A glimpse of the new England

It’s a tragedy, but it’s also an interesting look at England today, since this is a story that could not possibly have happened at any time other than the first decade of the 21st Century:

Britain’s first Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed [a Muslim peer is an entirely new thing in England], is being investigated over a motorway crash in which a man was killed.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it was examining a police file following an investigation into the accident on the M1 in South Yorkshire on Christmas Day last year.

The 50-year-old Labour peer was at the wheel of his gold-coloured X-Type Jaguar [is there an irony that a Labour politician — that’s the party of socialization and the poor people — is driving an expensive luxury car?  This goes to my point about the new Left being the party, not of the working class, but of the angry class.] when he hit a stationary red Audi A4 in the fast lane of the motorway at Thorpe Hesley, near Rotherham.

The Audi’s Slovakian driver, Martyn Gombar, 28, from Leigh, Greater Manchester, was killed [although it’s the Muslims who get the press, the greatest number of immigrants in England have come from the Balkan countries].

[snip]

The peer denied any responsibility for the tragedy, including that he was sending a text message at the time of the crash [not unique to England, of course, but text messages are a fairly new phenomenon too, aren’t they?].

He said: “I totally deny this allegation [that I sent a text message] and I have nothing else more to say. I was not using my phone at the time.

“I welcome the inquiry because it will vindicate me. I have co-operated with the police fully and there is an ongoing inquiry into this.  [Good for him.]

“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got no comments to make because it’s a police inquiry and they have every right to investigate.”

Incidentally, speaking of the new England, look at these figures:

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) will release figures showing that more than 200,000 Britons emigrated during 2006. That will take the total number who left the country between 1997 and 2006 to 1.97 million.

Another 1.58 million foreign nationals resident in Britain left during the same period.

However, 3.9 million foreigners arrived over the decade, including more than 500,000 in 2006.

[snip]

According to figures compiled by Jay Winter, of Yale University, the last comparable exodus came between 1911 and 1914, when 2.4 million people left Britain. The other significant spike in emigration came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when thousands of Britons left to start new lives in Australia, Canada and the United States.