How attitudes change

Like many people I love to people watch. It is an activity that comes under the heading of 'judge a book by it's cover' as one instantly forms an (uninformed) opinion of those being watched. And I know that others are doing the same to me, which others me not a jot for the simple reason that I just don't care and in the main I keep the world at arms length and value those few people, friends and family, who I know, trust and love.

I grew up in a multicultural family long before anybody coined the word 'multicultural'. As a result I've rarely had an issue working with people who had a different coloured skin to mine, or who had behavioural or physical attributes that differ to my own. But recent events have resulted in me responding in ways that I would not normally. The 1st event was a questionnaire from the office of my MEP, among which was hidden the question 'Do you feel that immigration has been good for the UK' (with sliding scale response). The 2nd was the conviction of a mother and her partner for the starving and beating to death of her 4 year old son. The 3rd event is the conviction and sentencing of a number of men for sexual grooming and exploitation of young girls here in Derby and across the Midlands.

You might ask why these two events caused my change in attitude. Well the answer is simple. The last Census of England & Wales revealed that immigrants now comprise the majority of the population, in other words more than 50% of the 63 million people covered by the census have origins in countries outside the UK which also means that as a born and bred Englishman I am now in the minority in 'my own country'. That has to go a long way to explain quacky laws we now have in place to protect the rights of those people who have adopted the UK as their home and the amount of benefits and support options that are available to those that have never worked, paid income tax or National Insurance contributions. Then bearing all this in mind, the 2nd event (sentencing takes place today) and 3rd events, one has to adjust to the overriding fact that these people, coming to the UK which they believe is road to prosperity, are not even worthy of being called animals, they are lower than that.

So let us think about immigration some more. It can be argued that these people came to the UK and did the jobs that we 'didn't want to do' but did they really? Is it not the case that they took 'our jobs' and just did them on a lower rate of pay, forcing an ever downwards spiral of pay rates for basic jobs, jobs our own less well educated could have done and been happy doing. Now they have 'lock out' in some areas of the job market like taxi driving or train driving on London's underground. When was the last time you saw a white skinned taxi driver in your nearest city (London, Birmingham, Leicester, Derby....)? And those convicted of sexual grooming, trafficking and exploitation of young white girls were all exclusively form ethnic backgrounds. The cleric Abu Qatada has cost the UK taxpayers millions trying to deport him because of the laws brought to the statute books by those with a (at the time) hidden agenda to protect their own from having to leave the UK against their will.

So have we, the UK, benefited from immigration? Maybe, maybe not. It is not clear cut or as simple as my prose appears to make it but one thing is for certain. Good or bad we are stuck with it, the consequences of decisions made over the last 50 years will take another 50 to work their way out. One thing is certain though and that is, when I people watch and I see people from a different ethnicity to mine and I go to 'judge a book by it's cover' the mental picture I will carry won't be the nice rosy and welcoming one that I have carried in the past.