members of parliament (Britain elected its first only in 1987). Poland certainly has its problems – but the highly questionable assumptions behind eastern 'backwardness' and Western 'progress' went blithely unexamined. "It would be easy to scent a kind of 'orientalism' here: the belief that 'ex-communist' is synonymous with 'poor', 'nasty' and 'ignorant'. The muddy wastelands of the east are great places to make shocking documentaries. Best of all, because nobody there knows English, you can say pretty much what you like and get away with it. Not any more." Brendan O'Neill wrote in The Daily Telegraph that England fans had staged "a protest against BBC Panorama's hysterical depiction of Ukraine as a hotbed of racism and anti-Semitism, which they have discovered during their stay in that country to be untrue. ...it was the respectable Beeb, echoed by broadsheets, which painted an entire nation "over there" as backward and prejudiced, while it has fallen to everyday fans to poke holes in this xenophobic mythmaking and to point out that there is actually nothing scary about modern Ukraine and its inhabitants. England fans have proven themselves way more racially enlightened than the aloof suits in the current-affairs department of the BBC." England football coach Roy Hodgson said the racism allegations were "the biggest negativity in England... As a result, I think we've lost a lot of fans who didn't come because of a lot of horror stories about how life would be in the Ukraine and Poland." Hodgson added that he had nothing but positive impressions of Poland and Ukraine. According to the Dutch daily , during an open training session in Kraków, Dutch black players were allegedly subjected to monkey noises and jeers, an incident that the Holland captain Mark van Bommel described as a "real disgrace". UEFA acknowledged that there had been "isolated incidents of racist chanting". However, other Dutch media, including the prestigious daily , have reported that the allegations of monkey chants were made up. According to the newspaper, the coach of the Dutch team has made several statements to the BBC that he had not heard the supposed chanting, nor did the rest of the team. According to , the story was sensationalised by . Jessica Elgot wrote an article in The Jewish Chronicle headlined "I went all the way to 'racist' Kiev and all I got was love", reporting how "By-and-large, no one understood why we