We do seem to elect a higher proportion of them to high office though (connecting this post up with BE’s latest one)…

For what it’s worth, I believe Britain is better than any other nation in the world – thanks mostly to its location (an island warmed by the gulf stream, free from significant earthquake or volcanic activity and with a pleasant – if somewhat damp – climate that does not suffer from the extremes of heat, cold or humidity that other parts of the world do. It’s also fortunate to have a developed culture formed over centuries by tradition, history and shared experience which has also managed to avoid the extremes which have been prevalent in other parts of the world.

This does not mean I think Britons are the best people in the world – we have our share of arseholes just like everywhere else does – but it does mean we are amongst the luckiest. I don’t care about skin colour – never have – but I do care about my country and I don’t want to see it turned into the sort of despotic shithole that I’ve had the dubious pleasure of visiting over the last 30 years or so by the crock of shit known as “multiculturalism”. I don’t mind managed immigration – but anyone who comes in should be prepared to accept what we are and what we do or fuck off back to whereever they came from. THAT is the default position of most nations and the only sensible one for any nation which wants to remain as one nation to have.

I have to agree with you, having travelled,worked and made friends around the globe, I now find that currently my best friends are scattered around the globe , Matt in Tokyo , Roxanne in Philly , Shaun in Singapore , that’s not counting the diaspora in the UK, of which the closest to me is in Buckinghamshire, then Hitchin , Worcester, Bristol, Dundee.

I’m happy for all of them , but it does make it hard to organise a quick pint on a Friday night.

On the flip side, the people who tend to favour multiculturalism tend to live lives which are largely unaffected by immigration because they have money. Money buys you the best houses in the best locations with the best schools – and to those people immigration means cheap servants and more choice of restaurant. For those of us who live in areas where immigrants are streaming in we have to worry about whether we can get a place in the school of our choice for our kids, whether they will be able to get decent jobs and whether they will be able to find homes in the place of their birth. Those are real concerns for millions of people living in areas being swamped by immigration – and not just by people with white skin.

The BNP are non-existent in Slough, but there is considerable anti-immigrant feeling – not least from established immigrant communities who are pretty fed up with the situation.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1812940.ece

“”A Sikh with a strong Indian accent lent credence to what that Polish woman said when he told me “there are too many immigrants in Slough”.”

The pressures placed on those communities for housing, school places and jobs are immense – and they will cause tensions within a community which will lead to fractures and, eventually, conflict. London is unique because the need for cheap servant labour means that those pressures are somewhat alleviated – but outside of London things are very different.

It seems that a century ago we had the freedom to move more than we have now with the benefit of high speed transport and flushing toilets on board.