Quote Originally Posted by swaledale View Post
Possible to make a contribution? You have obviously missed the fact that immigrants from the EU contribute more than they take by a very long margin and that leaving the EU is not going to reduce immigration! Who do you think is keeping this country afloat at the moment? Who is doing all the essential ****ty jobs no English person wants to do?

I wasn't inferring your racist, merely a little Englander who chooses to spout crap about England for the English, when actually nationality is far more complex than that, most "English" people are in fact a polyglot of different races that have invaded, or immigrated to the Uk over hundreds of years.
I don't dispute that we are a mongrel race with Normans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Romans (not Romanis thankfully), Jutes etc all contributing to our "essential Englishness", but that had been broadly unchanged since around 1100 and the hybrid we see today emerged from that mix and reigned supreme on the global stage for a considerable period of time.

Interestingly the next major wave of non invasive (but invitational) immigration did not begin until the 20th century and that is only beginning to impact our way of life - be it Caribbean, South Asian, East European etc - its too early to tell whether this will be a positive or a negative impact. Much depends on the degree that we do integrate rather than factionalise. I'd say the jury is still out on whether your "Brit of 2140" will be an upgrade on the "Brit of 1940", but unquestionably the arrival of the latest wave of voluntary / economic immigrant has coincided with a significant reduction in our influence and relevance on the global stage.

Being a mongrel nation is nothing unique to the UK - the Americans are probably bigger, and certainly more recently formed, mongrels and are maybe now dominating the world stage after a period of isolationism, before themselves quite possibly receding as a new mongrel nation will emerge such as China India or Brazil. No dominance lasts forever on any stage: who would have bet that in 1992, when the premier league was formed, that 27 years later Liverpool would have not won a single championship, given their dominance in the 27 preceding years.