Stereotyping is an annoyance. Tories are most usual  indicated as posh speaking, public schooled, wealthy and powerful yet it my experience that would describe many staunch Labour friends and acquaintances….. some very big names and families in there too, here and abroad. Most Tories I know are more lower middleclass in  their raising and have often reached high position through hard work and not influence and become posh speaking along the way.
 Then there is nationality stereotyping = remember  those stories that began.... "There was an Englishman a S...…… and so on" Those are no longer allowed ---- .. and some were ever so funny... oops.
But there are others sorts and I find those irksome too.

I don't mind stereotyping, but what I find objectionable is the modern idea that what we (my husband and I) think of as stereotyping is now considered racism. e think stereotypes are based on some form of reality but this might not have been the case in the past. 

To get this into a historical framework, have these stereotypes always been there? ie Germans are dour, the Swiss are hidebound by rules, Polynesians are relaxed and/or lazy, the Scots are mean, Jews obsessed with making money? Or are they more modern than that? I know Shakespeare is often criticised for his depiction of Shylock though I find his speech that includes "if we prick us do we not bleed?" very moving and un-anti-Semitic. I have just read Bill Bryson's Neither Here nor There about his 1999 trip round Europe and he considers most of these stereotypes very accurate. But when we were on our honeymoon in 1973 and probably not very aware of the stereotyping of certain countries we didn't notice them. And we have never seen the unfriendliness of Parisians when we have been there. They seem to go out of their way to help NZers (whom they probably take to be English, though we do often have bags that say NZ, and the stereotype of NZers seems to be generally favourable, mostly their friendliness and laid back attitudes).

I am sure your NZ tagged bags made all the difference, Caro. The English are not exactly popular. In the Great Spice market in Istanbul a few years back I was doing fine with bargained purchases  until it was realised that I was English and not German blond. My brunette daughter took over once I decided what I wanted in a shop and then left. It was really funny. I have met much of it abroad and it never bothers. Assumptions about the English..... always having tea at 4 for instance, and many odd little things  with attitudes from insult to fawning because of being English have to be expected. In very conservative households I was not allowed to meet their women. However, the women were kind.
 When designing a new beach house with local fishermen that they would build - with a stick in the sand and footsteps. As one does, the women sent the best  spiced sweet tea I shall ever have made with cardoman and limes, along with tasty snacks and an exotic handmade scented garland of seeds and scented wood. I had probably known them  when they were girls and like me on  rock reefs seeking Arabian sea shells at low tide.

The English do seem to be perceived as a nation of tea-drinkers and as drinkers of tea with milk also.  When I was in France 22 years ago I was willing to "muck in" and have black tea (would have had to weak in my case) with a squirt of two (or slice) of lemon but the lady in charge insisted on giving me tea with milk because I was English.  It doesn't sound as good (to me at least) asPriscilla's sweet spiced tea though.  I HAVE on very rare occasions tasted sweet and spiced tea but that was when people of Indian descent I knew made it for me to experience it and that was in a kitchen not on a beach.

I thought stereo typing meant you had two keyboards, one per hand, and produced 2 documents simultaneously.

Mind the gap, GG.... or ought that be ditch for a GG?  And would that be a Welsh sort of misunderstanding? That's the problem with stereotyping, glib thoughts soon surface.

Being a quarter Welsh... left leg really a pain today.... I have grown up with many a glib thought. 

Actually it is as serious problem generally and I started it off with silly tales.... but is that just being English or me being thick? Remarks and Replies on no more than ten A4 sheets, thankyou.

My mother was brought up in Wales.  She had a Welsh mother and an Irish father so I suppose that makes me a quarter Welsh.  

I apologise if I have mentioned this before but when I was a very young slip of a lass I spoke with a standard English accent.  However as soon as I started school I met with "You're a snob, you're posh".  I wanted to fit in so I changed my accent to the normal Stafford one much to my mother's disgust.  I probably speak a hybrid accent now though I have been told I speak more like a Stoke-on-Trent person than a Stafford person - though I say 'book' to rhyme with 'look' and not 'Luke'.  In retrospect I wish I'd been stronger minded when I was young and not been worried about being stereotyped as being 'posh' (and what would have been wrong if I had been 'posh?) - but I wasn't.