Bel is thinking

Some more holiday levity. A little feel-good quiz I found over at James Higham’s refreshing blog:

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to good manners and elegance. In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you’re told that you’re loved. You’d like to your lover to think you are optimistic and happy. You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please. Your ideal relationship is lasting. You want a relationship that looks to the future… one you can grow with. Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment. You think of marriage as something precious. You’ll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred. In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You’ll do anything for love, but you won’t fall for it easily.

Interesting, that. What I want to know is how ‘they’ arrived at that conclusion from asking me a load of questions about animals.

Click on the question to take the quiz.

According to Government figures, one immigrant a minute enters the UK.

This relates only to legal immigration in 2005.

One wonders what the figures are for illegal immigration. Because of the nature of illegal immigration, it is impossible to know this figure. One suspects it could well be higher than the figures for legal immigration, especially if one factors in people who overstay.

MigrationWatch does not believe the Government figures for legal immigration. They think they are an underestimate, because, for example, of all the Eastern Europeans who arrived in the UK in 2005, only 65,000 are recorded as immigrants.

Here is a little holiday game to keep you occupied. I’m nice like that.

1) Let us, for the sake of argument, set the proportion of illegal immigration far lower. Rather than one a minute, as in the case of legal immigration (ie almost 1500 a day), let us posit that only 100 illegal immigrants enter the UK every day. (This is a very conservative estimate.)

2) We were told recently that based on the estimated number of illegal immigrants already in the country, it would take 10 years to deport them, assuming a deportation rate of 25,000 a year.

Now here is our game:

• Question 1:
• If 100 illegal immigrants come into the UK every day, and 25,000 are deported every year, how long will it take to deport everybody who shouldn’t be here?

Exactly.

OK, let’s try a simpler question:

• Question 2
• If 100 illegal immigrants come into the UK every day, and 25,000 are deported every year, how many will have been deported in twenty years?

Time for the calculator, methinks.

This blog congratulates Monica Lewinsky on her graduation from the London School of Economics.

Not everyone is happy for the notorious ex-intern, though. This from Libby Copeland in the Washington Post:

Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond.

Now now, Libby, where’s yer Christmas spirit?

(For the next few days, this blog will wander around the place, highlighting stories that are not usually within its remit.

Normal service will resume after the holidays.)

I wish you all a merry Christmas.

I was tagged by James Higham of Nourishing Obscurity.

What are the seven best things I did this year?

1) Stayed up late after midnight

2) Went with the flow

3) Wrote a book

4) Joined the blogging community

5) Improved my Ancient Greek

6) Learnt Movable Type (believe me, this is worthy of inclusion)

7) Indulged my love of yellow socks, art and Rilke.

I am tagging: Andrew Allison, Colin Campbell, Ian, English Republican, Morag, President Ahmadinejad of Iran (great idea, Martine), and The Waendel Journal. Sorry, guys. Have fun.

Excellent, well-researched piece over at Not Saussure on murder rates and the death penalty. Most definitely worth reading.

On a side note, I liked the intro to the essay: ‘It being almost Christmas, one’s thoughts naturally turn to homicide.’ [Emphasis mine]

A seemingly nice young man doing some breast-beating in the Thunderer:

It’s an unsettling moment when you realise you might be a racist. The thought occurred to me as I walked to my home in North London and I saw a group of black lads coming towards me. Instinctively, I crossed the road.

I think Murad Ahmed (for that is his name) is being too hard on himself. What think ye?

I wrote yesterday about the Government’s decision to press ahead with the NHS Care Records System in the teeth of well-founded fears about patient confidentiality and other such matters. One of the comments to that post was from a Dr Paul Thornton, and I thought it deserved wider publicity.

He drew my attention to the NHS Confidentiality Campaign. The aim of the campaign is ‘to protect patient confidentiality and to provide a focus for patient-led opposition the government’s NHS Care Records System’. Their website, titled The Big Opt Out, gives very useful information about what parts of the system you can opt out from, and how to go about the process. One of the things you must do is write to your GP, if you want to prevent your details being uploaded automatically to the NHS ’spine’. The website has a sample opt-out letter you can send to your GP, which you can create on the site by entering your details.

I’m sure some of you may have heard of the NHS Confidentiality Campaign, but I thought it worth highlighting to those who have not. This is a worthy campaign, deserving of support from those who oppose the database.

Interesting story in the Sunday Telegraph:

Taxpayers are funding a £350,000 globetrotting tour that is intended to improve the “image of British Muslims” around the world. The Foreign Office has dispatched parties of up to eight Muslims as far afield as Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan, so they can “share their experiences” with locals. The groups have been staying in exclusive hotels and even flown business class on some legs, with all accommodation and travel expenses met from the public purse.

To what end, I ask. The Foreign Office claims that this is necessary to give a positive image of islam in Britain.

Leaving aside the issue of whether this is something that should concern the Government at all, I make the following points.

• why is it necessary for British muslims to show a positive image to muslims of other nations? If there is any group of people who should be shown a positive image of British muslims, surely it is those of us who live in this country, who suffered from the 7 July bomb attacks, and who continue everyday to put up with threats, bullying and every other manifestation of the negative face of islam.

• why is the Government going out of its way to look for trouble? Has it not occurred to the Government that, by paying for these people to go abroad and preach the ‘good news’ of British islamic bliss, this may encourage some people in those countries to come here and partake in said bliss? Do we not have enough problems with radical islam in Britain without going out to tempt some more mad mullahs to come join the party?

Madness. Why not just take out a full page ad in Asharq al Awsat, invite all and sundry to the UK, and be done with it? For one thing, it will be a hell of a lot cheaper.