I have a confession to make - I am sick of being integrated.

I feel like a piece of furniture...I can’t help what I am made of or what colour I am but I still feel I don’t fit in with the rest of the house.

In a week when all we could talk about was the veil it was interesting to note that no-one seemed to have said the obvious.

Not even Jack Straw for whom it takes years to bring up a subject.

And when does he do it? In the middle of Ramadan when there are more veiled women on the street than normal.

The veil issue slowly (and predictably) descended into one about ‘They live here so they should become more like us...” or “If they don’t like it why don’t they go go back to their own country.”

Okay, not everyone felt like that. There were plenty of voices saying the whole thing was a waste of time and if the women wanted to wear the veil they should be entitled to do so .

Now, correct me if I am wrong... but who on earth is segregated? Are we not already integrated?

No I didn’t have too much Mango lassi (a thick milkshake type drink) last night but I have decided that the majority of folk I know are already integrated.

And these people are ordinary Joes like you.

Such as the lovely lady at the Tesco checkout counter I met on Wednesday.

I was going to bring this subject up earlier but I thought I would sit on it for a while and share it with everyone when I needed to get myself back on the front page.

Parallel lives? Community segregation? Do the people who make these comments actually live in the North West?

There’s more integration going on than ever before.

I get threatened by young Asian drivers tailgating me and I get annoyed by young white kids who can’t handle their drink.

In fact if I was to reverse that statement I am sure it would still make sense.

We all pay too much tax, eat the wrong foods and our children don’t listen to us.

I hate driving, I detest shopping and the fact that I have no money left in my account at the end of the month.

More integration?. I suggest that all the Muslim blokes with beards start going to pubs.

That would make everyone happy, or would it? Every time I go into a pub some bloke shouts out ‘Taxi!’

On top of all of that we have a new set of fundamentalists in our midst.

NO...not the religous type but the ones who love to debate, and if you don’t debate it means you are wrong.

Just yesterday I got into an argument with one of these new extremists.

I said I thought the veil wasn’t a huge problem and she said I was stuck in the Middle Ages.

Eventually she won the argument because she shouted me down.

Which kind of defeated the whole purpose of the argument in many respects.

The point I make is that the veil, the Hijab or anything else that makes us different are not the real issues at all.

The real issue is that we are British and we are generally going through the same mundane stuff as each other.

Sometimes life is good and sometimes life is difficult.

Just don’t make it more miserable than it already is.

Source: lancashiretelegraph.co.uk 

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