Letters: Asians called to Scottish fight

Sir: If my fellow-countryman Ian Hamilton considers himself a foreigner in England ("Why is Black Rod the only Black Here?", 22 October) he should remember the first rule of international courtesy - not to giggle at the comic customs of foreigners. Ethnic jokes are only acceptable when directed against one's own ethnic group.

For example, it is all right for me to say that I find the spectacle of grown men marching about swathed in yards of coloured material, in a costume invented by a Yorkshire clothier, and with a wee knife in their sock-top moreover, irresistibly comic, particularly when accompanied by the skirling of a primitive musical instrument.

I should not like my English friends to dwell on this, however. But then, they never have.

ISOBEL HAWKING

Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire