No man is an island - Monocolumn | Monocle

Monocolumn

A daily bulletin of news & opinion

17 May 2012

Hello, Britain here. We’re very much looking forward to welcoming you to our lovely home this summer. We’re hosting the Olympics and the whole world is invited.

It’s possible you might have a bit of bother coming in at Heathrow but don’t worry, queuing is part of the British experience – might as well get used to it. Not that we want you to get too comfortable here though, because – without being too rude about it – we would prefer it if you left once all the running and jumping is over.

You see, while we might send our ministers to far off places to talk about how Britain is open for business and how keen we are for you all to come here and invest and whatnot, we have this policy of reducing the number of foreigners coming here. So feel free to bring your money but maybe you could watch it grow from afar. Afraid that goes for you students too.

We also rather like it when you come over here and spend your money at our universities, thus enabling us to afford to educate our own students as well as adding to the general pool of talent which our world-class pharmaceutical and technology companies can utilise. But you know how it is, the Daily Mail doesn’t really like immigrants. Sorry about that.

Of course, if you do choose to invest here your money really will grow. I know our ministers keep banging on about how terrible the economy is and how we’ve got no money left but you really shouldn’t listen to that, they don’t really mean it.

By the way, have we told you yet how “Britain is Great”? It really is, we’ve made big posters saying how great we are and put them up all over the world. I know our prime minister might have campaigned by going on about how Britain is broken but it’s got a lot better since then.

Of course there were the riots last year and our prime minister said that parts of our society were sick, but between you and me that was only meant as a bit of politics for the domestic audience. To be honest you weren’t even supposed to hear that one either.

So, to sum up. Please come. Please give us your money. Please don’t listen to anything we say when we’re talking to ourselves. And do please bugger off soon.

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