Quite. Absurdities abound. Rod Liddle is an entertaining, "outspoken", as they say, writer. By coincidence, his article in this week's Spectator magazine is relevant.
Jeremy
Well, hardly surprising, when you consider that Jeremy Clarkson (in his Sunday Times manifestation, not as tv motoring clown) was also vilified for cracks about the Regions...
I believe that all of those dear people who protest so much about their nationality do so, not from love of their "heritage", but from an acute sense of inferiority that's pricked at each and every real or imagined slur that comes their way.
It's really a lingering part of the caste/class system which, deny it as one might, is ultimately based on facts that we all can sense, however uncomfortable with ourselves those facts may make us feel. And that's key: had we no such self-doubts we wouldn't feel affected.
Having never made a survey of it, I nevertheless think that those who protest so much are perhaps derived more from the educated ranks than from those who are not, and who just want to get on with their lives as best they can. We have plenty of rich slobs in the country. It's why money maketh not the gentleman, and that too much self-knowledge has to find redemption. How better than through attack?