I am constantly amazed or setting the scene!

Perhaps I just accepted it as schoolboys do that Britain was once a great empire called strangely enough the British Empire. But what amazes me know is how it ever became one. It's such a small island , no great land mass like, Russia, China or Canada but even managed to rule a part of Canada for a while and a smaller part of China!

the other things that amaze me is why hordes of foreigners want to come and live in this dank, dark and dismal climate, particularly when they live in much better climates found in the West Indies.

And then of course there are the politicians who never fail to amaze me, and who cannot see beyond the next election, and actively encouraged immigration by the thousands from the West Indies, Pakistan, India and Africa. Why - cheap labour and because the rest of the British labour force were lazy!

So now we have a small island without an empire any more and full to the brim with a population of 62 million approx and predicted to continue growing alarmingly because of continued immigration and a risen birth rate!

So not only are we challenged to live in a harmonious multi-cultural society but also like rats in a cage, at least in our cities. So of course there is an uneven dispersal of population across the country, leaving some parts empty and fertile and unused, whilst others are packed like sardines.

I suppose I was fortunate to live for the main part in the 'old England' when the immigration wave was just a trickle and just starting - we never realized were it would end. My second job was in a small rural town fifty kms from London that was just being geared up and groomed to be an overspill town for the Greater London populations.

I for a while enjoyed the bliss of country life and pubs and British culture still surviving in a non-multicultural form. That didn't last for long.