It must be awful turmoil inside your head.

Has it not occurred to you that "white folk" (Jews, Huguenots, Dutch, French, Italian etc, etc) have been arriving in Britain into the cheaper areas for centuries and, as they became more affluent, have moved out into more leafy suburbs?
Has it not occurred to you that many non-white "folks" do the same?

I guess not, you probably still think of different colours of people as different species.

And it's down to those eastern Europeans that some Catholic churches in London have even been able to keep their doors open. Which point [ishould[/i confuse a few people.









Absolutely. And The whole Whitechapel area of east London is that situation in a nutshell. In the last few years, the demographic has started altering – again – with the arrival of more eastern Europeans. You see it perhaps most obviously in the opening of new shops; Russian and Polish food stores. Mind, I can get matjes herring and proper little pickled cucumbers now.



FWIW, I think that there are real discussion that need to be had about immigration, but as the situation with Mary Beard, and the abuse she has faced, illustrate, that's far from easy.

You may remember, a couple of years ago, I tried to start just such a discussion.IIRC, just two people responded – yourself and Mr Chicken. So I'm a tad cynical about how much some people really want to discuss it in anything other than an hysterical manner.

That's not the issue under discussion.

If you want to see think what alot of "middle England" think look at the readers' comments under the DM's article!

That is the biggest load of tripe I have read on here in a long time. We know the scientific reasons why people have different skin colour pigments but its got nothing to do with where they "belong". Humans can live where they like and while you might have to slap on the factor 50 if you fancied living in Australia it doesn't mean you "belong" in the UK.



Given immigration from outside of the EU is tightly controlled there is not mass immigration occurring from countries populated with dark skinned people which is what you seem to fear. I think there is concern over how many Eastern Europeans come here due to us being part of the EU but it's not a concern I share. I quite like it and think it adds something to our society but if when they come they want to all live close to each other why would I care?

After WWII there was a large Polish population and influx of Polish people to the UK and they were generally welcomed with open arms given their contribution to the war effort. They did stick together though and I can even remember my wife talking about going to nights out to the "Polish Club". I suspect you would like to ban such places because that means they have not integrated well enough into the UK but at least they are white eh?

The topic is "voluntary apartheid", and I'm asserting that it's not necessarily a race issue, more an affluence issue.
Christ, it's like pulling teeth.


Reader's comments under DM articles?
So self-selected and predictable that no-one needs to read them to know what they say. Hardly representative of anything except the harrumphing DM tendency.

Indeed, as a service, let's point out their latest efforts, as they publish pictures of an eight-year-old child attending a gym class, and comment on her 'shapely' legs etc.

[url=http://www.themediablog.co.uk/the-media-blog/2013/01/daily-mail-turns-the-creepiness-up-a-notch.htmlThis is a link to a pice about it – not a direct link, so not adding to the rag's hits[/url.

It's really about time people stopped quoting this piece of trash as some sort of reputable newspaper – let alone something with a shred of morality.

Just to pull a few loose threads together, when doing some research into my fathers family (I may have written this before) I knew that his grandfather had owned a large pub which at that time was in an area of Leeds just outside of the city centre but still not "suburbs" which consisted of rows of terraced houses and your usual mix of small corner shops etc.

What surprised me when I got the census return from 1911 and 1901 was the fact that in the street of my great grandfathers pub were twenty or so terraced houses and in at least 50% of those were Eastern Europeans reported as "Russians" or "Polish"mainly working in the various tailoring sub-trades and many of them were self employed craftsmen working from home, and as I write here [urlhttp://jerrychicken.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/rolling-back-the-years-part-two/[/url my great grandfather was probably a minority in his own pub in his own country

It's all fascinating stuff – particularly when we get past the nonsense.

My family are utterly hopeless at having kept or related much in the way of family history. But I've been able – just about – to sketch out a number of things.

One – my father, is a pretty typical Cornish Celt (with some Devonian blood, bit let's try to keep this reasonably simple).

Two – on my mother's side, it would appear that there is Saxon blood, based on the meaning/history of a name.

So in other words, I'm actually pretty 'old English'. But that is a result of long-distant swathes of migration.

And as an almost total aside, when we visited the Continent for the first tome – Amsterdam, back in the summer of 1998 – I was staggered by how much I felt that I 'knew' the place. It was same when, a few years later, we visited Germany for the first time. And at core, it's what, later this year, will take me back to Germany for my first ever travels-on-my-own adventure. I cannot easily explain it, but something makes me feel connected to these places – the latter, one that my parents spent my childhood deriding.

Suggestions from my pschoanalytical department:

1. Amsterdam - you watched van der Valk on telly when you were a child.

2. Germany - you are at heart a racist.

3. Cannot easily explain - delusions. Do you see ghosts in hotels too?

Steady on, Mintball, you sound like my late mother who, upon hearing that I had traced back to a great great grandmother of hers, who was Irish, said "Aaaah, so that's it, I always knew I was celtic".



But many people do venture abroad and feel a "connection".
My best guess is that it's just a place that suits them.
I used to have neighbour who described himself as a Canadian-born Londoner.

I did get the most enormous amount of fun telling my parents the background to a name on one side of the family (the probable Saxon connection). They were quite hilariously horrified.

It's as much my country as anyone else's country. But it IS my country. I'm English. If I was American it wouldn't be my country, America would.


I am aware your stupidity is, that's for sure.

Okay.

In which case, it's MY country too. At least as much as yours.

Where does your family come from, originally?

I can work mine back a few centuries from naming conventions and one or two other things, but what about you?

Y'see, once you get into that realm, perhaps the best way forward is to examine who is more – or most – English.

Obviously, as a teacher (IIRC) you're an incredibly intelligent and educated person, so you must be odds on to 'win'.

So d'you want to play?

Which is what I said. If you want this country to be your country then it's your country. Not everyone wants this country to be their country. People who move here, for example, may love it here but they still feel like they are of the country they came from. Others have different experiences. Me, I was born here, so were my ancestors as far as we have traced them (400 years so far) and so I am English, and England is my country.

I am ignoring the rest of your post because it is playground stuff, not worth the bother.

Oh diddy widdums. But you STILL don't want to answer the question properly, in a grown-up way!

Why am I not surprised?!

You're a religious fundamentalat. You see life through such a prism. Well, that's okay, but plenty of people are actually rather more grown up about the issues, as opposed to maintaining a state of continuing childhood.

You play a game - an infantile one. That's fine - that's your choice. Enjoy.