Barnoldswick Moor - Or War!

Mark Steyn:

"t has been sobering this past week watching some of my "woollier" colleagues (in Vicki Woods's self-designation) gradually awake to the realisation that the real suicide bomb is "multiculturalism". Its remorseless tick-tock, suddenly louder than the ethnic drumming at an anti-globalisation demo, drove poor old Boris Johnson into rampaging around this page last Thursday like some demented late-night karaoke one-man Fiddler on the Roof, stamping his feet and bellowing, "Tradition! Tradition!" Boris's plea for more Britishness was heartfelt and valiant, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. The London bombers were, to the naked eye, assimilated - they ate fish 'n' chips, played cricket, sported appalling leisurewear. They'd adopted so many trees we couldn't see they lacked the big overarching forest - the essence of identity, of allegiance. As I've said before, you can't assimilate with a nullity - which is what multiculturalism is.

So, if Islamist extremism is the genie you're trying to put back in the bottle, it doesn't help to have smashed the bottle. As the death of the Eurofanatic Ted Heath reminds us, in modern Britain even a "conservative" prime minister thinks nothing of obliterating ancient counties and imposing on the populace fantasy jurisdictions - "Avon", "Clwyd" and (my personal favourite in its evocative neo-Stalinism) "Central Region" - and an alien regulatory regime imported from the failed polities of Europe. The 7/7 murderers are described as "Yorkshiremen", but, of course, there is no Yorkshire: Ted abolished that, too."

Is the man completely mad? Now, there are plenty of Yorkshiremen who sweat from the eyes and judder with rage at any mention of t'Boundary Commission of 1974 (or whenever), but blaming terrorism on it is truly amazing. And he waited - what? - all of two days after Heath's death to draw a moral equivalence between joining the EEC and blowing folk up. Further down the story, he picks up on the Dilpazier Aslam row - but mysteriously doesn't bother to attribute it to the, ahem, blogger who built it. Where, Sir, is your decency?

And, what with all the flagwaving ("Best of British, old thing"), you might even have thought he wasn't a Canadian immigrant. Pah!