I thought that's what I was saying. Isn't the final question basically asking "How on earth could you think that a Paddy was the equal of a Sikh?"
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Not at all. I said that for 400 years Canada was almost entirely white and that that has changed in the past 40-50 years. However, I specifically said that that did not make me feel alienated in any way and I have never said and would never say that the immigrants to Canada, regardless of colour, are not Canadian.
I don't. I think everyone should do their best to integrate whilst also adding the best of their own culture to the melting pot that is London.
I want us to have, as a base, the continually evolving British identity, whilst also taking on board the best aspects of all the world's cultures. This gives us stuff like Ska/Two Tone, for example.
And "proper sports" isn't an arbitrary or irrational term. Ours are pwoppa, yank ones aren't.
The doorman at Raffles in Singapore is a huge Sikh chap called, bizarrely, Singh. One day I noticed that he was shivering and paler than me. "Singh," I said, "You're clearly not well, you must go home an rest!" He chuckled at my naivety. "It's nothing at all, just an attack of the malaria."
Tough as old boots.
Point taken.
I have a Sikh mate from Huddersfield who now lives in Stokey but has a broad Yorkshire accent. As I said to him, he now lives in a City where no-one cares about his race or religion by everyone will think he speaks funny until the day he dies.
I just object to the idea that his London-accented kids, born of his white, London missus, would be considered less English by some, simply on the basis of their mixed-race skin colour, than some white northerner.
I found it very confusing that the three charming young lads who sat in front of me at th'Emirates back when I used to go looked Asian but spoke Jamaican. For a while I wondered whether they were ethnic Indians who had moved to UK from Kingston or Montego Bay. Turned out they were just young Londoners. :shrug: