1066

Hay fever isn't much fun, especially when your eyes explode, all of which is additionally complex when you are trying to type on the kids fancy new laptop [a very generous gift] on which all of the keys are one space to the left of those on my laptop so, given my instinctive choice I epi;f yi[e ;olr yjod [AKA I would type like this].

But when I do type properly I do occasionally make sense. Over the past few weeks I have been re-reading 'The Lord of the Rings' and '1066 and all that'. One quote particularly from 1066 described Edward the Confessor as 'the last English King ... since he was succeeded by waves of Norman Kings [French], Tudors [Welsh], Stuarts [Scottish], and Hanoverians [German], not to mention the memorable Dutch King-Williamanmary.'

Immigration came up again at the first televised hustings on the Labour Leadership candidates. I know that I tend not to do for the establishment but I was impressed with Diane Abbott. She defended both a strong and big state [to look out for the marginalised] and civil liberties [attempting to re-claim the an agenda which only she asknowleged that Labour had lost though its authoritarianism]. She is the only candidate who voted against the Iraq war and she was the only candidate with a sufficient sense of history to say that no foreign power had ever won a war in Afghanistan. She also defended the UK as a nation of immigrants.

I would never claim that '1066' is accurate history but in humour there is much truth; and if our Kings and Queens have been immigrants for so many years, so too have we, from the Roman invasion onwards. Why are we suddenly so scared, why do we persist in ignoring the lessons of history?