Oxford, 9^th October 2007.

Dear Editor in Chief,

You have sent me a report that the British government has decided to make derogatory remarks about homosexuals punishable by up to seven years in prison.

You demand an explanation: instantly, of course.

Okay. Well, quite apart from the fact that if I ever again tell my poor old dog - as I might - "You silly old bugger", I may get seven years in the slammer for offending his sensibilities, this is certainly an interesting development. It deserves an explanation.

So, take a deep breath, sit back, and relax. I can imagine jets of super-heated steam pouring out of the vents of the deep nuclear-proofed headquarters of EdNews, all of it emanating from the desk of the editor-in-chief, he invisible in the vortex of righteous indignation and wrath shot through with forked bolts of fire. Calm: soothing British calm and sang-froid is required to be poured into this roaring inferno.

Britain, Chief, has never really been much of a democracy. It is now virtually a marginal totalitarian state in which a Great Leader rules surrounded by a Chosen Few of lickspittle sycophants and cronies.

This is not all my fault: but when I write about what is happening in schools I make the repeated mistake of letting what I describe appear to be a warning.

No, no. It is not a warning. It is a DESCRIPTION of what has been happening for at least three generations in most Western societies. As a result the MAJORITY of all those societies - including yours - now consist of the three divisions I have repeatedly described: an elite which doesn't much need to care; a majority who do care, but who are deeply confused about honesty and are easily excited by silly, small ideas; and finally a big fraction who would tear everything down if they could.

Some decades ago it was realised that whatever advance the British had made towards democracy - which wasn't much, but it had started - could be extinguished to the greater advantage of the Great Leader and his or her Chosen Few (by the way, it does not much matter which party they claim to represent; nor are these especially clever people: they are street smart) in a number of interesting ways.

First a great deal of controlled - but also much more uncontrolled - immigration would soon put an end to any natural and indigenous social diversity. This would be far too likely to develop in a proper democratic direction. It would be replaced instead by much more deeply divisive social divisions, having little or no common historical and cultural base. Even after generations, these would never constitute an even approximately whole society.

Second the poor bloody British should be told that they would lose none of their own capacity to govern their country - and also to regain the democratic direction that got lost in the two World Wars which had cost the best of their natural leaders and also beggared them - in joining a sort of Grocers' Convention called the Common Market.

This was a wonderfully clever and ingenious device: for of course the British still trusted their Great Leaders, and still believed what they were told. But what was kept from them until it has become impossible to conceal, is that this very innocent sounding arrangement was just the first furtive step towards yet another Hegelian State of the kind that the real political and industrial elite in Europe have always hankered after since Napoleon, one which has no time for the ludicrous notion of government of, by, and for the people!

Third - and perhaps the most damaging of all - was the attack of social philosophers on the very notion of common truth: and therefore any respect for common sincerity, common honesty. This notion was rejected violently - and, it may be said, with some very convenient historical evidence at hand - and was described as racist, elitist (for only an elite would pretend to know the whole truth), leading inevitably to the imposition (horror after horror!) of a totally UNdemocratic totalitarian state.

It would be much safer, the poor bloody Britons again were told, to replace wretched and out-dated concepts - like patriotism, historical continuity, love of country and culture - by a much more exciting, multi-national, many-flavoured multi-culturalism. They could become just a part of a multi-cultural society, with many kinds of truth, many different ideas about honesty, about patriotism, purpose of life and social values.

Oh, and by the way, whilst were about it, why not forget about this silly notion altogether of being a UNITED KINGDOM - such a tawdry old idea? Let's split your country up - without asking you all if this is what you want: we have bureaucrats to do it and draw the maps (they did: and England was omitted) - into piddling little nationalistic subdivisions that will never again present the ugly face of a UNITED Britain to the world again!

Now you may well wonder, dear old chief-editor, what precisely this rant of mine has got to do with yours.

Simple! In importing lots of colourful interesting multi-cultures into our land, the Great Leaders and their Chosen Few now discover that they have imported one hell of a big problem. Despite their guarded homes, armoured cars, and the company of lots of very rich friends with big foreign estates and private islands, not even they - or their children - are safe any more. In fact, they are a particularly unsafe. There are people out there who have VERY different ideas about all kinds of things that they thought they and their Great Leader had under control. Not only are these very different ideas: their owners are not at all excited by this multi-cultural lark; in fact they so dislike the notion of it that they are prepared to murder other people, of any sort, but always on the largest possible scale, just to emphasize that their opinions are not to be boiled up in some kind of multicultural stew.

So, what is to be done?

Well, the British have known for centuries that many priests must be sodomites. They probably didn't much mind because the alternative was not to be able to trust priests with their wives. Others on the other hand - probably for very different reasons - have a positively ineradicable hatred of sodomites, and are obliged to kill them wherever they are found.

Having thought about this a good long while, one of the Chosen Few has had a simply sizzling good idea! Why not order that anyone who even talks about the wickedness of sodomites be thrown at once into the deepest dungeon in the land, and kept there for a full seven years.

That ought to show whose culture is still the boss in this country: it's the culture of Great Leader and the Chosen Few! Do you see it now?

The secret of modern government is just to keep the people so confused by lots of small irritations, that they would NEVER get around to noticing what is happening to them that is actually important.

I hope this helps. I feel much better already.

Yours truly,

Colin Hannaford,

Proudly EdNews British (and Foreign) Correspondent.