A 27 year old Englishman has been beaten to a pulp and left for dead in Wales for being English.

Paul Meehan was born in London, grew up in Cardiff but now lives in Birmingham.  He was waiting at a taxi rank when he was attacked after the group heard the brummie twang in his accent.  Doctors had to remove a 5″ section of his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain.

Increasing anglophobia over the last decade or so has been recognised but the bulk of the increase in racially motivated attacks against English people has been in Scotland where a 2003 survey found that a quarter of English people living in Scotland had experienced racially motivated harassment or discrimination.  There are a number of prominent examples of that latent anglophobia translating into physical violence in the disabled Englishman who was dragged out of his car and beaten up in Scotland, the half English/half Scottish boy punched in the face in a park in Scotland for wearing an England football shirt, the English carer for a Scottish friend who had his windows smashed and was assaulted for being English.  But the most damning indictment was probably when the head of once of the Scottish police forces said that anti-English attacks had reached epidemic proportions in his force’s area.

However, that violent anglophobia has tended not to manifest itself so much in Wales.  In fact, the worst thing that I recall happening in Wales wasn’t even an assault on a person, it was a horse being slashed a few years ago.  Hopefully this racist attack isn’t the start of a souring of Anglo-Welsh relations.