I agree that people smuggling is awful Pinotmum, but I think you will find that the Gangmasters involved in the cockle picking events of a year ago were all white English men operating in Norfolk and surrounding areas.There are problems with illegal immigration but it is very easy for peopole to misconstrue the scale of the thing, and as I have said on other more inflammatory threads on this topic, the right wing newspapers are instrumental in fanning the flames of racial prejudice here, especially the Mail and the Express. I see last week it was the turn of gypsies and travellers to be savaged by the tabloids...same old, same old.I think a lot of very good points have been made on this thread, especially about the cause/effect scenario, and also the question of how far it is possible for there to be total compatibility between British law and rules or beliefs of a certain sector of society. As for victoriapeckham's original question about the so called ' 200 Al-Qaeda trained terrorists' walking around - well, there are probably far more rapists and drug dealers at large just here in London, and I bet only a tiny proportion of them are Islamic.
I have never liked Norman Tebbit or the Tories, but even I had to agree with the man when he commented yesterday on the irony of Blair's new ' house arrest' laws and their stringency,when he was the man who decided to let so many IRA convicted bombers walk free after the Good Friday agreement!
And finally I also agree with whoever it was on this thread who said we have to look at why the West, or parts of it, is so hated by Islamic peoples. Could it be because we have done nothing for the Palestinians for so long? I won't even get started on that one.....