Unscrupulous but not sexist!

Insurance Companies.
Custodians of morality.
Purveyors of good will and justice.
Never the sort of industry to make assumptions, jump to conclusions and forge the edifice of their profit upon the shifting sands of prejudice.
This is why the EU, as a bastion of equality and sense, will impose the new EU Gender Directive on car insurance this December.
How utterly despicable that in this day and age, insurance companies decide how much your premium is going to be based upon likelihood to crash your car!

It is only right, surely, that women drivers be forced to pay up to £2,000 MORE a year, despite, generally, being safer and more prudent drivers than their brothers, boyfriends and husbands.

Now traditionally, women pay less than men for car insurance because statistics show that they have fewer accidents and cause less damage when they are involved in a crash. But the good people of Brussels aren't fans of tradition. So they decided it was better to bar insurers from charging men more than women based on the expectation of higher and more frequent payouts.

It is estimated the average woman will end up paying an extra £362 a year, or around £30 a month. Yet for female teens, the price hike could be more like 94%, pushing the total cost to £2000, which, let's face it, most teenagers cannot afford.

Sorry Susan, we cannot afford your car insurance. Better you walk home by yourself at night or take a dodgy looking minicab. Or you could stay at home and put the supper on.

The money will essentially be used to subsidide the lower premiums male drivers of the same age will enioy - although the drop in their insurance is likely to be only 9%.

So all's fair once again. We have the safest drivers covering the costs of the accidents of the most reckless, insurance companies opportunising and harvesting huge profits and the EU smiling beatifically at the balance they are forging as the arbiters of equality in Europe.

All Eyes on Germany This Wednesday

Wednesday could be the most pivotal day yet in deciding the fate of the Eurozone.

Yes we’ve had critical summits and last minute emergency meetings. But September 12 is being hailed by some as the day that could make or break the common currency as Germany’s constitutional court will announce whether or not the European Stability Mechanism, or permanent bail out fund of €700 billion, is legal according to German law. So far 14 of the 17 Eurozone members have ratified the treaty, with Estonia, Italy and Germany yet to put pen to paper.

It is the reaction in Germany however that will pull the most influence. As the economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany has already been criticised by George Soros, one of the world’s leading financiers, for failing to face the brunt of the crisis and has been warned that the Eurozone would face a long depression unless Germany are prepared to take on some of her neighbour’s debts. “Stay and lead, or quit the Euro” has been the message from Soros.

As the clock runs down on a rescue mission, it is becoming increasingly apparent that time is no longer on the side of the Eurozone. With Spain sizing up the possibility of needing a full state bail out, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been clear in his intent to review all the conditions of seeking financial aid from the European Central Bank before arriving cap in hand. Nothing will be clear about the ECB’s recently announced bond buying plan until a rescue is requested, and how much this would mean signing over sovereignty to faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and at the IMF. Even if this were to happen, the Bundestag would then have to approve the terms of the agreement, and with recent backlash against the German Government from the media about the ECB’s proposals to buy Eurozone government debt, it is clear public opinion does not support the idea of Germany effectively bankrolling and underwriting the financial problems in other single currency member states.

Whereas in America, the banking crisis was quickly resolved after the collapse of Lehamn Brothers in 2008, Europe, due to its lack of federal unity, has been unable to find a weighty enough solution. On the same day as Germany decides on the legality of the ESM, the European Commission will announce proposals for a new Eurozone supervisor, an offshoot of the ECB that will regulate some 6,000 banks. Yet once again Germany is no longer playing ball. Whereas many see the creation of a supervisory institution as a concession to Germany’s demands that a watertight structure be brought in if German euros are to be used to underwrite Eurozone debt, Germany has now cast doubt on whether one central supervisor is enough and whether the ECB can supervise so many banks at onece. There has even been murmurings that some Germans suspect the French of trying to shift so much responsibility onto the ECB so as to deliberately render it impracticable. Meanwhile Britian, which houses the majorty of the EU’s financial industry, is of course outside the single currency and sceptical about any legislation or supervision that would shift power away from the City towards Brussels.

Even if a resolution is found, many still believe it is too late to make a real difference. The Eurozone is back in recession and unemployment has reached recird highs.

Also on Wednesday theDutch will go to the polls to decide on their future Government, with more vocal opposition to the country’s role in single currency bail outs than ever before. While it seems likely a pragmatic centrist government will be elected, there is no doubt that the ongoing Euro crisis has played a key role in many of the election campaigns with increasing public discontent over the handling of the Eurozone crisis and calls for the Netherlands to become  more assertive and sceptical about demands made in Brussels and by other Eurozone members.

Meanwhile in Greece the three party government cannot agree on austerity measyres designed to save almost €12 billion and ensure the next tranche of bail out funding from the IMF and EU. It is estimated that Greek debt is still at a whopping 166% of GDP. If the next chunk fo bail out money is withheld in the wake of insufficient reform, it is likely Greece would default, catapaulting the single currency back into crisis as markets would once again rally at the threat to the single currency, rocketing the cost of borrowing sky high and serving a heavy blow for Spain who is already teetering on the edge of insolvency.

According to Der Spiegel today Merkel’s rhetoric has somewhat changed on a Greek exit. Whereas before her and finance secretary Wolfgang Schäuble may have viewed Greece as the runt of the litter, it is reported she has now spoken out about the suffering of the Greek people in the wake of the crisis and implored that everything must be done to prevent a 'Grexit.'

This may of course also have something to do with the fact that in the wake of an exit, the €62billion owed by Greece to Germany would effectively have to be written off.

It will be interesting to see on Wednesday what the German Constitutional Court rules.

Bovine EID - What's your view?

Parliament has reconvened with a session in Strasbourg next week to kick things off. On the agenda and on my remit is the proposition that cattle received electronic identification tags, EID, in the same way that movement monitoring was introduced for sheep in 2008.

The farming community seem to see more sense in tagging cattle than sheep. Stringent paper records are already a requirement of the industry, and quite a few farmers believe switching to digitised record keeping will save time and effort. But what about money?

There is no stipulation under the proposals on who pays for the equipment, whether Bovine EID will be compulsory and whether strict penalties will be levied against non-compliance.

Sheep EID has suffered a great many issues, costing farmers hundreds of thousands through equipment failure and fines. Are we likely to encounter the same littany of issues when the ear tags are attached to cows? Is this monitoring really necessary? Before the introduction of such legislation, was farming and meat more dangerous, say, 30 years ago?

I will be reading into these matters and addressing Parliament next week and would appreciate any feedback from farmers about their concerns and questions. Feel free to comment on the blogpost.

In the meantime, here's a rather pertinent joke I stumbled across the other day.

A farmer named Bill was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Wales when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the farmer, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?" Bill looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the farmer and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bill. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car. Then Bill says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" "You're a Member of the European Parliament", says Bill. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answered the farmer. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of pounds worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a flock of sheep... .... now give me back my bloody dog.

The Great Debate...?

Yesterday Radio 4 transmitted a programme they called The EU Debate

Sir Stephen Wall, the former diplomat and EU adviser to Tony Blair, argued his position against a panel who want Britain out, including UKIP's own Roger Helmer, Dr Helen Szamuely - Head of research for the Bruges Group and Conservative MP Mark Reckless.

The debate was held at The London School of Economics and Politics (LSE).
The audience was resoundingly pro-European Union.

Some would say this is no surprise. LSE boasts "a distinguished history" in EU Law. They readily point out that "The first major English language textbook on European Union law was published by an LSE academic...Members of the Department have gone on to be members of the Court and similarly the Court is represented in the Department.."

It is perhaps the foremost University in the UK for any graduand seeking a Commission or ECJ based career, so one would imagine the audience of the debate was largely made up of people either aspiring to work for the EU or a student body of a broadly similar mindset.

It is rather sorry that the BBC chose to stage the argument with a roll-call on voting intention at the start of the debate (the Yays have it) and then the same question posed at the end of the debate to demonstrate that the vast majority still applauded the EU. It certainly whiffed a bit of a set up, pitching not one, or two, but three Eurosceptics against one avid supporter to then fimd that their arguments had gained no purchase with the audience at all.

 It would be like having three Michelin starred chefs attempting to extol the virtues of Chateaubriand with a side of Fois-Gras to an audience of Vegans.

The final product was this semblance that one rather unpopular Europhile (just former association with T Blair often casts people into the instant role of pantomime villain) could be pitted against three articulate Eurosceptics, and guess what, the EU still comes out on top. Well there you have it. A foregone conclusion. The EU is the shiniest and best thing to e'er happen to Western Civilisation.

But listening to the arguments put forward by Mr Wall, there was also implication, the same one often used by the left-leaning press, that leaving the EU is the same as getting into a time machine and returning to a war-stricken divided Europe of workhouses, soot and poverty.

Oh and Britain will become as insignificant on the world stage as Micronesia.

It just doesn't make sense. Nobody is denying that the EU at some stage may have done some good stuff.
But the ever centrifugal pull of power into the midst of a democratic vacuum exhibited by Brussels as it clambers shambolically through the self-inflicted wastelands of economic misery is eerily reminiscent of the very Communism Mr Wall exhorted the pan-European bloc gallantly overcame.

I shuddered at his use of the words "For safety's sake" as if without the very Union that is pitting nation against nation in an epidemia of economic contagion, puttting people on streets and causing petrol bombs and smashed shop windows to become a regular sight once again in the Mediterranean, Europe would be thrown back into myre of multi-national conflict. What an utterly grotesque assertion, and how undermining to NATO, the UN and 21st century common sense.

And how undermining to the UK that without Europe we would no longer have any sort of influence where it counted.

It is as if there is a clear dichotomy. Either be in the EU or hate neighbouring European countries and become an isolated and impoverished little territory.

Why nobody seems to posit that cooperation, trade and solidarity may actually be enhanced by leaving the European Union, which as far as most can see is merely the architect of economic and political failure, is a mystery to me. All you have to do is open a newspaper to see the turmoils affecting Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and so forth.

Of course Switzerland, who remains resolutely outside of the EU but fully cooperational in terms of free trade, is planning to use the Large Hadron Collider now Higgs-Boson has been found to forge a network of guerilla tunnels under continental Europe and take us all by force, all the while smirking as she benefits from selling Philip Patek's in return for civilisation-destroying arms. If that sounds ridiculous to you, then surely this proposition that the EU membership is essential for European peacekeeping also rings of utter codswallop.

Notice how the debate rarely even touched upon the catastrophic failure of the Euro, the self-defeating agricultural policy dessimating UK farming and neutering our ability to be self sufficient, let alone the Common Fisheries Policy which not only practically eradicates all ocean life from the waters of Europe, but destroys the coastlines and fishing communities of numerous third world countries.

I must admit I listened with pride at the arguments put forward by Helmer et al.
Yet a clever bit of editing and a sprinkle of production values and the BBC came across as the mouthpiece of Europe.

Passing the buck..or Euro

US President Harry Truman famously had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that said "The Buck Stops Here".

 

The expression itself is thought to originate from poker, whereby a marker or counter indicates whose turn it is to deal. A player could pass the "buck" into the next player and thus buck his responsibilities.

In international relations the phrase has come to mean the tendency of nation-states to refuse to confront an escalating issue in the hope that another nation will step up to the mark. Perhaps a more fitting representation of playing hot potato with multi-national responsibilirt would be the phrase "The Euro Stops Here". But then, where does the Euro actually stop?

I don't just mean in terms of the currency itself. The very problem with the single currency was that it was created without any sense of centralised control. Instead a sort of Ashram-style communcal ownership of the currency was forged. But as the edifice began to crumble, all of a sudden shared responsibilities were denied and finger pointing, points-scoring and accusatory proclamations shattered the previously optimistic murmured assent of the great single currency project.

It is of course summer recess in Brussels. That means the big boys in the EU are essentially on their holibobs, leaving nobody to call their shots for a couple of weeks and essentially passing the onus onto the European Central Bank to calm the waters before everyone can return to the drawing board and bang their heads together once again.

Rather unhelpfully, the ECB President Mario Draghi has been left the usual script.
Phrases like "The single currency is not reversible" and "The ECB will do whatever it takes to save the Euro" are being jettisoned out at the world's media, who, of course, have heard it all before.


Then there was even the line “In the coming weeks we will design the appropriate modalities for such policy measures,” alongside the usual affirmation that eurozone countries "must use the time constructively to move towards closer integration in the eurozone".

The ECB's bond-buying programme had managed to actually bring down the costs of government borrowing in the Eurozone via the trade between banks and government institutions on the secondary market. However this was shut down in January and anyway, actual costs of government borrowing are largely determined at auctions in the primary market where bonds are sold directly to banks (bonds are essentially I.O.U.s which certain crafty financiers agree to "buy" ata rate of interest which they believe will land them a sizeable profit. Of course, the less desirable the I.O.U. the higher the rate of interest demanded by the potential purchaser). It is here that the ECB would need to bring down the costs in much the same way as the Bank of England has done in the UK, effectively spending 20% of UK national income on government debt.

The same sort of intervention by the ECB would be a bond purchase of around €1.6 trillion.

But the ECB's constitution prevents it from lending money to European governments, precluding it from buying bonds at government debt auctions in the primary market.

Instead, under the Eurogroup plan, the EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility, or to you and I, the bail-out fund) would do the buying...through the ECB.

The problem is however that the bail out fund which at one point had €440billion has already thrown €200billion at Greece, Ireland and Portugal and has recently committed another €100billion to Spanish banks.

Yet the ECB has also stated that "first of all governments need to go to the EFSF; the ECB cannot replace governments". But there's nothing really lefy in the EFSF, and what's more the statement made by the ECB was not really backed up by one vital player:  Jens Weidmann, head of Germany's influential Bundesbank, the ECB's biggest shareholder. The very fact that Draghi named the dissenter was clear intent that rather than buttering up Germany as potential paymaster, the institutions are tempted to round upon the economic powerhouse by portraying Germany as some kind of Judas.


He is without doubt fully aware that all this chit chat must get through Germany's Constitutional Courts in September. 


Draghi has also reaffirmed that national governmens had to do their bit and stick to, if not enhance, already devastating austerity measures and use their bail out funds before turning cap in hand to the Central Bank.

Essentially all we have heard from Draghi is the usual rhetoric designed to temporarily calm the storm while everyone enjoys their vacation. However, perhaps significantly, the German Government has backed the ECB's statement despite officials at the German central bank being openly critical of using ECB resources to buy the bonds of struggling countries such as Greece or Spain as against the spirit of the ECB’s statutes, which forbid it to finance states. The bank simply reiterated that “There haven’t been any changes” on this position.

The question over whether the ECB could grant the proposed €500billion rescue fund a banking license in order for it to borrow from the ECB has been shot down by Germany. Yet while the Bundesbank cannot veto ECB policy decisions, the very fact that Germany is the biggest shareholder in the ECB due to the size of her economy means it is vital that they are on board.

And so we have in practice what the EU was designed to prevent.

The question of on who's desk the sign "The Euro Stops Here" should sit is increasingly obvious to us all. Once again the future of Europe will likely be determined in the Bundestag unless all the other European states can combine forces to overcome her might.

A knock on your door from Barosso can mean only one thing...

It's getting rather tiring talking about the same topics, week in week out.
But they simply cannot be ignored.
As soon as they disappear from newspapers, they are simply simmering under the surface of a fast-track primordial swamp waiting to evolve and re-emerge a more fearful beast.
More than £30billion of value of British companies was obliterated  by news that Spain, as predicted, will likely need a national, as well as the already agreed, banking bail out. And if the Eurozone's fourth largest economy is sucked into the mire, well, I've said it before and will say it again. The EU is screwed.
In fact the Global economy is going to be up the creek without a paddle. World stock markets fell by 2% in the wake of the news.
British banks with billions tied up in Spanish loans are now in a precarious position while the credit ratings of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany are all set for a downgrade, which ultimately will compound the problem, making the powerhouse economies of the single currency face higher rates of borrowing.
Italy is also heading towards a bail out with public debt totalling almost £1trillion.Ten Italian cities are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Currently Spain has been granted a bail out of up to £80 billion to shore up its banks, which are sitting on £122 of dodgy loans. But the latest news that the state also need an urgent cash injection adds an eyewatering £250billion onto that amount. Throw Italy into the mix and in total the Eurozone looks like it may need the previously predicted €2 trillion to get through to the end of the year. The bail out fund that took months to agree has only €700billion to it's name.
Let's see what that looks like as a number...

€2,000,000,000,000,000,000

Yikes!

Meanwhile the Troika, (IMF, ECB and EU) are about to arrive in Greece to turn the knife a little more and make sure their hugely unpopular and unsuccessful austerity measures are being obeyed to the letter.
Greece is likely to suffer much deeper recession that previously thought, with expectations that the economy will shrink by 7% ratehr than the forecast 5% demonstrating the swingeing cuts are driving the economy into the ground. But without progress, Greece is being threatened with not receiving the final part of its bail out of €31.5billion. Reports suggest the IMF will now refuse any further calls for aid.
I was surprised to learn that despite his pontificating from Brussels, Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso hasn't even set foot in Greece, the country he has overseen being brought to its knees, since 2009.

Commons census - The Dutch and The British

Figures released today from the latest conducted census have shown a population increase in at least 3.7 million in England and Wales.

Fifty five percent of that increase was fuelled by immigration between 2001 and 2011 - a jaw dropping 2.1 million.

The rest is due to rising birth rates and increasing life span. However, immigration has also played a part here, with higher average birth rates attributed to foreign born couples. One in four babies now born in the UK has a non-UK born Mum.

England is now the third most densely populated place in the EU, after Malta and the Netherlands. Well given that Malta is by nature a very small island, no bigger than the size of Bristol, I think we can discount that from the count. By virtue of its compact size, density is heightened. Even still, if you visit Gozo, you will see acres of unspoilt arable land.

England has around 402.1 people for every square kilometre of land, overtaking the figure of 398.5 in Holland and 355.2 in Belgium. The density of the population in England is almost more than four times that of France, which has 99.4 for each square kilometre.

So other than both having a Queen, a rocky history with the Habsburgs and a national zeal for football (they exhibit passionate opposition to the Germans even more than we do) we also find ourselves facing the same cultural questions.

The Netherlands is the 61st most populated country in the world with a population of 16,663,831. A mere drop in the ocean compared with the UK's burgeoning 56.1 million.

But like statistics often quoted for the UK, this marker relates to the Netherlands as a whole.

Britain is the 39th most crowded country in the world. But as 93% of immigrants go to England, it is England that matters in this context. Together with Holland, England is the sixth most crowded country in the world exlcuding islands and city states.

Between 1900 and 1950 the population of the Netherlands doubled from 5.1 to 10 million people, and then grew by another 50% thereafter. According to Eurostat, 2010 saw 1.8 million foreign-born Netherlands residents, 11.1% o the total population.

Such a dramatic change of cultural landscape has its repercussions. Apart from the fear of unsustainable pressures on housing, employment and public services comes the more tricky and sensitive issue of whether a country is the sum of its peoples, and that being the case, whether change is good.

Inevitably growing consertantion about immigration led to the rise of more immigration-centric policies. The Dutch Government's policy, overseen by Immigration Minister Laurens Rita Verdonk, paved the way for permits for "knowledge-migrants" who would earn a minimum gross income of €45,000 unless a doctoral student or postgraduate or university teacher younger than 30 years of age. The permit is granted for a maximum of five years, while foreign students get a residence permit of just one year, subject to renewal by the relevant educational instututions.


Newcomers to the country and those immigrants already settled are also subject to an integration exam, much like here in the UK. The Netherlands are the first country to insist permanent immigrants also complete the pre-integration course.

Many Dutch people however are also concerned about the scale of EU immigration. In reaction to European Commission proposals to enforce social security benefits to people working in a member state but living elsewhere, the Government has been denying this right, provoking the Commission to threaten the Dutch Social Affairs Minister Henk Kamp with legal action.

Which brings us on to the question of what EU member states can actually do to tackle the problems that a mass influx of immigration can potentially bring?

The difficulty with this subject is it falls victim too easily to protestations of xenophobia, despite simple mathematics and economics underscoring the sense of having a debate about the impact of a growing population.

Recent reports on Reuters suggest that as economic mire continues to trouble the Eurozone, so-called "Populist" concerns such as cultural ones have been usurped of their supremacy by valence issues such as fears about the economic crisis. Voters are apparently less bothered about immigration and are instead more worried about how the Euro crisis will affect the Netherlands.

But surely the two are intertwined?

Should we separate discussions about burgeoning populations and net immigration, or should they both be regarded under the same microscope? Is this not the safest way to tackle the tricky subject of immigration?

My tendency is to suggest the latter - certainly from a national point of view, though this is certainly not the vantage point of the Socialism-steered European Commission who wish to trample renewed calls for sovereignty in the light of ongoing economic crisis and iron out  any disjuncture between once allied member states. After all it is important for the very continuation of the EU for solidarity to supercede national interests - and how better to achieve this than create a single federal entity, both engineered and corroborated by the free movement of people?

The question now is what route the UK Government will take in light of these recent statistics.

Are we willing to burden share if economic migrants from, say, Greece, wish to come to the UK to seek employment or benefit from our social welfare system?

Since 1997 three quarters of employment created in the UK has been taken by immigrants.

The latest poll by YouGov shows that 70% of people want immigration reduced down to the level of emigration, effectively creating a one-in-one-out system of entry, surely reflecting an economic concern over and above a cultural one?

Are we even permitted to talk about the cultural ramifications of immigration? Is there a valid argument to be made?

It's a subject not often tackled here in the UK. Britishness has become almost such an abhorrent term that, other than during the Jubilee, it is by and lrge frowned upon (by nameless, faceless people) to raise the Union Jack outside your home as a perceived act of nationalistic hostility. (Who are these people that supposely think this, anyway? I've never met one, yet we are all aware of the connotations raising the British standard apparently engenders)

What level of insanity have we reached when flying our country's flag is perceived as racist?

In the UK we are not having the conversation in the open. Instead a perceived rot forcing us to shun patriotism is pervading common sense, meaning real discussion about immgiration is only taking place in sitting rooms and quiet corners of pubs, or by minority groups of society whom we would rather not voice their opinions at all.

Is that because the conversation is wrong in its very purpose?

No.

It's actually because we are a very welcoming society and so concerned to appear as such that, in a typical British fashion, to be seen to openly complain is, well, tasteless. Only a tiny, insidious little percentage of a percentage actually hold the sort of views that we fear we may be perceived as having if we open up this particular dialogue.

When left unspoken however, the argument is up for grabs by whichever niche section of society wishes to adopt it. Sadly it has become an issue in the UK far too readily associated with the BNP. They then have the power to attract support by laying claim to concerns that  are not being addressed by Government.

This very dialogue has been tackled head on, for better or for worse, by the peroxide-topped infamous figure of Geert Wilders and the PVV party in the Netherlands, to a rather astonishing level of success given the party's size all but five years ago and its present sway in Parliament today.

Now there are gaping differences between what the PVV stand for and what many British people stand for, however there is one aspect of uniformity. A shared desire to actually bring this debate to the fore.

There is growing unrest both over there and over here surrounding what can be done in support of the preservation of one's perceived country, its peoples and its ideals.

History has taught us that when such issues are ignored, they are more likely to become inflamed and then become very difficult for the middle ground to reclaim.

I vouch for an open debate on this matter, where British people are not afraid to show their true colours.

And you know what? I think we would all be quite proud of how open we are as a people, and not only 'tolerant' but actively welcoming and celebratory of our multicultural present.

Yet it is exactly this temperament that is at stake if we cannot talk about immigration sensibly.