We had a whole run of English cricket captains not born in England, Cowdrey, Dexter, (both born in India) Denness (Scots), Greig (South African), and I think Tony Lewis (Welsh) had a go for a series abroad.

Not one of Victoria’s grand children married an Englishman, although one did marry a Scotsman.

I. K. Brunel was at least half French.

Englishness is probably an invention of Victorian nannies telling stories to the children of rich gentlefolk, to get their charges to sleep.

And don’t forget the Huguenots.

Or that great patriotic anthem, England, half English by Billy Bragg:

Britannia, she’s half English, she speaks Latin at home
St George was born in the Lebanon, how he got here I don’t know
And those three lions on your shirt,
They never sprang from England’s dirt
Them lions are half English and I’m half English too

You seem to have missed the re-admission of Jews into England. Perhaps that’s excusable – it happened only 350-odd years ago, under Oliver Cromwell …

Yes, it was a generalisation. I also missed the Catholic recusants who would have been more numerous than the Jews.

You seem to have missed the re-admission of Jews into England. Perhaps that’s excusable – it happened only 350-odd years ago, under Oliver Cromwell …

jiggles, in nothing that I wrote did I suggest the Daily Mail story was not negative.

Chris Nelson, as I wrote, I looked carefully at the article, and I did not see the claim that the children or grandchildren of immigrants are not “British”, I see only the mention of the “impact” they cause. To deny that there has been an impact is to suggest that to be “British” today means the same as it did a hundred or so years ago, which clearly it doesn’t.

My point is that we need to be precise with words, and however much we might like to think the Daily Mail is saying “people with a grandparent born outside the UK aren’t British” because then we can jump up and down like silly little children or MPs at PMQs and say “racist! racist! yah booh sucks”, it isn’t actually saying that.

It seems to be saying that immigration, both recent and a generation or two ago has had a big impact, with which we can hardly disagree. We may feel the impact is largely positive and the Daily Mail may feel it’s largely negative, but that’s another issue.

In fact, the content of the article seems to be concentrating more on population number factors than on cultural factors. So even more so, while we might wish it to be saying something else because then we can have good “yah boo sucks” fun, it isn’t saying that.

Myself, I prefer plain debate in which each side acknowledges what the other says, even if it disagrees with it or with the implication, rather than debate which pretends the other side has said something else because it can then play schoolboy games with that something else.

Playing the “yah booh sucks, you’re a racist” game is something liberals like, because it makes us feel smug and pleased with ourselves and not like those working-class oiks we despise (OK, so I can do the hidden implication stuff as well). Sometimes I do find liberals to be such unbearable prigs, and here’s a case.

Moaning about how they had to leave because of an influx of immigrants who don’t try to fit in, refuse to learn the language, take all the houses & insist on eating rubbish.

The lack of self-awareness is funny.

It’s that last category – the idea that anyone with a grandparent born outside the UK shouldn’t be counted as British – that’s particularly nutty.

To prove my case – I was born in England. Both my parents were born in England. I have ancestry in England that has been traced back as far as the 1600s, and even have an ancestor was a cavalryman fighting against Napoleon.

Yet according to the Daily Mail, I must be a foreigner – because my grandmother was born in Ireland.

You’ve got to love the Daily Mail!!

Surely you would agree that the Mail story is talking largely in negative terms? It is not discussing the positive impact of people coming into the country be they first second or a thousandth generation.

They are using ‘foreign’ as a pejorative and implying that we should class all those whose parents may not be from the UK as immigrants themselves- and considering the Daily Mail’s views on immigrants in general I doubt this means they think we should shower them with candy and flowers.

As for not mocking peoples fears, when those fears are based on pure ignorance an prejudice then why not?

If you don’t stand up and say ‘you are wrong’ then those prejudices will simply continue. This is even more important when talking abut a paper such as the Daily Mail which have the ability to influence millions of peoples opinions.

Just because some people are ‘bewildered by the pace of change’ doesn’t mean everyone should have to appease them- as Dylan said:

‘Your old road is rapidly ageing, please get out of the new one is you can’t lend a hand.

In the article it says, ‘However although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants.’

I am not saying that people’s feelings are invalid – I can understand why some people are fearful of change – but some behaviour is certainly invalid – including the Daily Mail on this one.

According to another of my aunts, whenever she goes to certain parts of London she doesn’t feel like she’s in Britain any more. I imagine that’s the sort of feeling Matthew is referring to. And I’m sorry Matthew, but you’re just not going to be able to respond to those sorts of concerns unless you ban non-English-descent people from setting up businesses. Is that what you’re suggesting? Or should we perhaps continue to mock racism as being stupid, and continue to work on ways to enhance service provision to ensure that the resentment many white working class people feel over, for example, insufficient social housing, is mitigated?

The BNP has the quick and easy answers. We have the harder, long term ones. But ours are right.