Sometimes you forget that the large majority of people in Britain read the rightwing tabloids and broadsheets. Coming from Scotland, which votes lefter than England, and working in education and to a lesser extent media, most of the people I meet are moderately leftish. Goes with the territory. Of course amongst people my age I know several Tories - I used to live in Aberdeen which is a prosperous engineer's town, not always sympathetic to redistributive urges- but I always feel that it's just a lack of imagination on their part. It's like they feel "I am successful, hence: a. So can anyone, and b. I shouldn't have to give up any of my hard-earned to help those less fortunate than I". Maybe this is a gross misconstruction on my part... but maybe not.

So today I was on the subway talking to one of the summer teachers, whom I'll call Jane (not her real name). She's a pretty young home counties type who'd come over to China for two months to get some teaching experience, having recently graduated. We were talking about my trials and tribulations in getting a British visa for my wife (who's Chinese), and Jane said, "I mean it's ridiculous, when you think about all the immigrants coming to Britain and taking our jobs and getting free housing."

I was flabbergasted. Here's someone who is intelligent (having done a degree in psychology), but had swallowed the BNP/tabloid/Tory lies hook, line and sinker. I responded by saying something like, "They're not our jobs; they're on the open market and whoever is the right candidate should get it." She didn't look convinced. 25 years of ingesting EEC/EC/EU suspicion, foreigner-phobia and lies about asylum seekers, Muslims and whoever the hate target of the month is will do that to you.

I didn't mention the fact that she was an immigrant in a foreign land herself.