2001/05/29

A segment on NPR Morning Edition today highlighted the growing trend of Israeli's leaving the country as the violence spreads. Two families mentioned as examples moving to Canada and Australia.

This morning in the London Telegraph, there is more about the events in Oldham, Greater Manchester. There the cultural tension is between "native" Britons and "Asians" (in other words, Pakistanis, Bangladeshi's, others from the Indian sub-continent). A prominent Tory party member, John Townsend, has sounded the old familiar refrain of fear that Britain is being turned into a mongrel nation. What amuses me is that Britain IS a mongrel nation and has been for millenia. Recall the invasions of the Angles and the Saxons and the Normans and the internal fighting and intermingling with the Hibernians, Celts and Picts. Britain is now known as an Anglo-Saxon nation, ironically named after groups that had invaded in the past.