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A man who has offended residents by flying a Nazi flag at his Cheltenham home has denied he is a racist.

Malcolm Green said a friend had put it up yesterday morning and, now he had been aware it had offended people, he would take it down.

Speaking at his bungalow in Arle, the 59-year-old said: "I don't know who's been complaining. It's only been here two minutes."

The red and white flag with the black swastika, together with an American Confederate flag, have made some of his neighbours angry - not least because they are immigrants.

Mr Green insisted it was his friend who had put the Nazi flag up.

"I have a friend who is racist but I'm not. He dresses in camouflage and says 'get them out, get them out'," he said.

But unemployed Mr Green, who lives in the home with a dog and a cat, admitted he had displayed the Nazi flag in public when out and about in Cheltenham.

He said he attached it to the back of a child carrier, attached to his bicycle. He said he put his Chihuahua dog in the carrier and used the flag to let motorists know they needed to keep a safe distance behind him.

He said he had displayed the Confederate flag, with the words 'The South Will Rise Again' at its heart, because he was a Country and Western music fan. He said he realised there were some who associated the flag with anti-black racists in southern parts of the United States but it was not the reason he flew the flag.

Mr Green, who lost the sight of his right eye in a work accident in 1975 and whose wife June died in 2005, said he had been in dispute with neighbours who he thought were from Poland or Croatia.

It was over them parking their car too close to his gate (a picture of which is below), he said, though he said they had stopped doing that lately.

Asked if he realised the flags could greatly upset people, he said: "I can see what you're on about.

"It might offend people but I don't think there's any law against it."

He stopped short of apologising, saying he had not been abused while displaying the swastika on the back of his bike.

"I got a few beeps of the horn and people saying 'Sieg Heil'. I've been doing it for about a month or two.

"I never thought anything of it. Now you've brought it up, I will be a bit more sensitive. I never thought of it like that."

One neighbour, who did not want to be identified, said his grandfather had fought against the Germans in the Second World War.

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He said: "These kind of things are really offensive. It's shocking. I think these kind of things are growing everywhere.

"I thought about going there and taking it straight off.

"I never in my life expected to see a Nazi flag near my home. It's terrible."

Another neighbour, Teby Thomas, who lives with his Indian family in the road, said: "It was shocking to see the Nazi flag go up. Why has he allowed it to be put there?That's his home, his house."