While I agree about the difference between cultural influence – which can enrich – and imposition, which can only divide, I am not so sure about this bit:

Your head is firmly ‘in the sand’. There has been no discernible benefit arising from the influence of four or five decades of Western liberal thought on the cultural, religeous and social values brought into this country by immigrants from the Near, Middle and Far East. Nor will there be – ever. They are immune to our culture and values, despising what they see and experience.

I’m aware of the only educational statistic that matters to me. This nation is currently about number 25 on the international OECD list of nations skilled in numeracy and literacy. Which if you can’t interpret that means that we are nearer to the bottom than the top of developed nations in terms of those academic subjects.

You are not even close to the solution of the massive problems facing this nation due to unrestricted immigration. You, and others like you, are part of the problem.

I had very close colleague who was Iranian, and who came over in the 1970’s. He is the most civilised, cultured and now ‘Anglicised’ Gentleman you’d ever hope to meet, while also retaining his ‘Iranian-ness’. He wouldn’t recognise the ‘Immune, Despising’ description at all. I use Ed as the first example that sprung to mind. I guess I am saying no more than the usual ‘Please don’t tar with the same brush’.

The link to educational standards is confusing. It is not immigrants from the East who are underperforming in our schools – the situation is quite the opposite, as I am sure you know really.

..that nobody would vote for currently. This is true. Not a contradiction at all. And yes, it could ge argued that any system of government is ‘workable’ when taken to a logical extreme. This is still logically inconsistent with ‘Socialism does not work’. Maybe the intention was to say ‘Socialism as the guiding principle of Government is currently undesirable to the electorate, especially when it is deliberately confused by its opponents with authoritarian coersion’. But that is impossible to argue against, so not one for a debating society.

It’s made people think, though.

My only aim was to show that socialism, in its original sense, is not really unworkable – by giving a provoking example of when we ourselves applied many of its precepts. I admit it took an extreme set of circumstances for it to happen.

CD.. Your post-war change of Government argument doesn’t work that well.. look at who WAS elected and the state-sponsored projects they undertook with that mandate.

JG, that’s fair comment. Almost too fair.. Do I detect a trap?

Tony, that’s called ‘solidarity’ and is not counter to anything.

Often conviniently-overlooked fact. The Spitfire prototype was largely state-sponsored. 13 out of the 20 thousand cost came from the taxpayer, not private capital. Bloody socialists, eh?

And no. It wasn’t thanks to private entrrprise. If that could have hacked it with profit as the driver then we would not have needed, for example, a Ministry of Aircraft Production.

State co-ordination.

Got news for you, John and Paul. How do you think we won the last world war? State organisation, sacrifice for the common good, a sense of collective effort over individual material gain.

Socialist principle works, in fact it has worked repeatedly over the years. You think we’d have ever stood up to Hitler by applying modern capitalist virtues? Where’s the fast buck? Not in standing up for Poland. Or even ourselves, if the price is right.

It’s only when the ‘ism’ becomes corrupted by power that we hit problems. Yes, human nature means a socialist ‘state’ is doomed to fail. But that is not an excuse for ‘self over society’ – thus denying the positive principle of socialism (in a non-state-imposed sense).

I have never been a socialist in political (ie voting) terms for this reason. But I don’t believe the principal to be wrong.

There ‘s no logic in ‘The fact we’re all too selfish makes being unselfish wrong’.

It’s not the religion, though, it’s what you do with it. It’s possible to get on fine with someone who believes in the flying spaghetti monster, and for them get on fine with a Catholic, or a Jedi. It’s only when they start threatening to behead non-adherents to airborn pasta that we have a problem.

Diverse religions have co-existed in Europe for many hundreds of years.

Mixing through migration – in terms of religion, at least – is rarely a problem. Deliberate imposition – be it an attempt at a caliphate or the placing of protestant landowners into Ireland – rarely goes well.

You are aware that many migrants are attempting to escape the violent impositon of religion and its consequences? Because they are very specifically not a part of that conflict-inducing belief system themselves?