Last updated 11:38, Tuesday, 19 February 2008

THERE comes a time in everyone’s life when he or she is required to be logical and reasoned - and I guess that’s the day any self-respecting writer of columns hangs up the pen!

This week I am going to try for reason and logic because maybe that is what is required in a week when, if I wasn’t being reasonable, I would believe that in future we would have our right hand chopped for stealing and that everyone who is out of work will be thrown out on to the streets.

Before the Archbishop of Canterbury made his comments about incorporating Sharia law into the British legal system, I had already listened to a conversation this week by people suggesting that Britain was losing its identity.

Later in the same week, speaking about the Sharia law, someone else told me that if people came to Britain they should adopt our ways.

I have lived in the colonies for the most of my life. I have been brought up on history lessons that show how the British went to other countries and threw out the ways of the natives and then subjugated them.

I agree that is now history, but many of the problems in the world, especially in Africa, can still be laid at the doors of the colonisers.

It is probably growing up in Africa that has shaped my own ideals. From the age of about seven or eight I could not understand why one group of people should be treated so differently just because of the colour of their skin. I think that is why, when I hear people talking about immigrants - whether from Africa, Asia or eastern Europe, I feel my hackles rise and I have to defend them as I have to defend any underdog.

I acknowledge that this is a small island and I acknowledge that there have to be some guards against immigration, or the island would eventually sink! I don’t think we can do it with Europeans.

If we choose to join the EEC - and if we choose to inflate the price of housing in places like Croatia and Bulgaria where the Brits are buying holiday homes and if our children can go and work and live in holiday destinations such as Spain - then we have to accept the reverse of that particular coin.

Maybe, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we could tighten up our rules. Maybe we should have a points system like Australia and New Zealand have and we should stick to it. Maybe my sense that turning anyone away is immoral is just stupid and emotional so I will concede that one.

But what about Sharia law? I feel sorry for Archbishop Rowan Williamson who was NOT suggesting that we should adopt the extremes of Muslim law; he was not suggesting public floggings or limbs being cut off.

He was not suggesting forced marriages or honour killings - and neither, by the way, would most Muslim people. But what he was saying, I think, was that in a country which is already multi-cultural maybe we could incorporate some of their law for their people.

It has been pointed out that the Jewish people have a system within our legal system, so why not the Muslims? Instead of getting hysterical, let’s discuss it rationally - and that, I am sure is what the Archbishop wanted us to do. He was doing what Christians should do - he was reaching out to others.

There is one thing I am not prepared to be reasoned and logical about this week.

Did you hear the suggestion that people who don’t want to work should be kicked out of their state houses.

What a great way of solving the problem. Now, instead of getting an unemployment benefit these people, and their spouses and their children, will be out on the streets. Maybe they could take up begging? Maybe that could be considered work! Maybe the Government would fund more charities to ensure that the children had least have an occasional meal? We would need more truant officers for all those children who would be unable to go to school because they are now vagrants. That’s good! More truant officers means more people in work.

I have never heard anything so ridiculous and sinful in my life. One of the basic rights of human beings is the right to shelter. If we take that right away we might as well go the whole hog and throw out our protective laws, and adopt the worst extremes of Sharia law!