Edmund Hazle November 26, 1918 - June 22, 2006

From the Telegraph :

... the companies reached their objective with a combined strength of 40, plus 30 wounded; the Gurkhas were pinned down, also with heavy casualties, and there was little food or water. As the only medic present, and with no resources but a first aid haversack containing some bandages, a bit of morphia and scissors, Lance-Corporal Hazle became, in effect, the regimental medical officer, according to his regiment's history.

Working in cramped conditions under constant mortar fire and artillery bombardment, as the empty canisters from smoke bombs caused further casualties as they fell among them, Hazle fearlessly exposed himself to continual fire over six days, dressing wounds, and carrying out an amputation.

He was a stretcher bearer, not a qualified medic. And that was "Nutty" Hazle's second DCM. The first was awarded for continuing to treat wounded of the 5th Indian Division despite having half his face shot away.

Picture from the Times obit.



There's a line in Solzhenitsyn's novel August 1914, in which the author regrets that so few photographs exist of the conscripts. I paraphrase :

"There are no photographs of them, and this is all the more regrettable because since then the composition of our nation has changed, faces have changed and no lens will ever rediscover those honest, trusting eyes, those placid, bearded faces, those relaxed and unselfish expressions. Our whole national character has changed since then."

The Brits of 1939 weren't at all like Russian peasants. But I know what he meant, and feel the same regret at the passing of the last heroic generation of Britons, none of whom would ever have described themselves as such.

"People who support the BNP are without exception racist scum"

So sayeth Alex of Recess Monkey, who has a CiF post up about the BNPs use (if any) of the social networking software Facebook.

I disagreed and gave reasons as best I could. Sorry for regular readers if I repeat myself. A lot of this is cut'n'paste.


"Alex - you really are urinating into a Force 10 here. All this well-meant stuff is unlikely to have the effect you want.

Let me attempt to explain why.

In 2001 the Observer reported a demographer (who I’m presuming with zero evidence was David Coleman of Oxford University) as saying that on current trends for immigration, emigration and birthrate, whites would be a minority in Britain by 2100. I’m not sure if he’d taken into account the million-odd Poles who have come over since EU enlargement, and I’m not sure talking of ‘whites’ is helpful either. I prefer the term ‘Native Britons’, which distinguishes the indigenous people from Albanians, Poles, Frenchmen and other Eastern Europeans.

Since then immigration has increased dramatically, and emigration of natives likewise. Brits are leaving at a rate not seen for 100 years. More than half the babies born in London and 20% of those born in England have mothers who were themselves born overseas.

The latest forecast is that "on present trends, by 2073, the majority population of this country will either have migrated here, or be the child or grandchild of parents who did so. No past wave of immigration has ever come anywhere near having that kind of consequence."

Two points here.

First, it may be that the demographers and the ONS people are fabricating the stats. But people on the Left don't seem to want to discuss them. The absence of any attempt at rebuttal is itself IMHO significant.

The second is that apparently this change is not worthy of debate or discussion. The Observer said that "It would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine or disease."

Most people on the Left are instinctively sympathetic to an indigenous people who find their land occupied by strangers. Those who resist are heroes. Native Americans, the native Irish, Aborigines, Palestinians, the Indians of South America. All these peoples may have ended up belonging to much richer nations as a result of immigration, but they didn't necessarily appreciate the favour.

I cannot understand what's so special about the English, that they, uniquely among the nations and races of the earth, are apparently expected to acquiesce in their own replacement.

Most people don't spend their time studying ONS stats. They just notice the changes in their area, or when they visit a city. The problem is that those who are concerned about immigration, and who feel that social cohesion demands an immediate stop to immigration while those who are already here integrate, have an extremely limited voting choice. None of the three major parties have the slightest intention of halting mass immigration. Because to do so would be racist.

The native British are a demoralised bunch, and have generally reacted to immigration by voting with their feet rather than for people who like Odin and dislike Jews. But as the incomer population grows, the English are finding that there’s nowhere (emigration apart) to run to. This may be why the BNPs vote of nearly 5% in the 2004 Euro elections was around four times their 1999 vote.

This trend may not continue - as children of all cultures grow up together they may unite and reject communal politics.

But Bradford, Oldham, Burnley aren’t terribly hopeful pointers. It seems to me more likely that as the Native Brit population declines, and natives become the minority in more and more areas, politics will almost inevitably become split on ethnic lines, as for example in Fiji. The demographics are still pointing all one way, the Tories are unlikely to to make major changes if and when they do ever win power.

So in 20 years or so there'll be a nativist British party, representing a substantial proportion, if not a majority, of the native English. The only question is what the name of that party will be.

At the moment, for good or ill, the only party that seems to many natives to be for 'people like us' is the BNP.

So Alex, as long as demographic change on this scale continues, banning the BNP from Facebook, harassing and sacking its activists, "duffing them up in the street" (copyright B.Bragg) are in the long run not going to make a difference.

The BNP may have many idiotic ideas. They may also have some very nasty ones at the heart of their ideology and among their senior people.

But that isn't why people are voting for them. The native Brits haven't suddenly become swivel-eyed types with obsessions about black IQ, Jewish conspiracies and the other things that make a BNP ideologues eyes light up. The English don't do fascism. They just don't want to be a minority in their own country.



UPDATE - Alex Hilton's response :

"Labantall - you're the scariest person to have commented so far. Would you mind telling me what a native Briton is to you? Picts, Celts, Norse, Angles, Britons, Scots, Danes, Normans, Saxons, Gaels, Huguenots? But you know this. You know that you could pick a different date in history and find a different group of outsiders to hate."

makes it pretty clear that the last thing he wants is to think about is why people are voting BNP. And the combination of ad hominem and wild assumption implies that he's operating on the principle noted by the historian AJP Taylor. Discussing the Katyn massacre of Polish Army officers (blamed at the time by the Poles on the Russians and by the Russians on the Germans) he said words to the effect of "as the Russians have discovered, the best way of sustaining an argument is never to put any evidence forward to defend it".

"Generation X"

In what could be a parody of core Labour support, the Indie interview ten people who used their first votes for Labour in 1997.

The ten are - press officer (actually PR), solicitor, teacher, lawyer, "urban regeneration consultant", company director (in PR), marketing "consultant", PR "consultant" (his firm do work for the Government), artist, freelance designer. They all appear to have been either at university, in their last year of school before university, or in a gap year before university. Half would still vote Labour, three don't know, one Lib Dem, one Green.

Three PRs and a marketer, two lawyers. The People's Party sure does appeal to the horny handed sons of toil. No wonder Labour want half the population to take a degree.

They're all 28, 29, 30, 31. None have children. None are married.

What bothered them ?

Law and order has upset two - not absence thereof, but Blair's 'move to the right'. One of them inevitably is the solicitor. Iraq - three. Impossibility of buying a house - two. Peter Vardy (a wealthy Christian) sponsoring academies - one. The target/initiative driven teaching culture - one - the teacher. Civil liberties - one.

People like these are pretty much Labour's core demographic nowadays. Someone who'd been in a timewarp for the last twenty-five years might have looked for Labour first-time voters among those who left school at sixteen. The Indie knew better.

One touching little postscript - the teacher, who sounds like a decent chap, gives us this vignette.

I come from a fairly hard working-class background ... although we talk now about the "spirit of the times", a lot of my friends didn't actually vote. They were concentrating on the next football match. I'd always felt a bit of an outsider among them, and was looking for a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. I suppose that's what attracted me to New Labour, too.

In John Braine's late 50s period piece 'Room At The Top', the visit to the Conservative Club with Susan's father is like a rite of middle-class passage for the ambitious working class antihero Joe Lampton. Forty years on, the Labour Party is the choice for a young Welshman seeking a "more cosmopolitan lifestyle".

"I do not address white people"

Reality vs the moonbats (not that I can talk, with one or two of my commenters) in this Zimbabwe thread at the always reliable Ligali.

A Few Late Bluebells From The Curate's Wood

I missed Mr Cuthbertson's response at Conservative Home to Matthew Parris' claim that Tony Blair will leave Britain "a happier country than he found it".

One of the comments, by sim, struck me.

I have canvassed extensively for the Conservative Party since 1987 - I have seen anger, enthusiasm, opposition and apathy.

What I had never seen until the 2005 GE was an incredible number of ordinary people saying either that they wished they could leave the UK, or that they were glad to be old so they wouldn't live to see more decline in the country they loved.

Time and again, voters said they didn't feel at home in their own land anymore - and this was not just a reference to immigration, which is very visible here.

Mr Parris vision of 'a kinder, gentler' nation is echoed in yesterday's Caroline Wyatt Today report (Realaudio) on the French first round results, where Segolene Royale's 'gentler France' is contrasted with Sarkozy's 'brutal' rhetoric. No bias there then.



More alleged Church abuse.

After his ordination in 1979 he was appointed assistant curate at a church in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he is accused of assaulting a 15-year-old.
When the boy’s mother informed the police and church authorities, Mr Smith was moved to another parish, eventually becoming vicar of St John the Evangelist Church in Clevedon, Somerset.

Both Catholic and CoE churhes have been guilty far too often of simply shuffling an accused priest elsewhere, often to continue assaults.



More alleged 'Brit' jihadis.

Younis Tsouli, from Shepherds Bush, West London, was born in Morocco but was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain two months before his arrest. Tariq al-Daour was born in the United Arab Emirates of Palestinian parents and became a British citizen in May 2004.

Cheers to the Home Office for those particular decisions.



Is it not a bit strange for a Bullingdon Boy to be calling for more civility ?


The General Teaching Council investigates unacceptable behaviour.

- a classroom being vandalised during a break time, with windows smashed and glass thrown around the room, books destroyed and desks overturned;

- boys openly using mobile phones to download pornography, accessing obscene websites on school computers and making serious sexual suggestions to her;

- a pupil accusing her of hitting him, and threatening to report her to the police and sue her;

- having to stand guard by the classroom door to prevent students walking out.

The unacceptable behaviour, of course, is in reporting it.

NATIONAL ANTHEM OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS

(Tune: Men of Harlech)

What's the use of wearing braces ?
Vests and pants and boots with laces ?
Spats and hats you buy in places
Down the Brompton Road ?
What's the use of shirts of cotton ?
Studs that always get forgotten ?
These affairs are simply rotten,
Better far is woad.

Woad's the stuff to show men.
Woad to scare your foemen.
Boil it to a brilliant hue
And rub it on your back and your abdomen.
Ancient Briton ne'er did hit on
Anything as good as woad to fit on
Neck or knees or where you sit on.
Tailors you be blowed !!

Romans came across the channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel
Half a pint of woad per man'll
Dress us more than these.
Saxons you can waste your stitches
Building beds for bugs in britches
We have woad to clothe us which is
Not a nest for fleas

Romans keep your armours.
Saxons your pyjamas.
Hairy coats were made for goats,
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas
Climb up Snowdon with your woad on,
Never mind if you get rained or blowed on
Never want a button sewed on.
Go it Ancient B's !!


UPDATE - written by W. Hope Jones, mathematics master at Eton College.

UPDATE2 - Moved to the top. A commenter chalked me off for not crediting the writer. All the versions I'd ever seen credited it as 'Anon', but I guessed it was somewhere between Edwardian times and the 20s, as my mother learned it as a child in the early 30s. Wikipedia credited it as an anonymous Scout song, but this Mudcat thread pointed the way. John Moulden wrote :

Sorry to return to the point after so many flights of fancy but my copy (actually I have three of different ages) of the Hackney Scout Song Book (first edition 1921 - this one is the ninth edition (1959) and their contents may have differed) attributes the song to W Hope Jones of whom I know nothing but for whom I will look. [Note the avoidance of terminal prepositions.] The copyright acknowledgment thanks him but makes no reference to a publisher.

Malcolm Douglas added :

it seems that W. Hope Jones was a master at Eton, and wrote the song, c.1921, for the college's Boy Scout troop. ("Gilwell Camp Fire Song Book" and comments on the web.)

At this point a bell rang furiously in the Laban cranium. Wasn't Mr Hope Jones one of the Eton masters who takes the Scout Troop on the ill-fated expedition to Wailing Well in the MR James story ?

He certainly seems the right man. In the Wailing Well Notes we learn that "Known at Eton as "Hojo", William Hope Jones was a maths teacher noted for his eccentricity; he was feared among the Scouts for his loud, stentorian singing." In the story "You cannot be surprised to hear that Mr. Hope Jones added a special verse to each of his songs, in commendation of Arthur Wilcox".

Trouble At Handsworth Vaisakhi Carnival

Brum Evening Mail.

A man was today fighting for life in hospital after being repeatedly stabbed as Vaisakhi (Punjabi New Year, also the founding of the Sikh khalsa) celebrations in Birmingham erupted into violence.

More than a dozen other people were also injured in the trouble which began in Handsworth Park and spread to surrounding streets.

A fleet of nine ambulances were sent to scene, and paramedics gave first aid to victims as the violence continued for more than four hours yesterday.

Other officers were forced to close the park, in Holly Road, and surrounding roads and urged people to stay away from the area.

An estimated 100,000 people were enjoying the event when the violence started at 3pm and the ambulance service was still receiving 999 calls more than four hours later.

The stabbed man, who has not been named but is in his mid 50s, was today critically ill in hospital.

The other victims, some with very serious injuries, were treated at hospitals across the city.

Gangs ? Religious trouble ? "Intra-communal" ? Four hours of incidents isn't just one group of youth not getting on with another group. Anyone know what's going on ?

UPDATE - Sunny and Kulvinder in the comments at Pickled Politics say it's probably gang-related - said gangs (Shere Punjab and Babbar Khalsa - named after the Khalistan seperatist terror group) having previous of various sorts.

UPDATE2 - BBC report

Witnesses reported seeing ceremonial swords being drawn and men carrying sticks. A paramedic said people tried to rock their ambulance and open the doors as they made their way through the crowds to treat the stabbing victim. He said one man stood in front of the vehicle and said: "Leave him, let him die."

UPDATE3 - Express and Star comments :

"… the people involved they arnt sikhs behaving the way they did, even worse they were grown men, what sort of example is this to set to our youngsters???… even this event will be tarnished like all the other desi events…. typical apne bande ..cant behave .."

"there wuz already a fight a week b4 dis at smethik… manz need 2 fix up.. u cud hav sorted mattaz at a nex place.."


Already a fight a week at Smethwick ?

"from what I have heard, the men who were responsible for the stabbing want to take control over the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Smethwick and the guy who got stabbed was standing in there way. The men who committed this crime are only concerned about getting there dirty hands on the money which is given by the congregation to the gurdwara"

The Guru Nanak Gurdwara wants an "independent sovereign Sikh State of Khalistan" - which of course Sikhs once had under Ranjitsinghi, appears not to like the Indian Government, sends money to "families of Sikh Shaheeds (martyrs) of 1984 or after in India", and runs a registered political party, the Sikh Federation, "based on the "miri-piri" principle the Sikh principle that temporal and spiritual goals are indivisible."

Hmmm. If by shaheeds they mean innocent Sikhs killed in massacres after 1984, fair enough - indeed a worthy cause. If this guy is a shaheed I'm not so sure.

The story of Flight 182 is a murky one. I seem to remember seeing a memorial plaque at the Old Head of Kinsale twenty years back, but can't find it on the Web. And I see the Old Head has been privatised.

UPDATE4 - more comment at Punjab2000.

well from wot i've heard, the leader of SP (the guy hu got stabbed) knocked off sum singh's pagg (turban ? LT. My Punjabi's pretty poor), which lead to the stabbin. it's something to do with gurdwara politics.

and more background on SP, BK and Smethwick gurdwara politics.

Simply Bhangra

apparently hes part of sum gang called SP...? n he was propa runnin his mouth 2 all lyk da amrit dhari sikhs sayin u dow kno nefin da fightin broke out n he got stabbed wid a kirpan i fink n was immedietly taken in2 da ambulance where all da amrit dhari sikhs were crowdin round sayin let him die!! it soundz mental!

Happy St George's Day !

Icon from Church of St. George in the village of Dripchevo, Bulgaria.


The reason assigned for this admission of foreigners into our service, is the want of men; but if there be any truth in that main principle of Mr. Malthus's admirable "Essay on Population," I apprehend it cannot be controverted, and hope that I have not misunderstood it—That population depends upon food; that, in long peopled-countries, it is only restrained from increasing, by the incapacity of the country to produce or procure a greater quantity of food: it follows that, if our country has sufficient food to give to foreigners, it has the same to give to Englishmen, and it would surely be better to give it to them, since they must be attached, by opinion, to their country; since they are, in every point, more industrious subjects, more courageous sailors, and better men; while the others have nothing to attach them to our country, they are destitute of legal principles for fighting in our defence, and have no motives for virtue but fear ...

Perhaps it may be said, that our want of these men is immediate, and that Englishmen would require to be born and bred up; but this, I conceive, furnishes the strongest objections that can be urged against the admission of foreigners into any part of our country; for, if they were not to eat the food which our labours procure, it would have been shared amongst Englishmen; consequently, a greater number than now exist would have been reared to manhood. Now, as the general repressing causes of population are vice and misery, for even in our country moral restraint represses but a small part of it, this admission of foreigners has caused a greater portion of vice and misery than would otherwise have existed in our country. As the end of legislation, and entrusting power to any men, is to promote the happiness and morality of all, our rulers, by the encouragement they have given to foreigners, have acted in direct opposition to that end for which they had power entrusted to them.

When the English character is so much superior to every other; when English opinions are so strongly tinctured with the love of liberty, and liberty is so valuable to mankind, true policy would have dictated a prohibition to strangers entering the country ...

(Thomas Hodgskin - An Essay on Naval Discipline, 1813)





(Englishmen with high blood pressure are advised to ignore the atrocity committed at the Telegraph)

Home Defence Nightmare

Mark Steyn on the New York St George's Day Parade.

St George's celebrations are still outlawed in England under Draconian measures dating back to the Blairite regime. In the late 20th century, many Scottish families - the Blairs, Browns, Cooks, Darlings - settled in England, seizing the rich pasture land of north London, driving the local chieftains from the Palace of Westminster, and forcing the native population to work in servile, degrading jobs such as "Leader of the Opposition". Many still speak of the effete decadent sadistic viceroy, Lord Irvine, who had entire herds of cattle slaughtered merely so that he could use their hides to wallpaper his en suite bathroom.

And on Virginia Tech's "Gun Free Zone" (which I blogged here).

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance?

Answer: Dartmouth College.

I'd not heard of the Dartmouth murders. Like Perry and Dick planning their Mexico trip, Jim and Rob had it all worked out. They'd even dug a grave for their prospective victims.



From Crime Library :
Jim's backpack contained duct tape and rope and they had hunting knives in their boots when they walked to an isolated house on Goose Green Road. Rob would knock at the door, say his car had broken down and ask for help. Jim would crouch in the bushes, a ski mask covering his face, until the door opened.

A few miles from Chelsea, it was a home purchased by New Yorkers Andrew and Diane Patti to stay at when they wanted to experience rural life. Diane had not accompanied Andrew on this trip. He was at the home with his son Andy, 11, and their poodle Roxie.

At about ten that night, Rob severed the phone lines. Then he banged on the door.

Patti did not like the insistent sound of those knocks. A lifelong gun lover, he reached for the Glock pistol he wore on his right hip and unsnapped its safety latch. Pushing aside the blind on a window above his front door, Patti saw Rob.

"What's up?" Patti asked.

"I have car trouble," Rob said. "Can you help me out?"

Something about this stranger troubled Patti. "No," he replied.

"Do you have jumper cables?" Rob asked.

"No," Patti said.

"Let me in. Can I use your phone?"

Again Patti refused and Rob persisted, "C'mon, let me use your phone."

Certain this was a ruse, Patti told his son to get away from the front windows. Then Patti brought the gun up to the window.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Rob said. "I just want to use your phone."

Patti said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll call Ward's Garage for you."

"OK," Rob said. "Please do that. But please do that now."

Patti went to the kitchen and picked up the phone. The line was dead. He told Andy to come with him and they raced upstairs to try the other phone. It was also dead. Patti was terrified. Not only had someone cut his phone lines but the stranger wanted him to know his phone was dead. He feared it was an attempt to lure him outside into the darkness where he could be attacked.

Father and son went back downstairs where they huddled on the living room floor. As time passed, little Andy got sleepy and Patti put his son on the sofa and covered him with a blanket.

Patti sat on the floor with his gun in his hand. He was awake when daylight broke, allowing him to see that danger was gone.

It's Scotland's Soil !

Link.

We're Not Having Kids Part 394

Telegraph

Now 41, she has added to her psychology degree a husband, a highly successful business, a £500,000 two-bedroom flat in central London plus an £800,000 detached house in Hertfordshire - but still no children. She has no regrets.

"I have found my career really rewarding and absolutely stand by my decision," says Mrs Ambrose, who runs Seventy Thirty, a matchmaking company for the wealthy.

"I decided not to have children because I knew I would not be able to devote time and energy to my career. I knew my work would suffer."

Hmmm. Good looking girlie. Neither brain nor beauty will be passed on though. Adolescence lasts a long time for the childless. She is 41. Not quite in the league of an Alison Broom though.

"Susie is a big fan of alternative rock, indie rock, and grunge and funky-jazz music."


The article refers to recent demographic research by Heather Joshi for liberal (read 'Liberal') thinktank Centreforum, which thinktank holds a Pollyanna-ish view (pdf) of our demographic future.

Blunkett Plays Race, Underclass Cards

My God, they must be worried. About losing votes of course, not about what's happening to England - with its knock-on effects on Wales.

Council property should be set aside for Britons trapped on long waiting lists to help tackle rising anger at immigrants and single mothers perceived to be jumping the housing queue, says former Home Secretary David Blunkett.

The controversial call reflects fears that the BNP is successfully exploiting resentment over the housing shortage in this year's local elections. White working-class voters are said to be increasingly convinced, often wrongly, that they are waiting years to be housed because asylum seekers get preference over them, while soaring house prices have put private properties out of their reach.

While a pool of emergency housing should always be kept for those in direst need such as refugees, he said the government should now consider creating two streams of housing - one reserved for people who did not benefit from the points system. It could help reduce anger not only at immigrants but also at young women perceived to be given flats just for getting pregnant: 'The BNP play the race card, but of course it's also applied to single mothers - if you get a baby you get a house. What signals does that send?'

UPDATE - the BBC report from Sandwell.

There is open and unblushing backing for a party traditionally seen as racist, xenophobic and homophobic.

So that'll be a Labour vote then ?

Some voters might struggle to articulate their reasons, but they can be summed up with the thought that "the BNP would put British people first".

Yet More Demographics

David Conway of Civitas disses the 'nation of immigrants' thesis. Looks like the 2001 forecast that natives would be a minority by 2100 are well out of date, and 2073 is the new date. Well inside my children's lifetime. Of course, the tipping point - when the number of native babies is less than the number of non-native - will be before that.

Labour remains committed to the view that immigration is good for the country, and the more there is, the better it will be. What is the evidence for that remarkable proposition? If you ask most ministers, they will tell you "Britain has always been a nation of immigrants". That claim is false. The evidence which refutes it is not very complicated: it consists simply in looking at the numbers.

Between 1066 and 1945 Britain actually had very few waves of immigration. By far the largest was the Irish during the 19th century and, technically, they were not immigrants, since Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Irish "immigrants" never amounted to more than 3 per cent of the British population.

Numerically, the next largest group is the Jews. Official statistics record that 155,811 Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe arrived over 25 years from 1880. Their contribution to the intellectual, political and economic life of Britain has of course been enormous. But even adding the 70,000 who fled to Britain from Nazi Germany, the number of Jewish arrivals was, compared to the 50 million Britons already resident here, minute. They are certainly not enough to make Britain "a nation of immigrants".

Almost all immigrant groups never managed to reach 1 per cent of the population. The Normans, though they seized land and power, were a tiny elite. The Dutch who arrived in the 16th century were, in proportion to the whole population, a much smaller group. Even the 50,000 Huguenots from France only ever amounted to a hundredth of Britain's total population. And they arrived over a period of 50 years.

Immigration today adds 1 per cent to Britain's population every two years, or more than 5 per cent every decade. Official statistics which reveal that, in 2004 and 2005, net migration into Britain was running at around 300,000 people every year. And that number does not include the tens of thousands who arrive illegally, or who claim asylum, have their asylum claims rejected, but who are never deported.

Again and again you hear it repeated that the present levels of immigration are "nothing new", "nothing exceptional" and are in line with the proportions of immigrants who have, "throughout our history", come into Britain. The facts refute that claim so completely that I doubt any minister still believes it.

Labour, for reasons it has never fully articulated, decided in 1997 to dismantle practically all controls on immigration. The amount of immigration we have seen over the past decade has no parallel in British history. International migration into Britain now contributes around 80 per cent of Britain's annual population increase, and has done so since 1999.

In 1950, Britain's ethnic population amounted to just over 1 per cent of the total. By 2001, that figure was 8 per cent. On present trends, by 2073, the majority population of this country will either have migrated here, or be the child or grandchild of parents who did so. No past wave of immigration has ever come anywhere near having that kind of consequence.

More cheerful news. Look what the increasing number of women in higher education can do.

A third of women graduates will never have children, research has concluded. The number of highly educated women who are starting families has plummeted in the past decade, according to findings that provide the most detailed insight yet into education and fertility. While some women are making a conscious decision not to have children, others are simply leaving it too late after taking years to build their careers, buy a home and find the right partner. Graduates who do become mothers are having fewer children, and later.

If the low birth rate trend continues, then the eventual rate of childlessness among graduates now aged in their twenties is likely to be even higher than a third. The findings come from a ground-breaking study into more than 5,000 women born in 1970 and tracked throughout their lives by researchers at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, based at the Institute of Education in London.

It revealed that 40 per cent of the graduate women were childless at age 35. The researchers forecast that by the time they reach the likely end of their child-bearing years at 45, about 30 per cent will still be childless. Of a panel of older graduate women born in 1958, only 32.7 per cent were childless at 35.

The results help to explain the low birth rate which is leading to an ageing population in Britain and much of western Europe. Overall population decline is only being prevented by immigration and a higher birth rate among non-graduate women.


Meanwhile, as incomers arrive, the natives get out. Telegraph 1

More British people are leaving this country than before the First World War. Yesterday's figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm what has been apparent for years: we are in the midst of the biggest inflow of migrants in history.

Until recently, Britain was a country of net emigration, not of immigration. During the period of Empire, people left in their droves to live and work in the colonies.
But in the past 10 years, that has changed. People are still leaving but they are not coming back, or at least not as often as they did.

Meanwhile, there are more immigrants who are coming to stay for good. Emigration is now on the rise once more, with 207,000 British nationals leaving the country in 2004. This was the highest number since before the Great War, when more young men were leaving the country every year than died on the battlefields of Europe. While more foreign nationals are coming here and staying on, at the same time more British nationals are leaving.

Without this immigration, given the negative birth rate of indigenous people, the population would be declining. Cumulatively since 1997, 1.6 million British nationals have left the country and 806,000 have returned. At the same time, 2.93 million foreign nationals have arrived and 1.41 million have left. So, for every two Brits that leave, one returns; but for every two foreign nationals that arrive, only one leaves.

The ONS stats are here, if you have lots of time and are a spreadsheet wizard.

Telegraph 2 - more analysis

Overall immigration has been steadily rising since the 1990s and is now at unprecedented levels, but there has been a big change in the nationality of incomers, many of whom used to be British citizens returning after working abroad. The ONS said: ''There has been a noticeable upward trend of out-migration in recent years. This, coupled with lower numbers of in-migration of British citizens, has resulted in increasing net emigration since 2000.''

It added: ''Conversely, immigration of non-British citizens has more than doubled since the early 1990s. Out-migration of non-British citizens has been considerably lower... This has resulted in a pattern of high and increasing net immigration.''

In 2005, there was a net emigration of 107,000 British while net immigration of non-British people amounted to 292,000. In 1991, one third of all citizens entering the UK were British. By 2005, this dropped to 16 per cent.

The 2005 figure was down on 2004, which with net immigration running at 223,000 was the highest ever. When Labour took office in 1997, net immigration was around 50,000 a year, a level at which it had remained for about two decades. More than 4.3 million people born abroad were living in Britain at the time of the 2001 census, an increase of around one million compared with 1991 and two million higher than 30 years ago.

The majority of those granted settlement in 2005 were relatively young, with 116,950 under 35.

Labour politician fesses up. His article can be found here.

Mr Byrne also challenges the idea that immigration concerns have been media driven. ''The only problem with the 'it's all the media' thesis is that it is not quite true,'' he writes.

The good news is that in a democracy, you can get out and vote to do something about these issues.

Oh dear.

The result of a close election, whether local or national, might well be affected by nearly 1 million non - British citizens from the Commonwealth currently resident in the UK who, in a hang-over from the past, have the right to vote here, says a new report out today.

Sir Andrew said that, given the massive increase in the immigrant population in recent years, this has become an important issue – exacerbated by the encouragement of postal voting – which could mean that the outcome of a close run election could be affected by the votes of people who are not British citizens and who may not even have the right to vote. 'At present, for example, there is nothing to stop an Albanian claiming to be a Cypriot or a Somali posing as a Kenyan,' he said.

The report quotes the Electoral Commission as saying that "... the security of existing voting methods is to a considerable extent illusory, since it depends more on the honesty of the voter than on systematic measures to prevent fraud ..."

The honesty of the voter, eh ? Once upon a time there was little doubt about that. No more.

"Who are you going to vote for, mummy?" asked my eldest today.
"No one," I had to reply, "I can't vote."

He was quite stunned and well he might be. I might be able to vote in European elections (big deal, I'm sure that's just because the voting numbers are so dismal that they are desperate to involve the bottom of the pilers - foreigners) but I cannot vote in the one that counts. The election to choose the President of the Republic is not for me. I am not French. End of story.

However, the Republic is perfectly happy for me to pay my taxes and social contributions; they insist, in fact, but prevent me from adding my voice to how all my tax euros are to be spent, despite my being part of the happy, inclusive Euro family, as a Brit.

There's been some debate about who votes where. Can French nationals domiciled here vote in our General Election ?

Election Roundups

Briffa gives us the latest on what the commentators are saying in England.

Kirk Elder reports from Scotland on Labour's woes.

As I understand it, the logic is as follows: devolution has been a failure, because it has not been able to stop the American-led invasion of Iraq, Mr McConnell's kilt, or the entertaining humiliation of the suntanned firebrand, Mr Tommy Sheridan. In it's early months, the Executive was powerless to stop the decline of the Scottish football team under the command of the German, Herr Berti Vogts. The broadcasts of Mr Fred Macaulay have continued unabashed on Radio Scotland. The manufacture of Hillman Imps has not resumed at Linwood.

The jobs that we won't do ...

Two "footsoldiers" in a gang from Eastern Europe that has stolen more than £2.5 million from London parking meters were each jailed for nine months yesterday at Southwark Crown Court.

Antonio Mia, 22, and Shpetim Bujaj, 25, who are both refugees, were arrested after members of the public saw them unlocking machines and helping themselves to the contents. The pair were said to be part of a massive operation run in the City of Westminster by crime bosses from Eastern Europe.

And the new EU accession countries make their contribution.

A gang of thieves proved they were as light-fingered as they were light-footed when they stole thousands of pounds' worth of family jewellery after distracting a shop owner with a display of traditional dancing.

The 12-strong troupe, who claimed to be Spanish but who police believe are Romanian, put on displays in two stores in Nelson, Lancashire, but as the dancing was taking place their accomplices were plundering nearby living quarters.

Two Brave and Righteous Men

One acted instinctively.

Librescu's family said his last moments were recounted in numerous e-mails from students after the attack.

''My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,'' Joe Librescu told The Associated Press after the massacre. ''Students started opening windows and jumping out.''

As the students jumped, Librescu was shot dead, one of the 32 victims in the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

One deliberately and with aforethought puts himself on the line.

Outspoken Zimbabwean Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube said in an interview published on Tuesday that he understood that he may lose his life over his continued critical stance against President Robert Mugabe's regime.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on a visit to London, Ncube also criticised the leaders of Zimbabwe's neighbours for not doing more to avert the ongoing crisis there.

"The Church has a prophetic role to speak the truth when no one else dares to," the Archbishop of Bulaweyo told the paper.

"I accept that it may mean that I lose my life."

A few cracks in the Curate's Lawn

It's not grown much at all this year ...


After the lunatic idea of Greg Dyke for Mayor, I started reading this Mary Sieghart piece on the Hammersmith Tory 'open selection' procedure with a sinking feeling.

The shortlist could not have been more diverse. There were two women and two men; two whites (one from a gypsy family), one mixed-race and one black. There was only one traditional Tory candidate: a white merchant banker, the classic perfect son-in-law who usually prevails at these occasions. But, despite the presence of a claque cheering him on, there was also a strong desire that Hammersmith should do something different. After all, ours is a gritty Inner London seat, not a genteel Home Counties affair.

There was genuine enthusiasm, too, from those of us who are neither party members nor tribal Tory voters. We were pleased to have the chance to vote in an open primary.

So far so bad. But it turns out the black candidate is one Shaun Bailey, of whom I have blogged before. And he won.


Polly Toynbee wants Britain to become more like Sweden. Looks like it's the other way round. Brussels Journal also comments.

Rosengård, an area with a very high immigrant population, is yet again on the frontpage as the riots from Saturday continue. On Sunday, several storage facilities were set ablaze.


I think this woman may have issues. Not professional conduct.


Three people sought after 89-year old woman conned out of £100,000 ? I try to fight my prejudiced stereotyping, but for some reason the headline made me wonder if they could possibly be from the travelling community ?


Ethnic Population change 1971-2001, David Owen, University of Warwick. Uses official census figures FWTW.


Ruth Gledhill puffs more Ekklesia lunacy.

Out must go the dragon, the crusades and the associations with patriotism and Empire. Instead St George's Day should become a 'day of dissent' when England celebrates its noble, alternative tradition of rebellion against the abuse of power, Ekklesia says.

What these idiots don't grasp is that 'alternative dissent' is now establishment orthodoxy, and that today it's far more subversive and radical to praise Empire or to regret the failure of the Crusades (perhaps looting Constantinople en route wasn't the brightest idea) than to beat ourselves up, the default ruling class position. They still think they're rebels, where Ms Gledhill and Ekklesia are total conformists.



The unveiling in the presence of Labour MP Gerald Kauffman of a bust of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, to go alongside Gladstone and other Victorian greats at Manchester Town Hall, reminded me of something.

Jinnah believed that Muslims could not live peacefully as a minority in Hindu-majority India. At a Muslim League conference in Lahore in 1940, Jinnah said:

"Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs and literature... It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes... To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state."

The 1947 Labour Government agreed with this Two-Nation Theory and partitioned India.

What I can't understand is this. A Labour government agreed in 1947 that it was impossible for an Indian state to survive with a large Muslim minority. Let sixty years later anyone who questions whether a British state can survive with a large Muslim minority is declared by a Labour government to be a swivel-eyed Nazi.

Can anyone explain this historical conundrum ?

Low Intensity Warfare

Accrington, Oldham, Stockport.


Grooming in Oldham, Bin Laden in Accrington Market.

Mythical beast spotted in Shawclough. I suppose it could be real, but seems more likely to be the bright idea of some 'antifascist' student types.

Here's a genuine native bad hat. And some other bad hats.

That 'Muslims More Loyal' Poll

As reported by the BBC.

"Muslims in the UK are more likely to identify strongly with Britain and have confidence in its institutions than the population as a whole, a poll suggests.

The survey says they are also more likely to take a positive view of living side-by-side with people of different races and religions.

Fifty-seven per cent of the Muslims polled said they identified strongly with their country, compared with 48% of the general public.

Muslims were also more likely to express confidence in the police (78% to 69%), national government (64% to 36%), the justice system (67% to 55%) and elections (73% to 60%).

Nearly three-quarters of the Muslims said they felt loyal to the UK, and 82% said they respected other religions.

But just 45% of the wider population said Muslims living in the UK were loyal to the nation, and only 55% said they were respectful."

Huzzah ! These guys are more British than the Brits ! As Sunny at Pickled Politics put it "that should shut up some of the usual racists". The Times sub-editors titled Michael Binyon's piece "Muslim, British and just like the rest of us".

Call me an old cynic, but this seemed a little too good to be true. Just before elections, too. I wondered if that poll, (if reported accurately), may have been telling a different, deeper story. We have three slightly ambiguous sentences in the BBC report.

"Muslims in the UK are more likely to identify strongly with Britain" is upfront - no figures given. But fewer and fewer native Brits identify with the UK, instead identifying with England, Scotland or Wales (Northern Ireland is an exception, half identifying as British, half Irish). An unintended consequence of devolution.

"Fifty-seven per cent of the Muslims polled said they identified strongly with their country, compared with 48% of the general public."

Hang on - what's "their country" ? Britain, England, what ? People of recent immigrant stock, the overwhelming majority of whom live in England, have tended to identify as British rather than English.

It turns out that, as reported by Foreign Policy, which seems to have the fullest coverage, it is indeed Britain we're talking about.





"Nearly three-quarters of the Muslims said they felt loyal to the UK, and 82% said they respected other religions.

But just 45% of the wider population said Muslims living in the UK were loyal to the nation, and only 55% said they were respectful."

Hold on a minute. Where are the comparison figures for 'the wider population' ? We don't get them. Instead we get what the wider population think of Muslim loyalty. So we don't know how the BBC derives its 'more loyal than most' headline. Alas the FP report doesn't feature the 'loyalty' figures - but if the BBC are reporting correctly, and we're talking UK, the poll may be telling us as much about the fracture lines within Britain, expressed as an increased loyalty to the constituent nations, as it does about Muslim loyalty.

(The report was apparently due to be released Wednesday, but I can't find it on the Gallup site. Anyone know where it is, or who commissioned the poll ?)

UPDATE - thanks to commenters who point out this David Conway post at Civitas :

I think there is very good reason to doubt the impartiality of those responsible for devising and for interpreting the poll, and hence to mistrust any claims about what it supposedly has revealed about the opinions of Muslims.

The reason to mistrust the impartiality of some of those connected with the poll is that, as stated on its own website, in developing and analysing data from the World Poll, the Gallup Organisation has relied 'on a panel of world–renowned scientists … [who] include John Esposito'. Now, John Esposito, as I explained in a related posting about the Gallup poll in February, is the founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington DC which changed its name to its present one, after his university where it is based received a gift of $20 million from the man to whose name his centre changed its own.

As I reported in my posting about the Times' encomium of Ken Livingstone last week, this Saudi benefactor is known to be someone who is prepared to use his fabulous wealth and great influence to shape world-opinion in a way favourable to Muslims in general and to the Saudi Wahhabi regime in particular. He also happens to be the single largest share-holder in the holding company that owns, among many other news-media, ... the Times.