Possibly amongst the older generations and the hard of thinking, but personally? Not a chance.

Some of the most enjoyable people I've worked with in my jobs over the past 10 years have been Germans.

Thinking about it, old people can be eye poppingly racist...I suppose at some level you think the ignorance/prejudice would disappear through life/education/experience and yet it doesn't.

Some media outlets don't perpetuate these outdated ideas too, from economics through to sport.

How dare you.

Europe is an island off the coast of mainland Britain.

Sorry to keep the trousers thing alive but is that a really, really long trousers zip?



Or perhaps he's wearing hipsters and a zip-up cummerbund?

I think you should have more respect for someone who was around at that time, and who lied about his age to get into the RAF.

Interesting point to raise, it's just got me thinking - I know it's a stereotype, but why are old people considered racist?

Is it merely a particular generation of old people who only really travelled abroad to fight who regard all foreigners with suspicion, following on from previous generations who didn't travel at all?

I just find it hard to believe that anyone who has grown up either with access to foreign travel or who are in contact with people who have travelled the world, who have access to news from all over the world, can develop that kind of racism-through-sheer-ignorance we often associate with old people today.

Thing is, I can almost see why someone who has seen their high street go from predominately white to predominately Pakistani/Caribbean/Chinese can develop views which border on racism, as they might be resistant to change, but I just can't see my generation growing up harbouring these kinds of mass-prejudice that previous generations seem to have through sheer ignorance.

I can't stand the Chinese government, for example, nor do I like what I've seen of Chinese big-business practices, but that doesn't mean I tar all Chinese people with the same brush, but I guess that's because through mass media and immigration I can clearly distinguish the people from the institution.

Please, Sir, can I have some Moore?

70 years is a long time to hold onto a grudge, especially a grudge against a nation which likely no longer contains the vast majority of the germans who actually fought against us.

Exactly. Anti-semitism was quite evenly represented across the continent before the war. Us Dutch didn´t exactly cover ourselves with glory in those dark days either. The National Socialist Association was a significant political party in the 1930s here. Only a handful of public servants declined to sign the ´non-Jew declaration´ during the war. The rest thought ´Well, I´m no Jew so I don´t do anything wrong by signing a form that states I´m not a Jew.´ The Dutch Railways duly invoiced the German government the price of a one-way ticket for every Jew they transported to the concentration camps. There was a pretty sizeable congintent of Dutch who joined the SS and fought at the east front.

By the sounds of it, the few Jews who survived the German camps and returned to their home country right after the war, weren´t exactly welcomed with open arms either.

Then, after the war, everyone had been in the resistance and people were suddenly all petty and borderline criminal towards anyone who spoke German, or dared crossing our borders in a German-plated car. Great.