I'm a WHAT?

Hate was, of course, the wrong word. What most English in my experience feel towards the Welsh is something less inaccurately labelled contempt. I used the word Hate, possibly with the fat that the Slug is a Taff Slug in mind. And of course he is the exception that proves the rule (that is to say the rule about it being contempt rather than hatred).

While I'm underlining my credentials as a non-racialist let me say this on a not entirely unrelated matter.

Three million cheers and equally many congratulations must go the Japanese for their showing in today's Rugby match. This will of course be interpreted as a typically obnoxious piece of bullying arrogance from a bullying arrogant Aussie - but notwithstanding the brutal final score line, the Nips apparently acquitted themselves quite magnificently particularly during the first half. I didn't see the match or listen to it; my impression is based only on the BBC on-line coverage of the match which presumably is based on a report of the match filed by someone who was in touch with some one who was somewhere in Europe when the match was taking place. So that's authoritative, right?

Anyway, well done, Tojo.

And the plucky kiwis also had a quite solid win over whoever they were playing. So well done to them too.

The English, on the other hand, can celebrate not one but THREE victories at international level, today. What a tremendous hat trick that is chaps. Well done! Romping to victory in the match and the Best Of series against solid opposition in the form of India is splendid. To have ground the Red Sea Pedestrians (as the Slug described them) into the turf despite Michael Owen's best efforts to keep them in the tie is a Grand effort! A veil had best be drawn over the rather patchy performance against the USA in the World Cup. A Win's A Win, as they say. Never mind the quality feel the, er, remaining in contention.

Today's piece on hate came courtesy of the deeply peculiar 'Englishman' Graeme Le Saux, a man never knowingly found to have forked out on a copy of The Sun, and once rumoured (by pretty much all and sundry) to have no interest whatsoever in that august journal's Page Three Stunna du Jour.

For that sarong and frilly pantie wearing pal of the Sir Elton John's to casually diss a fellow player in the most pejorative terms at his disposal is one thing; that he does not have the balls - be they of gold or base metal, to say "All is fair in love and war, and I routinely call anyone who can string a coherent sentence together a faggot" is quite another matter. I suspect strongly that Golden Balls views on those few footballers who don't read at the Sun/Mirror end of the journalistic market are pretty commonplace, not excluding among those who actually work in the mass media.

After that, and one or two other things that have happened to cross my path today I have decided to become a Militant Atheist Humanist Libertarian. I've tried (a bit) to come up with some alternative combination or alternative words that would provide me with a snappy acronym and failed. Perhaps if I hadn't had a couple of bottles of Hobgoblin already.... Anyway

So now I'm a MAHL, a strangulated creature stranded somewhere mid-Atlantic (between the British and American pronunciations of that dangerous little tyke of a word - m.a.l.l.).

To the two female members of staff who've announced that they've progressed in their "faith" to the point where they must wear some garment, the name for which they have I've forgotten but which seems to approximate to what you or I would call a Head Scarf, because "only their husbands should see their hair"... I say this:

You go right ahead girls. You've been going up to London and immersing yourselves ever deeper in your "faith" and if wearing a head scarf is where this has led you so be it, though I challenge you to show me where in the Koran or the Hadith the particular garment is stipulated, and if not, what is actually required of you beyond dressing modestly - an imprecation surely open to the widest imaginable interpretation and as manifested anywhere and everywhere largely reflecting a cultural imperative.

But let me also say this. The minute you stray beyond what is strictly demanded of you by your "faith" and lapse into an expression of what would more honestly be described as the culture your parents brought to this country with them when they migrated, I will absolutely assert my right to express my culture, in whatever way I interpret that.

OK?

Probably not, but I've been imbibing, and that probably goes a long way to proving your point and, as it happens, mine also.

Good night.