One of the meagre amusements in watching one’s country slip by degrees into the clutches of unassimilable aliens is the complete hash they make of claiming to be, in any meaningful way, “British”.  No attempt at it really.  Nothing that rises above the derisory, anyway.  Nothing remotely sufficient, for example, to justify the most brazen and comical claims they make to my heritage - while at the same time advancing quite the most outrageous and perfectly conflicting demands on my tolerance.

But then for my sins I don’t expect anything else.  Rumours abounded during my long-past formative years that the, shall we say, personal probity of Arab and Indian sub-continental gentlemen was not always of the highest.  Something regrettable probably stuck and, today, all the experience of said gentlemen garnered by my clearly racist if not actually Nazi, colonial forefathers must be poisoning my narrow, unworthy mind.  I am quite blinded to the precious worth – nay, more – the cultural equality of these splendid persons and their splendid, burqa-encased person—females (and my, how grateful I am to be saved by their modesty from my base lust).

But it isn’t all bad news.  When the hopelessly correct BBC, an “equal opportunities employer”, cannot elicit an end to the confusion even a right-wing dinosaur like me may allow himself a brief moment of ecstatic celebration.

For anyone who did not faithfully peruse yesterday’s Daily Martyr, the news is that:-

Three Britons who were killed in Iraq were making a pilgrimage carried out by thousands of Shia Muslims every year, despite risks posed by the volatile country.

“But many Iraqis will combine visiting many shrines on one trip. They would collect life-time savings to do this and it would be very significant for them to be in this spiritual atmosphere.”

“Three Britons” … “Shia Muslims from the UK” … “many Iraqis” … a Muslim can, it seems, be all things to all men.  But further down the article we learn that:-

Mr Khoei believes Iraq’s recent security problems have put Shia Muslims off and “numbers have dropped.”

“But last year I was there and saw quite a lot of foreign pilgrims, including some from the UK,” he said.

Not Iraqi then, but foreign.  Whoops, no … because next we have:-

He said there were UK-based travel companies offering tours of religious sites, but believed most now travelled in community groups or independently.

Mohammed Bhojani, a member of the Muslim Council of Britain’s community working committee, believes UK-based Shia Muslims who visited mainly took tours from Dubai, Kuwait or Jordan.

So, merely “UK-based” - that sounds like a remarkably frank admission - but still, apparently, “foreign”.  How can this be?  How can my vibrant and, of course, equally British fellow-Britons possibly be only UK-based and yet foreign to Iraq?  I don’t understand.  Surely, the passport decides all these matters with absolute finality.  Amazing things, passports.  A bit of ink on a few scraps of paper … but quite sufficient to make any of the dead, disgraceful Theo’s goat-fuckers my five-minute fellow-countrymen.

No, be serious.  This is terrible.  The fate of the entire multicultural future may hinge on this single moment of multicultural vacillation.  But never fear, multiculturalists.  The day is saved by the BBC’s trusty Middle East analyst, Roger Hardy, who is on hand to set the keffiyeh straight:-

“The killing of British Shia pilgrims, as they were returning to Baghdad from the holy cities, suggests militants may regard all Shia as targets, whether Iraqi or non-Iraqi.”

So, unequivocally “British” and “non-Iraqi”.  Phew, what a relief that a non-Iraqi, non-Shia though quite possibly non-UK-based Englishman from, one must suppose, the UK was able to clear that up.

All this does, of course, leave me wondering what on earth is the meaning of the fifteen centuries of “UK residency” implied by my father’s family name and the nine by my mother’s.  Then, I am bound to point out, there was the thirty times he set course with 13,000 lbs of high explosive strapped to his arse … and the hundreds of hours she spent toiling over the whirring electronic delights of Bletchley Park.  But I am absolutely confident that the, of course, British, non-Iraqi and in no way merely UK-based Shias’ answer to that is: nothing.  Not a bloody thing.

I just do not accept it.  That’s the problem.  And it isn’t going to go away.