1997 CRE Race in the Media Awards. The award was for a "body of work," a number of features written during the year and it was presented, as I recall, by Meera Syal.
Now, if you are big enough, you will remove the comments from your blog.
Incidentally, wouldn't  this be the ideal time to assure your readers that you have never, ever sought to write anything for the "racist" Express & Star?

1. 'Wrong' is an odd word for subjective opinions.
2. I'm not frightened of any consequences. If Peter wants to sue over satirical comments, he's very welcome. This, let's remind ourselves, is a man who equates supporting equal marriage to shovelling Jews into the gas chambers.
3. I haven't posted comments. Readers have posted comments. I don't censor comments.
4. I spent a good long time searching for Peter's award. It doesn't appear anywhere. I invite you to do the search he recommends. There it… isn't. 
5. A prize! In 1997! Presented by someone famous from an ethnic minority! Well, some of my best friends are black too, as the saying goes. 
6. My history with the Express and Star: 
a) I complained to the Press Complaints Commission about the paper equating Travellers with animals. They got away with it because the code - conveniently written for newspaper editors by newspaper editors - said that you can say what you like about entire ethnic groups: you just can't attach racialised commentary to individuals. That's a hell of a loophole. 
b) The Express and Star approached the university looking for a piece about the American election. It was suggested by the university that I co-write it with my boss. The Express and Star rejected this because it doesn't like me. I certainly didn't approach them. 
7. Is the Express and Star racist? Well, it suggested that Travellers are congenitally criminal, which sounds racist to me. It gave notorious racist Enoch Powell a column for many years. It demonises ethnic minorities and religions. So yes, in my subjective view, it is. 
8. I won't be removing comments. Peter has emailed me again:

You are responsible in law for every item appearing on your website. Shouldn't you know this sort of stuff?

I do know my stuff (and nothing posted by my readers is libellous anyway).

Blogger is hosted in the USA and comments are therefore held to be posted there. Under 47 USC 230, I am only responsible for comments made by employees (I have none), comments which breach criminal codes (which none of mine do) or comments I've edited substantially enough to change the meaning (which I don't do). As I'm sure you're aware, libel is a civil matter. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 stipulates that

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Of course, one might dispute jurisdiction: Vole is readable in the UK so its content is actionable here. In which case I would refer you to Google v. Pamiz, in which a British judge decided that blog comments were the responsibility of their authors rather than the platform (in this case, Pamiz's own blog: he objected to libellous comments made about him and sued Google - and lost). UK law isn't completely clear, however. 

(New reader? Start here).

Woah… this guy bites

A while back, I criticised Peter Rhodes' column in the local press, which called advocates of equal marriage and supporters of immigration 'Blackshirts' and liberals 'Fascists'. 

The offending article

Apparently that's reasonable commentary while my satirical response is 'defamation' (I can tell you're not legally trained, Pete) and 'character assassination'. This morning I updated the piece to make it clear that I don't think poor suffering Pete is a racist, just an ill-informed reactionary know-nothing. 

A man with a public bully pulpit in the form of a column in two newspapers seems curiously thin-skinned judging by this morning's email:

You are quite sure about this?

Regards,
Peter Rhodes (former winner of the Commission for Racial Equality "Race in the Media" Awards)

and later today

That's an apology? Still looks like defamation to me. Thank the Lord no-one actually reads it.
But it does occur to me that on the one occasion we met, you did not stand up for your principles and harangue me as a frustrated bigot (incidentally, where on earth did you get the idea that I resented never going to Fleet Street?) but shook my hand and smiled sweetly.
How very easy it must be to indulge in character assassination from the safety of an anonymous website.  But it's a bit cowardly, isn't it? Hardly a proper job for a grown-up.

Did no-one read it? Well, I'm up to 154,000 readers cumulatively, and I get about 180 a day. I can't be that 'anonymous': Peter managed to find my personal e-mail address and worked out that Plashing Vole is someone he met before. And by the way Peter, blogging isn't my job. It's a hobby. Whereas you call people with whom you disagree 'Fascists' and 'Blackshirts' for money. The only differences between you and I are that I have a grasp of history and you distort things for cash. Are you suggesting that only newspaper columnists are allowed to bandy around strong words? If I were you, I'd look up the terms 'fair comment' and 'satire'. And I'd really consider how silly it would look for a newspaper columnist to take legal action against a mere reader before you bandy around legal terminology. 

Why didn't I spit upon Peter and his terrible opinions when we met? Well, for a range of reasons. Firstly, I'd never heard of him then: if I'd known you were a frustrated bigot, I'd have called you him on it. I do distinctly remember, however, mourning the fate of your newspaper, founded as a progressive organ and turned into the mouthpiece of Enoch Powell and his racist, reactionary followers. And I'm generally polite. And because we were in a radio station discussing other matters. I suspect that if Peter met one of the liberals he calls 'Blackshirts' and 'Fascists', he wouldn't be rude to them either. 

Why do I think you're a frustrated Fleet Street hack? Because your 'style' is a third-rate version of the ill-informed poison purveyed by characters like Clarkson, Moir, Littlejohn and all the other Little Englanders who infest the pages on the grubbier end of the national trade. 

All clear now?

And a final update:

Actually, I am legally trained (all real journalists are) and I know a clear case of libel when I see it.  I am a long-established columnist working in a racially- mixed area. I have a commendation for the quality and balance of my work from the Commission for Racial Equality. Yet you blog:"Rhodes and his friends spend their time muttering darkly about 'them'. They promote Section 28 and dream of the days of Empire when black people contentedly cut sugar cane for white people's tea and didn't moan about having their countries invaded by the Bwana."
Under the circumstances, it is hard to imagine a more wicked and damaging allegation. If this came to court, the lawyers would wipe the floor with you.
However, I am a proper journalist with a proper disdain for this country's draconian libel laws and would never dream of suing. You have been man enough to apologise, and I accept that. Sleep soundly.

I meant legally-qualified actually. Still, that'll do. Not sure what he means by 'real journalist'. I'm not claiming to be one by profession and he's simply a columnist: offering opinions, such as that people who support gay marriage are the same as Blackshirts who wanted Jews exterminated. I offer opinions, but they're a) free and b) better-informed. But I'm still not a journalist. 

And yes Peter, I sleep very soundly indeed. Despite being 'wicked'. 

Local journalism at its finest.

One of my agents in Shropshire (I have agents everywhere) sent me a classic piece of local opinion journalism, by a chap called Peter Rhodes. He's like a toxic mix of Peter Hitchens and Jeremy Clarkson, only more embittered because he's never made it on the national reactionary stage. He has columns in the Express and Star (popularly known as the Express and Swastika for obvious reasons) and its sister paper The Shropshire Star.

That's right! Even though he calls you Blackshirts (that's the treasonous British Union of Fascists, by the way: Hitler's Jew-hating UK wing), you're the one who doesn't believe in 'reasoned debate' and uses the 'vilest terms' while trying to establish a 'tyranny' through the… er… fascist tactics of standing for office and expressing opinions in public.

I can't link you to Peter's article because his employers don't think it's worth wasting pixels and bandwidth on, but it's a classic of the Reactionary Paranoid White Man kind. Hence a short letter from yours truly to that paper. I'm guessing they won't print it.

Sir,Peter Rhodes' latest lazy effort ('scratch a liberal, find a fascist') omits to mention that liberals have not as yet resorted to gas chambers. They were built and operated by a group which did hate immigrants, ethnic and sexual minorities. Peter Hitchens and Mr Rhodes invent liberal bogeymen to hide the fact that what they fear is difference of any kind. If it's any consolation, the world still appears to be run by angry heterosexual white men like themselves. They aren't (sadly) a persecuted minority. 

Much as the Peters might like to think otherwise, angry white heterosexual conservatives are still quite powerful – from the press to politics to business. I'd been inclined to guess that they form the majority of reporting and editorial staff at the Shropshire Star. The 'freedom' they tend to espouse is usually the freedom to silence people who aren't like them. That's the difference between Peter and us liberals and lefties.

Much as I fantasise about putting Mr Rhodes in a prison camp and subjecting him to twenty four hours of Julian Clary, Malcolm X and Shami Chakrabarti's greatest hits, we tend to shake our heads and hope that reasoned argument will change their minds. Rhodes and his friends spend their time muttering darkly about 'them'. They promote Section 28 and dream of the days of Empire when black people contentedly cut sugar cane for white people's tea and didn't moan about having their countries invaded by the Bwana. Rhodes and his friends see every effort to treat subaltern groups equally as some kind of Stalinist plot to make them contract gay marriage and salute the North Korean flag every day. And they get paid very well to stoke these fears too. I wonder if he's descended from famous imperialist conqueror Cecil Rhodes?

It must be tiring to be so bitter and paranoid all the time.

As luck would have it, I'm reading some academic papers today which would make Peter's head explode. They're about Jackie Kay's wonderful novel Trumpet, which features a black! Scottish! trans-sexual! jazz! trumpeter and celebrates the claim that racial, national and sexual identities are unstable and all the richer for it!

I am available to give Peter and his friends remedial classes in Coping With Post-Medieval Life. Give me a call.

Update! Peter has indeed contacted me (via email rather than in the comments like the hoi polloi:

You are quite sure about this?
Regards, Peter Rhodes (former winner of the Commission for Racial Equality "Race in the Media" Awards)

So I'm happy to offer a clarification. Peter is definitely a reactionary who doesn't know his political arse from his historical elbow. And his newspaper is racist. But he is clearly not a racist. He just doesn't understand the irony of British people opposing immigration while celebrating an Empire built on over-running everybody else's countries. Nor does he see equating advocates for equal marriage with the Blackshirts who wanted Britain to put Jews, homosexuals, trades unionists, communists, Roma, Jehovah Witnesses and assorted others in gas chambers just like their Nazi masters as at all inaccurate or offensive.

Peter: 'liberals' are for things. Fascists are against things. You're against gay people marrying and people immigrating into Britain (except for the Romans, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Norwegians, Normans, Huguenots and Dutch, I presume). You may not be a racist but it's clear which side you're on.