Letter: You English are crazy

Letter: On a visit to New York we watched the St Patrick's Day parade along Fifth Avenue, and how impressive it was.

It started at 11am and finished at 6.30pm, with the Irish bands, New York Police, and the Fire Service, the armed Services – and a dozen of our police – taking part. We were the only ones not displaying their country's flag.

An American next to me asked me if we had parades like this one. When I said no, he could not understand why.

An Irish Lodge band came past with a long notice carried by six people that said English out of Ireland. This was not far behind our own police. I said to the American that if this was in England the police would arrest them for some terrorist offence.

All the New York police and fire service departments marched by and every person had an American flag on a long pole resting on their shoulder. There must have been 500 of them. I told my American friend this would never happen in England as we would be afraid of upsetting other nationalities.

"You must be crazy", he said. "If you want to see a proper parade come and join in our independence parade, we celebrate kicking you Brits out."

"You can't say that, it's racist" I said, adding we could not shorten names without being called a racist. "What a crazy country England must be," he replied.

J R Jones

Shrewsbury