Ranting

Both of my grandfathers fought in World War One. My parents were in the forces in World War Two. My extended family have paid their full dues to Great Britain in terms of taxation and labour. We paid for the NHS and the roads and the sea defences and the transport infrastructure and so on and so on. It is our country and we know its rituals, its history, its cultural and linguistic nuances, the subtleties of its class system. Yes its our country. Or at least I thought it was.

I don't recall ever being asked to give carte blanche to economic migrants from across the European Union and yet they have arrived in their thousands. They call it "free movement of labour". And any of us who question this phenomenon or raise objections are frequently dismissed as latent racists. If we were far-seeing and modern enough - like the chattering classes in London - we would be dancing in the streets, delighting in our beautiful multi-culturalism. Whoopie-doo!

All this free movement of labour is starting to impact on British identity and to dilute our shared sense of culture. Of course there has always been immigration but it has tended to be of a manageable slowly infused nature - drip by drip. In the last ten years those drips have turned into a mighty torrent which resists control or even calculation.

We now have thousands of eastern European criminals here, Roma gipsies begging or pick-pocketing on the London underground, NHS facilities being utilised by people who haven't paid for the service, urban schools being swamped by children who arrive with virtually no English, translators earning a mint from official coffers, young men seeking their fortunes while often abnegating family responsibilities back home in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania.

"Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world
are very often wrong" - Jose Manuel Barroso (Outgoing EU President)

And the traffic in this "free movement" seems pretty much one way. Where are the British emigrants off to work in those eastern European countries? You could fit them all in a couple of minibuses.

Okay we have a good number of British ex-pats living in France, Spain, Germany and Portugal. As you may recall one of my own brothers has lived in southern France for several years but regarding other member states of our so-called "European Union", it's the rarity of  British incomers that is noteworthy.

I have visited some eastern European countries - all very interesting trips but I feel a much stronger kinship with English speaking countries and countries that were once part of the British Empire. They are like our blood relations - Australia, Canada, USA, New Zealand, India, Kenya, Fiji, Sri Lanka and South Africa for example. Yet workers from these countries are being held back or demoted in favour of Europeans who dwell in lands with which our bonds are entirely new and purely economic - not rooted in culture or history.

I don't like what has been going on. I don't like it all and when I talk to my fellow host citizens, I find it virtually impossible to meet anyone who will speak up in favour of free movement of labour. It feels like something that has been imposed upon us by Eurocrats living the high life in Brussels and Strasbourg. And one sad and tragic thing about it all is that we cannot turn back the clock or shut the stable door for the European horse has already bolted.

Ahhhh! (sigh of relief) Rant over.