I know that if it is one thing the British are guilty of.....

I know that if it is one thing the British are guilty of, it’s swanning around the world as if they own the place, while expecting to be able to speak English and be understood by everybody. If they can‘t be understood in English at a normal volume, they shout in English instead.

While we’re certainly very much in need of improvement to our language skills abroad, I do find it very frustrating to almost need a smattering of practically every language in existence to communicate with all the different races in Britain today. Like any topic that involves the word "race", there are always plenty of hand-wringing do-gooders wanting to twist the words of anyone raising a concern. This is why nothing gets done to try an improve things, nor is it likely to anytime soon. We’re all too scared to try.

The way I see it, the opportunity was missed many years ago to insist on fluent English being the goal of anyone looking to make their home here. This situation hasn’t dropped out of a clear blue sky. It’s been allowed to develop and get to the point where it seems all too common for some who weren‘t born here, but who may have lived here for decades, to have to rely on their British born children to act as interpreters in many everyday situations. While they may now carry a passport that says "British Citizen", many still cannot understand what other British people are saying and the end result is that they are cut off from mainstream society. It could even be said that they are an underclass, as they seem to exist within their own community in a kind of tiny version of the country they left behind before coming to Britain.

Putting it incredibly bluntly, what use is someone that doesn’t speak the language of the country that they are living in ? What jobs can they do when they’re fluent in a language most of us don’t speak ?

Such a situation must be incredibly isolating and I can’t help but wonder how happy this can really make someone. As well as the obvious dangers that could face a someone that doesn’t speak English very well, maybe misreading a sign or not being able to relay vital information to the emergency services, they must be missing out on so much.

As published in the September edition of "The Kemptown Rag"

As the Government is widely accepted.......

As the Government is widely accepted as more than a bit rubbish, it’s the opposition parties we
turn to, to provide us with reasonable and viable alternatives. Therefore, it’s a bit of a shame that they don’t inspire much confidence either. There is too much dancing around the issues at
the moment and not enough solid ideas. It could be that I am oversimplifying the situation, but I
think that there are some problems which could be resolved with a bit of commonsense.

For example, immigration is generally seen as something which has gotten out of hand. Therefore it could be brought back under control by restricting the numbers of people coming into the country and putting strict rules in place for access for newcomers to things such as healthcare and welfare benefits. If we weren’t regarded as such a cash-cow by the rest of the world, it’s likely that the numbers of immigrants would drop anyway.

After immigration, I’m sure that another hot topic in pubs and at office water-coolers up and down the land is crime. To me, this is again something that just needs some sledgehammer logic. We should be much tougher on crime and remember that for every criminal, there is at least one victim and it is their rights that should be paramount and not those of the perpetrator. Criminals should be going to prison for a lot longer than they seem to be these days and the term “life sentence” shouldstart meaning “life”. At the moment, as criminals seems to be getting younger, some who are going to prison for life, will be released before they’re thirty. Where is the justice for the family who have had to bury one of their own as a result of the behaviour of some out of control juvenile?

If the reason for such light sentences is prison overcrowding, build more and generate some room in the ones we already have by getting rid of the gyms and plasma screens. Prison should be a harsh existence and an experience that criminals should never want to repeat. They can have all the counselling they want when they’re on in prison and be given plenty of opportunity to reduce social workers to tears with their hard luck stories, but it’s a decent spell on
the inside they deserve.

Shall I form the “Commonsense Party” ?

As published in the 29th August 2008 edition of the Kemptown Rag