The mother of the Academy Award winning film director Anthony Minghella CBE (1954 – 2008) was a matriarch who lived by the philosophy: “You put in what you can, no matter how little that is, you don’t know how far the ripples will go”. Dedicated to community service and charity, Minghella herself was famous for introducing exotic flavours of ice cream to the Isle of Wight and even named one “Ripley’s Downfall” in honour of her son’s masterpiece The Talented Mr Ripley.
She sounds like a lovely lady.
There are few other countries….apart from the US, Canada, Australia and NZ, where an immigrant can come to live and within a few decades become part of the furniture as Gloria and many others have.
And yet, as a country and as a people we are maligned as being cold and unwelcoming! Quite bizarre.
Every immigrant to this country should have to present themselves before an immigration board manned by those of immigrant stock who have made a success and assimilated themselves into our ways of doing things.
If they don’t pass muster they should not be allowed to stay. And no one could then accuse the ethnic English of being discriminatory.