Living in the UK

Just recently I spotted a book to prepare Immigrants for the citizenship test on life in the UK. It got me thinking, what should someone know when going to live in the UK, what it means to immigrate to another country and about multicultural living.



Included this test there are many pointless questions such as:

• "Where are Geordie, Cockney and Scouse dialects spoken?" Seems really useless knowledge to me, who really gives a damn. Same goes for "What is the Queen's official role." both are nice to know but it's not really going to matter if you don't know.
• "How many people belong to an ethnic minority and which are the largest minority groups?" Is this just another way of making sure people know where they are more likely to find people of similar origin?
• "What are Quangos?" This one I would have to look up myself.

Clearly to be able to live in another country the first thing would be to be able to speak the language. It must be impossible to live in an area which you are unable to read signs or communicate with anyone, right?

Next thing is driving, people can come over here and drive for up to 12 months with out renewing their license. That seems a little daft to me, I think a theory test should be needed before they start driving as surely your most likely to have an accident within that first twelve months. Having said that would that mean tourists would have to take a test to hire a car? I don't think that would be a bad thing, maybe a cut down version to the normal theory test, just so they are aware of the rules of the road UK. Especially as we are in the minority of countries that drive on the left.

In terms of culture London is one of the most diverse cities in the world, as a country sometime we find ourselves struggling to find a national identity. Hence there aren't religious/ cultural practises to abide by, immigrants to the UK, or to any country for that matter, should always abide by the local culture. If, for example, it was considered rude to green t-shirts on a Sunday then any one who chooses to live in an area should automatically be obliged to follow this belief.

Back to the immigration test and one of the key issues: should we need permission to live in another country? In my opinion, yes, it's like belonging to a (very) large tribe, each tribe needs to be able to have some degree of control over the population size. If a tribe could only support a population of 500 people because the available resources were limited then foreigners would be very unwelcome because it would mean the rest of the tribe would suffer. If half of China arrived at the doorstep of Spain tomorrow and pitched up camp it wouldn't work.

To finish off I must mention that by no means should people be bound to where they are born, freedom is a good thing and having a choice of where to live should be considered a definite privilege. Multicultural societies are a modern occurrence and as history will show that the integration of different cultures was never without conflicts. For Multiculturalism to truly work different cultures must live together as one without judgement, it is something that is no where near complete yet and will take many more generations to achieve. That is if we don't end up completely divided in our own countries.