Rabid, pig-ignorant and staggeringly ill-informed...

...are all words that we bandy about far too frequently, without really taking time to consider their true meaning. So I feel that it's appropriate, in a time that's all about renewing old ties, to catch up with our old friend Roy Stockdill, columnist for the Watford Observer and the man who puts the "pig" back into "pig-ignorant".

"A letter writer, commenting on my remarks about a Watford Afro-Caribbean group;s battle with Watford Council, accused me of spending far too many column lines on the topic. Funny thing, but his letter contained around three times as many words as my original piece..."

Now, regular readers of Watford's newspaper should hear the distant sound of alarm bells ringing here. It's word association really "Roy, race, row"

"...The words pot, kettle and black might be appropriate."

And the alarm bells stop ringing, as the clanger just fell out.

"moreover, her seems to have missed the point, which was that ethnic minorities shouldn't whine about there being nothing in Watford for them when they have all the facilities enjoyed by the rest of us at their disposal.

Being a Yorkshireman, I could regard myself as an ethnic minority."

It carries on in this vein for a few more paragraphs, clangers falling all around, but before we cross the lines of "ranting" and "reasonable use" let's try hard to write a considered response. No, too much.

It's hard to know what to say to this one. Roy, you've done it again.