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Reggie Perrin wrote:

> It's like renta-bigot on the Yahoo Royal Family Forum right
> now. Maybe it's healthy that people can get their racism and
> sense of injustice off their chests on a forum like that. It's
> depressing that so many people think that 'Paki' is a
> completely accaptable term, just a shortened version of
> Pakistani.

Well, that's what it is.
It is used in an offensive way as well, but that's because there are negative attitudes towards people of Pakistani origins.
The only reason 'Pakistani' is not deemed offensive itself is that people prefer their insults to be short and crisp. Thus, people with that negative attitude would have used the official term for offensive purposes had it been shorter - and I am pretty sure many people in the educated classes simply use the long version 'Pakistani', and do mean it offensively.

I simply do not like giving up the short form to people who use the term offensively. It's like surrendering a bit of the language.

Aye, but a lot of the kind of views average people in such areas (as opposed to full-blooded racists/bigots) hold seem to be created and stoked by the media and by Government Ministers. Interaction probably puts an end to most of it among basically decent people who are just on the naive side. You meet people and realise they're no different to you: they hate the British weather as well (why would anybody leave the Carribbean to come here? Britain's a beautiful place, but all the bloody rain...).

Hull used to be 97% white - it's changing recently, which is good (I like black women. And Asian women. And I like cooking - Asian stores are fantastic). Hand on heart, I don't think that there's ever been a serious bout of prejudice in the city. There are lot of problems with work, money and education - and there are definitely some idiots - but the BNP don't poll here well at all, thankfully.