Really British?

A man has set up a shop in London and named it "Really British". It's a decent play on words, because everything in it is really British: figures of the Queen, cuddly toy London buses, chairs with Union Jacks on. You get the picture.

I quite like the name. It's suitably sarcastic yet accurate, like Completely Chairs, or Totally Bananas (which is definitely the name I'll use if I open a smoothie shop).

But the shop was in the news because a bunch of people have written to the shop owner and the council that the name is racially insensitive towards non-Brits and that we should be ashamed of using the word "British". And he's not getting the complaints from immigrants or tourists. He's getting it from white middle-class Brits who live locally.

Now I'm in two minds here. I'm one of those people who gets really scared of accidentally saying something that might offend someone else on a class/gender/race basis. I've ended up in lengthy arguments by accident because I've tried to say something that I thought was quite sensible, accidentally said the wrong word, and then had to spend the next hour back-peddling because what I said and what I meant got a bit confused when the words came out of my face. So yeah... if you're going to name your shop something that could be misconstrued as offensive then you need a smack around the head.

On the other hand...

Well, firstly, it frustrates me the way we view national pride in this country, which can best be described as the fact that almost any time you see someone flying the English flag you automatically assume they're a member of the English Defence League. For some odd reason someone decided that we aren't allow to be patriotic and it's bad to be British or English. Yes, I know we've had a very long and difficult history (read: we invaded most of the planet and were evil overlords for a while), but we've grown out of our Darth Vader phase somewhat and it would be nice to be able be proud of some of our more recent accomplishments. Like Bradley Wiggin's sideburns.

Secondly, one of my biggest bugbears in modern life is people getting offended on behalf of other people. It isn't you who is offended. Offence is subjective. You have to be involved in the act that could cause offence to be able to accurately judge whether it is actually offensive or not. And that case is the same here: the people who it is supposedly offending aren't the ones complaining.

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this though. Is it offensive? Or is it Political Correctness Gone Mad?