On a trip to a local post office, I recently overheard one of those conversations that lessens your faith in humanity.

Some people in their 50s and 60s were discussing in grave tones the horrors of having a group of travelling people encamped in a local park, when one decided enough was enough: "Do you know what Hitler did?"

Encouraged by the lack of answers, he went on: "He had these mobile gas chambers and they went up and down Europe and killed these people when they found them.

"If Hitler had won the war, we wouldn't have had any problems from them ... they're nothing but trouble, that kind."

This description, presumably of the attempted extermination of gypsies, was met not by outrage but by a nervous titter, the kind that accompanies a risqu suggestion.

Not to be outdone, one of the others said another group of travellers had "been moved on soon enough" when someone attempted to set fire to one of their caravans.

Call me pedantic but I thought a war was fought, in these people's memory, against the notion that genocide was a valid response to people who were deemed "undesirable".

Furthermore, I had never thought of arson as a reasonable response to being bothered by someone.

It seems any tolerance alive and well in Britain can be safely murdered and burned.

-Scott Bunyan, Overhill Drive, Patcham