London, Britain, and democracy
It takes five years to be eligible to become a British citizen - of which over a year (450 days to be precise) can have been spent outside Britain. Even under the best of circumstances, it is not obvious that this makes you British. Living in London, even less so. As an immigrant, you will likely live among immigrants. The British citizens you have close contact with will often be other immigrants who have acquired British citizenship by "naturalization" living among fellow immigrants. The logic of naturalization is presumably that you acquire to some extent the culture of those you live among.By this logic, is it more likely in London that a foreigner will be naturalized British, or that an Englishman will be naturalized as a foreigner? Perhaps the most important behaviour in a democracy is one's attitude to democracy and to the democracy. As far as the democracy is concerned, London's attitude is much the opposite of England's: the London idea is that the ...