Why?
Honest question here and I don't think it gets asked enough or at all. I'm not asked to prove my Britishness having been born here but I have better grasp of history than the average Brit but am total rubbish when it comes geography beyond where a grew up and have lived. More importantly we are already such a culturally diverse country that how do you measure culture awareness and acceptance? There are elements of sub-culture I take part in that I'm 99% sure most members of this forum wouldn't have a clue about except stereotypical nonsense. I'm also sure that life living in inner cities very different to mine and I don't pretend to know anything about it, just the same as I have no true understand of how the upper classes live their lives. So how do you define what they should know? TV shows like pointless prove in a generic survey of the British public how little the average Brit knows about elements of British culture. A strong Geordie, Scottish or Yorkshire accent is really difficult for me to understand. Yet you want to put rules on other people for what reason, what actual purpose does it really have? Ultimately if a person is contributing towards society by working and supporting the country why should we stop them for doing so by not being able to prove on some arbitary scale they are not British enough.
My grandfather is Irish and grandmother South African. Yet for some people I am more British than 4th generation British-Indian.
I get bloody annoyed by simplistic arguments and sound bite policies the world is many shades of grey, not black and white.I think you hit an interesting point and something I've tried to explain to people in the past. If I walk down the street at night and two Arabic people are walking towards me do I feel fear? Yes, the real question is do I act upon it and should I? To which the answer is no. It's okay to have feelings of not understanding those who are different to yourself. The important thing is to acknowledge you have those feelings, understand they are the wrong and then act the way you should not how you feel.
Last note valley commando can you post the page for those figures? Not saying they are untrue just it's under silly statistics as there's no context. In 2013 there were 698,512 live births in the England & Wales yet one of your numbers is larger than the total births in one year when only 25% were from foreign nationals, so where does the number from illegal foreign national starts from since 1980? 24,720/year, 1800? 2874/year, 2010? 123,600/year. Also the number has zero meaning, how many is too many? How are you in a position to judge? Are you a leading expert of immigration control and it's influence on the economy as a whole? You listed three countries with strong immigration policies but have half the GDP of ourselves so how is that proof it's better to have a strong immigration policy?
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1...013/stb-births-in-england-and-wales-2013.html
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