I’m sitting in a London cafe, watching the world go by. (It’s off season, so no bus loads of Japs shooting the Selfridges shop windows with their Canon instamatics). I’m listening in on snippets of conversation. And English isn’t the only language being spoken. Guess it’s to do with migrant populations.

First, it was us Indians crowding into the corner shops, then the Bangladeshis, the Pakistanis and other Asians.u00a0Didn’t really bother the Brits. We were slogging our butts off, but tucked away in little cubicles in the tube station. But then came the Middle Eastern invasion. You could walk into Soho and you could be in Syria. The Arabic lilt replaced the cockney twang. The famous Brit stiff upper lip took on a grimace.u00a0The expression of the average Pom. General distaste. No one could blame them, the Middle Eastern immigrant not really making an effort to fit in.