Is this England or is it ....

Is this England or are we in another place nowadays and nobody has told me that we all sold up and moved away ??

Yesterday , I went to Hillingdon to help with the local English Democrats elect a mayor campaign.
It was to say the least an interesting day , we did meet a few interesting people who gave us their thoughts and didn't hold back when they spoke and we also met a true character of the area , a nice man who is a friend of Cliff Dixon whom we were helping.

So the question is this England or are we .... Well to be honest I'm really not sure , i spoke or at least tried to speak with about 100 people over the course of the day , some just couldn't understand me because they just didn't speak English , One lady whom i approached actually asked her son to translate for her and the husband read ( i think he did anyway) the petition word for word and still never signed it and while he was doing that his daughter decided to run round me and use me as a buffer cushion.

The local Natwest had its own sign up and underneath it was 4 languages 3 of which were Arabic i believe and then in the corner English.
The local butcher was a Halal butcher only , no problem with Halal , but a choice of non Muslims is always nice and the butcher or the man working in the shop didn't have a proper hat on just some woolly hat on when serving the meat ?? (something wrong there).

The people in Robes , turbans and burkhas out numbered the others by many and some appeared just to scared to talk to us , for whatever reason.

Were were stared at by people who i think were simply amazed to see the England flags on our table and the English Democrat banners at the sides and it just didn't seam right that we had them up , maybe the MAC flag would have gone down a bit better ??

We were told a story by someone who is reliable that a new tower block had been built and the local council had moved mainly people in from Somalia and when meter readers had gone into the flats , they had built little fires in the middle of the main room to cook on ? they had proper ovens but choose to decimate the place and make holes to build fires , have these people no sense at all.

I always try to work for integration between people but looking at the people in this place its hard to imagine any of them wanting to integrate with the home grown people of the area.
None of them whom didn't speak English would be int rested in learning it , because the need is not there and neither is the requirement because they can live in their own little worlds and be surrounded by other people like them and know that we will make every effort to communicate with them if we need to by either having a translator around or by publishing forms and such in multiple languages so that they do have to try and learn.

I could never see them celebrating St.Georges day there and enjoying the English culture with us as they would not understand and nor would they want to.

Its not about being racist , its about being respectful of the country that you are in and learning and understanding about the people and its customs and it works both ways , we have opened our doors and allowed you to have free access to our wonderful land , now give us something back and learn from us and do not use us.

You here about communities and police and other groups working with local communities Muslim community's , black community's ,polish community's etc etc but stop , hold that thought for a minute and think about it - Instead of being separate community's why not just be one big community and work together for understanding that way we would all learn about each other , the police or whomever would not need separate liaison officers for different people ,but just one person who would be the community officer and work with everybody , it has worked before and can still work , but we all have to work.

Respect works all ways not just one way.
Understanding worked s all ways not just one way.