Help me understand this article

Apparently there is a long-standing rivalry between British vacationers and German vacationers where each says that the other one is guilty of taking up all of the chairs for sitting in the sun. Photographic evidence shows that British people may be guilty of this far more often than Germans.

Refusing to take something lying down = not allowing someone to say something about you that isn't true. This is also a sunbathing joke.

Sunlounger = chairs by a pool or beach where you can sunbathe.

Hogger = a person who selfishly uses more than their share of something.

To have someone bang to rights = to catch someone doing something in a way that they can't deny; another idiom for this would be to 'catch them red-handed.'

The towels are how people reserve a sunlounger - you drape your towel over the chair to claim it. It is considered very rude to remove these towels from the chairs, but leaving your towel on a chair all day is also very petty, as it prevents other people from enjoying the sun.

This seems to me to be a very silly article about another silly tabloid article, full of sunbathing puns and idioms.

There is a long-standing British joke that holidaying Germans get up early to place towels on the poolside sunloungers, thereby 'reserving' them while not actually using them. This is what is referred to as 'hogging.'

'Jibes' is a mainly Br English word, often used in the media, to describe a nasty comment.

The article reflects the continuing tension between two friendly nations!