Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
straw-man, and absolute bobbins!

there are always nut-cases, they they always shout loud, should I tar germany with the visible presence of their neo-nazi groups...........? no, because it doesn't reflect germany as a whole.

clegg is talking utter guff, and repellent guff at that. i do not want him representing me.
The phenomenon which I and Clegg are talking about has nothing in common with the far-right. The far-right is a minority group of mentally challenged extrremists. Anti-German sentiment in the UK is something which is far deeper and more insitutionalised.

80 per cent of British schoolchildren, when asked what they associated with Germany, mentioned the Second World War, and 50 per cent mentioned Hitler. Even John Cleese hates it, saying at a competition at the German Embassy ""I’m delighted to help with trying to break down the ridiculous anti-German prejudices of the tabloids and clowns like Basil Fawlty, who are pathetically stuck in a world view that’s more than half a century out of date...I think the German contribution to literature and philosophy is extraordinary, and to music and science is enormous.". To say that this a "strawman" argument is to say that we live in a nation of scarecrows.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/worl...ugh.2442846.jp
http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/ab.../whygerm1.html