Test to be hailed as British fish and chips
How thoughtful of the British Government to ask for one's fingerprints before issuing an entry visa. Tomorrow it will get worse. Any immigrant to Britain must leave his footprints in the sands of British history if he wants a passport. And thus bound hand and foot, the immigrant will be integrated into this society and hailed as British as fish and chips.

The person who is determined to turn every immigrant into a god- fearing Britisher ready to stand up and applaud Queen and Country is a chap called David Blunkett who, incidentally, is the Home Secretary having failed as Education Secretary to educate students, let alone the public.

Like charity, Blunkett should actually begin at home by educating Britons who would rather guzzle beer and behave like louts than delve into their own past. They like their politicians don't wish to leave their footprints in any kind of sand. They are too busy covering up their tracks.

Mr Blunkett, bless his simplistic mind, believes that if an immigrant has a smattering of English, knows how to apply for a job and report a crime, will imbibe the best of British culture and turn overnight into a model citizen. So every immigrant who wishes to become a British citizen will sit for a nationality test and take an oath to the Queen or whoever is around at the time in Buckingham Palace.

Now this dyed-in-the-wool Brit, is expected to carry his passport proudly like the Union Jack. I don't know whether David Blunkett's middle name is Aladdin but if he believes that by one rub of his magic lamp he can turn immigrants into fully integrated citizens, the Home Minister is surely living in cuckooland.

Blunkett says that immigrants who sit a new English language test will also face questions about Britain's history. If I were the Home Secretary I would not wish to rake up too much of the past seeing how unsavoury it has been. Counter questions about the massacre at Amritsar during the British Raj when hundreds were simply mowed down by the colonial army or about the execution of Buddhist monks and the killing of thousands of persons by the British army in Ceylon could prove too embarrassing.

If Mr Blunkett had any sense he would avoid going into the past since countless skeletons are bound to rattle, including those in the British museum. Apparently the idea of subjecting immigrants to a test was the brain child of an independent advisory group chaired by Professor Bernard Crick, a former university tutor of Mr Blunkett.

I don't know what Professor Crick taught at university or what Blunkett learned from him. But he does leave a crick in the neck. He claims that an understanding of British history could strengthen a commitment to common values.

If by "common values" he means turning into a football hooligan and smashing up property and breaking innocent people's heads here and abroad, I hardly think those are values any decent person would accept, common though it may be here. Or maybe he thinks immigrant children should start consuming alcohol at around six years of age and cause serious concerns as recently reported. Hardly an illustrious example of good citizenship.

Seriously, how many people of English origin will be able to answer questions on British history and some of its institutions when they hardly know what is happening today and can scarcely write correct English. Talking about English, 95 per cent of the words are borrowed from other languages.

By Blunkett's standards of linguistic attainment, Charles I would have failed the language test since he knew little or no English. Equally Blunkett could hardly be expected to survive a history test. "Knowing the six wives of Henry VIII doesn't constitute being a good citizen," The Guardian quoted Blunkett as saying.

How anybody in the past couple of centuries was expected to "know" the wives of Henry VIII, passeth understanding. What he meant I suppose was knowing about the wives, not knowing the wives. Teaching of English should indeed begin at home.
Perhaps Blunkett does not realise the importance of Henry's wives. England would never have been Anglican had Henry not divorced his first wife Catherine.

So in order to help prospective immigrants, not to mention edify the native British, here is a sample test paper.

Instructions
Please read carefully before answering. Answer all questions. In each question delete what is not applicable. If you don't know delete everything. That'll entitle you to one passport for yourself and another one free. You can sell that to an asylum seeker or give it to Saddam Hussain.

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