Are You Normal?

Are you British? Mark Reed on the Daily Mail's own twisted concept of 'Britishness'.

According to the Daily Mail, “...although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants".

According to this, because my grandfather was half-French, I am an immigrant. Winston Churchill? Immigrant? Prince Charles, Harry, and William? Immigrants.

If parents move abroad am I no longer British?

My son? He's a second generation immigrant, because his mother was born in America but moved to Europe years ago.

Does my son care? He's three. He couldn't care less. All he's worried about is if there's enough food, electricity, and Ben 10 on the television for him and all his fellow Ben 10 fans. Adults would be wise to be more childlike, I think.

Almost everyone, if they look far enough back, a generation or two, will find that someone in their family fell in love with someone from a different country. Strictly speaking, meanwhile, because I was born in Birmingham but now live 200 miles away in the South East, I too, am an immigrant. It's just a degree of separation. All concepts such as nations are artificial divisions: land masses are not separate, and the only difference geographically between Africa and America is that there's a lot of water between the two. Everywhere on Earth is connected underneath the water.

If I go back to where I came from, it's going to get mighty crowded, because every non-Native American-Indian is a umpteenth generation immigrant and they'll have to come back to Britain. And if all humans went back to where we ultimately came from, there'd be a lot of monkeys on this planet. Fear of the other is unnatural. Human beings, where we live, and how we live, changes over time. If you truly despise people from different places, I suggest that you stay living and working in the postcode you were born in and never go away.

And this separation is what is causing every goddamn problem in the world. The refusal of the small minded to see the world for what it is: one nation, made of different cultures, races, and practices that all share the same planet. I couldn't give a toss if someone is British, American, or Korean: as long as they aren't disrespectful of their fellow human beings. We're all stuck on this planet together and if we stop fighting each other and start working together, we're going to be in a lot better position than if we destroy each other.

“Why's a man gotta pick up sticks against another man when he could use a stick to prop another man up?” -Tugg Speedman, Tropic Thunder.