Piddington’s Migrant Camp Fight: Enter the Newts

Perhaps you’ve heard of the troubles besetting the perfectly named English town of Piddington, in Oxfordshire. The townsfolk number about 350 — which, in American terms, would be the 4 a.m. Sunday population of a Buc-ee’s. Recently, they were a bit alarmed to learn that 1,250 “migrants” — Middle Eastern men who trek to the tip of France then decide the grass to which they are entitled must be greener on the other side of the Channel — are about to be deposited in an unused military barracks in their neighborhood. The womenfolk were wondering about the possible safety impact of having men from cultures in which the sovereignty of shameless Western females was not held in automatic respect. They were not mollified by the idea that the government would make the migrants sit through video sessions in which they’d be instructed not to rape anyone. The locals’ objections, of course, strike right-thinking people — which is to say, left-thinkers — as unmitigated Islamophobia, a dereliction of humanitarian ideals. One is simply not allowed to wish that the character of one’s peaceable hamlet not be changed irrevocably by the introduction of a tenfold influx of another culture.

And so the locals held to vote to secede from the U.K. in protest, and the referendum passed with greater than 90 percent approval. If allowed to proceed, they would be a state so tiny that it would make Monaco look like Brazil. But of course, they will not be allowed.

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James Lileks

James Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com.

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Perhaps you’ve heard of the troubles besetting the perfectly named English town of Piddington, in Oxfordshire. The townsfolk number about 350 — which, in American terms, would be the 4 a.m. Sunday population of a Buc-ee’s. Recently, they were a bit alarmed to learn that 1,250 “migrants” — Middle Eastern men who trek to the tip of France then decide the grass to which they are entitled must be greener on the other side of the Channel — are about to be deposited in an unused military barracks in their neighborhood. The womenfolk were wondering about the possible safety impact of having men from cultures in which the sovereignty of shameless Western females was not held in automatic respect. They were not mollified by the idea that the government would make the migrants sit through video sessions in which they’d be instructed not to rape anyone. The locals’ objections, of course, strike right-thinking people — which is to say, left-thinkers — as unmitigated Islamophobia, a dereliction of humanitarian ideals. One is simply not allowed to wish that the character of one’s peaceable hamlet not be changed irrevocably by the introduction of a tenfold influx of another culture.

And so the locals held to vote to secede from the U.K. in protest, and the referendum passed with greater than 90 percent approval. If allowed to proceed, they would be a state so tiny that it would make Monaco look like Brazil. But of course, they will not be allowed.