Ooooh….the Belgians don’t like us. From Brussels paper De Morgen (translated from the Flemish by Paul Belien at The Brussels Journal), under the title “Waarom wij de Britten zo haten” (Why we hate the British so much):
The Huns are back, and they speak English with a variety of invariably common accents. No other nation manages to spoil other people’s holidays so thoroughly as the British. They do that all through the summer everywhere the sun shines with their unique mixture of wantonness and arrogance, their pathetic addiction to drink, their bad taste, and actually just their ugliness and thickheaded presence. There, that is a relief.
With melancholy we think back to the days when the Dutch were most in evidence, with their caravans, their noisy children and their legendary stinginess. Or the Germans, who once on holiday, seemed to forget who had lost the war. Our northern and eastern neighbours are discerning aesthetes compared with the born hooligans from the other side of the Channel.
Luckily it is easy to recognise a Brit on holiday. A clean shaven head with a much too big and cheap pair of sunglasses; a sunburnt bull’s neck; a set of disgusting tattoos across his torso if it is not covered with a football shirt of Manchester United, Chelsea or Celtic Glasgow; a half liter of beer always on hand. The lady in the company divides her attention between the whining children and the curtain that she got mixed up with the tops in her wardrobe while packing. Anyone who has seen a British couple on holiday understands why the English papers are filled with dramatic stories about binge drinking, obesity and teen-age pregnancies.
Rob Verreycken, a member of Vlaams Belang, the right-wing successor party to the banned Vlaams Blok, is lodging a complaint of racism – mostly, it seems, as a way of getting back at De Morgen after they applauded the banning of Vlaams Blok for supposed racism.
Imagine if someone of the Vlaams Belang were to write a similar text entitled ‘Why we hate Muslims so much’ with similar stereotypes about the behaviour of Muslims and how their women dress. Picture the outcry and indignation of the Leftist crowd, led by De Morgen.
It’s difficult to get too offended: you could read similar sentiments in any of our broadsheets, reflecting middle-class horror at the antics of the lower orders. Not nice though, and not easy to pass off as an attempt at humour.
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