Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Muslims, Mosques and Mosquitoes

The British author Paul Weston steps in again with a guest-essay on the much-debated question of how many Muslims actually live in Britain.

Muslims, Mosques and Mosquitoes
by Paul Weston

Although the population of Great Britain is reputed to consist of only sixty million people, a recent Independent newspaper article argued there may well be up to eighty million inhabitants of this poor benighted island, and as the Muslim population is expanding at ten times the rate of the demographically dying post-Christian population, one can only reasonably conclude that a good percentage of these possible extra twenty million bodies are of Islamic descent.

There is no particular reason to disregard such a possibility just because it is not of mainstream acceptance. The number of Sharia courts operating in Britain was thought to be only five until yesterday, which proved to be yet another naïve and delusional liberal hope shattered by the news that there are actually eighty-five Sharia courts sitting in Britain, a seventeen-fold increase on received opinion. One is almost tempted to note that Sharia courts are expanding like mosquitoes, but perhaps that would be a little dangerous in the modern Western world, so I will refrain from saying so.

When Mark Steyn attracted the attention of the Canadian Thought Police by relaying in print the words of Mullah Krekar… “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes” his utilisation of another man’s words led directly to his hate speech trial as the authorities reflexively tried to censor out any semblance of truth as to the real number of Muslims in Europe.

UK Immigration

Comparing the reproductive proclivity of Muslims with mosquitoes is to make a rather distasteful association and not one that sits easily with the average European, his or her mind filled with notions of oppression, prejudice and general Western ne’er do well, unlike the good Mullah who presumably has no such mental shackles. But although Mr Krekar is a member of a faith not universally known for its contribution to stand up comedy, was his linking of Muslims and mosquitoes not perhaps subconsciously drawn from an old sketch by Peter Cook and John Cleese, in which Cook took it upon himself to inform Cleese of an interesting fact?

PETER COOK: The grasshopper is an interesting creature… up and down and up it goes, all over arable land. That’s land that’s actually tilled by Arabs. You see the interesting fact about your Arab is that he can live for a whole year on one grain of rice.
JOHN CLEESE: What rubbish! One year on one grain of rice!
PETER COOK: Sorry, sorry. It’s the mosquito that can live for a whole year on one grain of rice… I get those two muddled up because they’re next to each other in the dictionary.
JOHN CLEESE: What are?
PETER COOK: Mosquitoes and mosques…

But levity aside, and God knows we need it, as an apparent 40% of British Muslims wish to see Sharia law enacted in the traditionally Judeo-Christian country they were so affably invited to reside within, it becomes important to know what their numbers are. Relying on our ruling elites to honestly inform us of such pertinent facts is perhaps asking too much, but let us take a stab in that general direction.
- - - - - - - - -
In 2001, the BBC released a report, stating there were 1.6 million Muslims in Great Britain, equating to some 2.8% of the population.

In 2008, Jacqui Smith, Britain’s masochistically implausible and as such sadly missed Home Secretary disclosed there were 2 million Muslims enjoying the advantages of British democracy.

By 2009, The Times newspaper reported the numbers had surged to 2.4 million, or 4.5% of the population.

The Economist magazine agreed with the figures from the Times survey, but broke down the overall percentage into differing age groups, within which the Muslim population of 0-4 year olds now numbers close to 10%.

Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund has little time for such surveys; his personal viewpoint being there are at least four million Muslims living in Britain, which is certainly a more believable figure given the puzzlingly disproportionate clout Islam currently exerts over British authorities, not to mention the confusion surrounding official statistics.

Suppose though, that all the above are mistaken, and Britain’s Muslim population is far higher than anyone has yet to admit?

Such a scenario is more probable than improbable. Were Britain an Eastern bloc country circa 1975 then it would know exactly how many people entered and exited its borders over any given time scale, but the truth in Britain of 2009 is that no one has the faintest idea who comes in and who leaves.

A recent Daily Telegraph article tells us of a gang of illegal immigrants running one of the biggest visa scams in Britain. The ringleader by name of Jatinder Sharma was accused of submitting visa applications based on thousands of forged documents to the British Home Office all of which were rubber stamped by the equal opportunity officials with nary a backward glance, although one assumes they were scanned assiduously for that dirty word “Gurkha.”

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) was rebuked last year for hosting a Christmas party where the invitations consisted of mocked up visas inside fake British passports, a Home Office jape which unfortunately coincided with news that 300,000 immigrants had been processed by said UK Border Agency that year, and for many other years, with obviously fraudulent paperwork because to deny them entry meant increased form filling.

UK immigration employees

Not that this is much of a surprise. The UK Border Agency lacks sufficient staff, particularly lean men of substance, to ensure complete surveillance of our borders, especially so over weekends and national holidays when quite unbelievably they have been told not to arrest anybody — so, a little tip to any ambitious Afghans, striving Somalis or peripatetic Pakistanis without the correct paperwork is to turn yourself in to the authorities on a Saturday afternoon when Manchester United is playing Chelsea. In wintertime. When it is raining — at dusk.

What is something of a surprise, however, is who partially co-sponsored the £140,000 UK Border Agency Christmas knees-up, fake visa invitations included. Step forward Clear Springs Property Management and The Angel Group, two privately run organisations who make millions from the British government by housing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, not always in accommodation fit for human habitation.

In 2003, Julia Davey, the owner of The Angel Group, collected almost 1.5 million pounds in salary and dividends. Nice work if you can get it, but try getting it without having a “friend” in the higher echelons of government. In Davey’s case her name has allegedly been mentioned in association with an ex-Home Secretary and ex-Communist sympathiser (take your pick as regards the name, it could be one of four and the short straw wins) always useful if you want to enrich yourself at the expense of the British taxpayer whilst reaping the 90% Labour voting pattern of third world immigrants even as you destroy your own country.

Britain is out-Mecca-ing Mecca as a destination for Muslim students from Pakistan, who come to the UK on fraudulent study visas all the time. A few months ago Britain had 15,000 schools and colleges open to non-EU students, the majority of which appear to have been used as a major conduit in the trafficking and promotion of Islamic extremism and terrorism within our borders. Of the twelve Muslim terror suspects arrested in April 2009, ten were here on student visas.

The vast majority of these “students” are not interviewed by the Home Office, nor are they interviewed by the British High Commission in Pakistan where security threats are now so high that officials, nationality unknown, vet potential students over the phone in… Abu Dhabi! Perhaps if we were slightly more stringent we would never have allowed Dhiren Barot, often quoted as Osama Bin Laden’s second in command in Europe, to study at Brunel University on forged identification documents.

This has led to a serious rise in extremism on university campuses, where one in three Muslim students think it is acceptable to kill in the name of Islam. Some forty-eight universities have been infiltrated, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and the London School of Economics, yet many of those with a student visa obtained in Pakistan do not even bother to attend college. They arrive in Britain and simply disappear. At the time of writing it is not legally necessary for the educational institutions to notify the authorities that Mustafa Bint or Justada Kamel had been granted a visa but subsequently gone AWOL.

The Yorkshire Post points out that 10,000 non-EU students failed to attend local universities over the last three years. One faculty in Manchester claimed to have more than one hundred students whilst foolishly providing only two desks, and an international college in London with links to Pakistani businessmen is alleged to have made five million pounds by selling 2,500 forged visas.

In March 2009 a new ruling decreed the 15,000 educational establishments must be registered with a government authority. To date, only 10% have done so, out of which a quarter were rejected. Ninety percent of them have simply evaporated. How many students passed through nobody knows and just in case you were thinking that good old Britain has started to get its act together, I should point out that the government authority in question is none other than the UK Border Agency, who admit they cannot track non-student students until they have fixed their computer systems, a not inconsequential matter they predict will take place in 2010. Possibly.

How many other people come in? Again, no one really knows. British MP Ann Cryer, who represents Keighley, a town near Bradford, estimates that 1 million Pakistanis came to Britain over the last four years to work, study or marry, with imported wives making up 80% of all marriages in her area.

If one wishes to wage demographic warfare against a benevolent and naïve country, polygamy is really the way to go. One man has four wives, aka baby machines, each of whom produces five children, all twenty-five one of whom (father, wives and children) will be financially maintained by the British Government, even though polygamy is illegal in Britain.

Such insanity goes some way toward explaining why only two out of three babies born in Britain today are classified as white British, with twenty percent of mothers being first generation immigrants and a further twenty five percent of mothers being second or third generation immigrants. In London, for the first time in history, white school children now enter their first year as an ethnic minority (pdf).

Now clearly, not all non-white births are to Muslim parents, but such figures make a mockery of the average middle-class assumption that indigenous Brits make up ninety percent of the population, and the Johnny foreigner-come-latelys only ten percent. Indeed, one million people from Pakistan alone over four years alone is an astonishing figure, even assuming the real figure is not considerably higher.

When Eastern European countries joined the EU, our wonderfully prescient government predicted a mere seventeen thousand people would venture west. That figure is closer to two million of course, at the very least, and Migration Watch UK tells us that nine out of ten recent immigrants are of non-European heritage, which effectively means an additional eighteen-million non-EU immigrants our government chooses not to tell us about.

Going back to the Independent article written by Martin Baker, one is struck by his persuasive simplicity. The people he cites in his argument that an extra 20 million people reside on our small, damp and wind swept island are not gimlet bespectacled micro-statisticians getting everything wrong in the backrooms of failing banks whilst in the possession of petroleum-based shirts, wide-soled shoes and the entire DVD content of Star Trek, but national food producers and chairmen of supermarket conglomerates, who tell us with brutal honesty that the Britain of 60 million people simply cannot consume so many calories without turning into Little Rock, Arkansas.

This extra 20 million people is borne out by the National Insurance numbers issued in Britain, which outnumber eligible British citizens by 29 million. As it is impossible to obtain welfare benefits without NI numbers, they thus become a matter of vital importance to the forty percent of British Muslims who devote ceaseless time, energy and self-sacrifice into remaining resolutely unemployed, although, to be fair, providing for four wives and twenty-five children is probably beyond the financial means of Warren Buffet, let alone Sammy Achmed, late of Waziristan, occupation goatherd. Abu “Old Hooky” Hamza, for example, received almost £5,000 per month, to finance his half a million pound house, his current wife, and her seven children, and of course he received this from the very British government he seeks to overthrow. Dear God, please tell me this cannot really be happening.

One does not need to read — or more pertinently to read between the lines of — official statistics to gain a picture of reality. There are vast areas of Britain that have been physically transformed into the East in a blink of an eye. Although one sees very few veiled ladies on the streets in my area, which unlike many parts of modern Britain is 80% indigenous, a continental shift occurs the moments one sets foot into the maternity ward of the local hospital, which more resembles Islamabad than Isleworth.

No one from the British government will refute this. They will call you a racist for raising the issue even as they admit the last twelve years has seen an influx of non-EU immigration twenty-five times higher than ever before and even as they cheerfully admit a la Hazel Blears that Britain has become an immigration madhouse in which no one has the faintest idea who is here and who is not. We don’t even really know how many indigenous Brits are emigrating. Official reports suggest 1,000 per day, but this could be far higher given the misery that currently exists in Britain, particularly England, coupled with the fact that ALL official figures are just guesstimates, ALL of which have historically proven to be not just inaccurate but as wrong as wrong can be.

Is it racist and xenophobic to raise this issue? I am sure many people will think it is, but they should be aware that the huge number of Pakistani Muslims who came here over the last few years come from a country where only 19% of people have a negative view of al- Qaeda, and by default the Taliban, and where 75% wish to see Sharia law implemented. Or in other words, out of every five Pakistanis entering Britain, four of them statistically wish to overthrow us.

Although British and Western liberals may decry this, it is not a view shared by Islamic extremists, who view such ridiculously naïve people as Lenin once viewed his very own Western useful idiots. Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca, Medina and Mohammed has not spent 90 billion dollars entrenching Islam in Europe in order to achieve peaceful co-existence. They can do this far less expensively by just selling us oil and leaving us be, but that is not their agenda simply because it was not Mohammed’s agenda.



Libyan president Mommar Ghadaffi added for good measure:


Paul Goodman, the Conservative shadow minister for “community cohesion” representing High Wycombe, an area historically known only as a stockbroker belt due to its close proximity to London, has stated that his constituency will be 25% Muslim within the next fourteen years. Any English readers who are familiar with High Wycombe will tell you that if such an area is being Islamified then quite frankly, it is all over. Or yet to begin.

In conclusion, we don’t really know how many Muslims there are in Britain. The accepted number is 2.4 million, but our government which hates traditional England constantly lies to us, and based on all the above, the true number of Muslims in Britain it could just as well be anywhere between five and fifteen million, which means ten million to thirty million within one generation, which means the end of Britain as a liberal democracy.

I am not surprised that the British Government wishes to cover such appalling realities up. If the truth were known it is hard to believe even the docile British people would not take to the streets. Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking.


Tuan Jim said...

Great stuff overall, but I didn't get that "Little Rock, Arkansas" jab at all. Was it supposed to be a clever joke about obese southern white trash or is it more subtle than that?

Independent Accountant said...

Sounds like Mexicans in the US.

Czechmade said...

It is strange UK cannot control its see borders. Germany has in spite of Schengen three zones behind our common border to check foreigners suddenly appearing on their side.

Cars are checked without any given reason, not on the border, more in the interior.
They involve or pay also local population to give them tips. And taxi drivers "unknowingly" transporting foreigners got real troubles ( a nice trick to avoid traffickers with their own cars).

Graham Dawson (Archonix) said...

It's not so strange. We have no history if interior identity checks and until the mid 20th century we were able to rely on border controls and a strict immigration policy to keep out most of our problems. Of course, after the war, the new labour government decided to import a vast number of foreign workers ostensibly to help rebuild the country, but with the added bonus of depressing wages to the point where it was much easier to sell their socialist agenda - and then we subsequenty joined the EEC and started opening up our borders to all and sundry.

We have this ancient right that a man may travel unmolested within the borders of this country. It's a very ingrained right, one that lies behind nearly all of the opposition to national identity documents. It worked when the border was properly controlled. It fails now beause the border isn't controlled - because we're being forced to adopt a foreiogn method of border control that assumes long, uncontrollable stretches of remote borders where we were able to bottle-neck everyone into a few entry points with relative ease. That's why we're having so much trouble sealing our borders and pursuing the criminal element taking advantage of our current weakness. If we were allowed to function in the way we had functioned up to the early 20th century we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

But that way was waycist, so we can't do it lest we get shouted at by anti-fascists.

Czechmade said...

The three zones behind the German border are very new - few years. It is not much discussed, but it is quite tough.

But the east of Bavaria or Saxony has no immigrants - it is easy to check non-European strangers.

Wakefield Tolbert said...


Paul Weston said...

@ Tuan Jim

I am afraid to say there was no higher or rareified inference apropos Arkansas.

I merely implied that the inhabitants of Little Rock were less than svelte based on a visit a few years ago, when I was struck by the puzzling conundrum of astonishing girths contained within thin skins.

As to the white trash you mention, I tend not to mix in such circles. Most of the astonishingly rotund friends I have in Little Rock are solidly middle class.

gatesofvienna said...

1979 Saudi Aramco World....

Stats for 1979 Europe!

Muslims in Europe

The Presence

Written by John Lawton
Photographed by Tor Eigeland

Islam, today, is the second largest religion in Europe; and Muslims - more than five million in 1978 - now make up 40 percent of the Common Market's foreign workforce

As a result, says Azzam, "the West has generally known Islam as an enemy and a threat."

In an effort to build new bridges of knowledge and cooperation between the Muslim world and the predominantly Christian West,

When the mass migration of foreign workers into Western Europe first began in the 1960's, most Europeans assumed that "guest workers" would stay for a few years and then take their savings home.

But as the total of foreign workers reached 12 million - nearly five percent of the EEC's total population - the problems could no longer be dismissed as temporary or minor.

The problem worsened in the 1970'. The result, particularly in urban areas, was tension. As The Economist in Britain put it: "Xenophobia in Europe is rising."

In West Berlin, for example, the Standing Conference of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Europe has warned that if Christians and Muslims do not learn to live together there could be trouble.

Some countries, certainly, have already taken steps to alleviate problems. Belgium and Austria, for example, now officially recognize Islam as a religion. But the bulk of Europe's Muslims do not live in Belgium and Austria. Of a total of 5.4 million, 1.9 million live in France, 1.5 million in West Germany, 1 million in Britain, 500,000 in Italy, 350,000 in the Benelux countries, 40,000 in Scandinavia, 25,000 in Spain and some 5,000 each in Austria, Portugal and Switzerland.

"Islam is not simply a religion in a limited sense of the word," said Khur-shid Ahmad, now Deputy Minister of Planning in Pakistan. "It is a complete way of life. It fashions the social attitude and behavior patterns of its adherents: their food, dress, marriage and family life and social relations..."

Muslim efforts to achieve legal, religious and political equality with Europeans are complicated and often bring them into conflict with established customs and laws.

Progress, nevertheless, is being made. By a special Act of Parliament on July 19, 1974, Belgium recognized Islamic law; the Common Market Commission has recommended that immigrants' political rights should be extended; and a special parliamentary committee has been set up in Britain to study such Muslim demands as allotment of government land for construction of mosques and recognition of Islamic holidays for Muslim workers.

Some Muslims in Europe, however, feel that in view of the large amounts of money they are sending home - in 1977, Pakistan's second largest source of foreign exchange - the equivalent of about $450 million. Turkey also depends heavily upon the money its workers abroad send home; the total in 1976 was $982 million, about half the value of Turkey's exports.

This article appeared on pages 3-8 of the January/February 1979 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.


Check the Public Affairs Digital Image Archive for January/February 1979 images.

Not only did the Independent quote the stats of 80 million plus population in October 2007 but so did Radio 4s farming today programme,2008
I wrote to migration watch- was ignored.
Wrote to optimum population trust-they replied saying that they must use official stats.

Grant said...

An otherwise very interesting and enlightening article ruined by an unnecessary jibe at Americans "based on a visit a few years ago".

Why is it that most every otherwise intelligent comment made by a Brit has to have an obligatory comment on the United States because they have an aunt in Nebraska, or once visited Miami?

And, Independent Accountant, the situation in Europe is nothing "like Mexicans in the US".

The Mexican people are, by and large, Christian, with the same traditional values held by the American people and western Europeans. They arrive in the US to work, not to overthrow the United States government or their way of life. They want to participate.

British commentators would have far more credibility if they refrained from mentioning the US at all, unless the subject is the US, and stuck to the subject at hand. Those on this side of the Atlantic might question whether your knowledge of the Muslim situation is as informed as your opinions on life in America.

These are unnecessary diversions and distractions, and only serve to alienate those Americans who might otherwise share in, what should be, a common cause.

Paul Weston said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paul Weston said...

Dear Grant

Firstly, I must apologise. You sound genuinely aggrieved, which is an emotion I hope never to arouse in an American.

I do try to write with a degree of wit, if only to unburden myself of the sheer misery that a little knowledge of these peculiar times we live in brings with it.

I appreciate though, that what amuses me does not necessarily amuse others. When Bill Clinton was elected President I questioned the responsibility of the US electorate in supporting any man whose political teeth were cut in Arkansas, a not unreasonable premise subsequently validated.

We now move to a new President whose teeth were cut in the corrupt political machinations of Chicago, so perhaps I should drop Little Rock for Chicago.

I am "well up to speed" as I believe you Yanks call it, in keeping abreast of American political.

I am something of a "Yankophile". I believe America has been a force for the good since ravaged Britain gave up the reins of global influence. I much admire the freedom of speech guaranteed by your constitution and personified by Rush Limbaugh, Denis Prager and countless others, along with Aristotelian Gods of wisdom such as Thomas Sowell. In Britain, and indeed in Europe, we sorely lack such quality.

I also believe Europe has adopted its decadent death spiral even as Uncle Sam's militarily sacrifice afforded us the post WW11 freedom to build a better society.

If the Western world has any future it will be because of adult America rather than childlike and spoiled Britain.

I cringe in comedy clubs with the inevitable anti-US and anti-Bush jokes, uttered by ignorant adolescents who fail to realise that without America we would have become part of the Third Reich or part of global Communism.

I hope this mollifies your opinion somewhat.

NB: The geographical area of Britain suffering from Arkansas style jibes is Essex. They are not particularly corpulent, which one must admit is not a statement that could be made in all honesty with regard to Little Rock, but they are known for their uncouth and vulgar behaviour.

My favourite joke is:

"How do you turn off an Essex girl's bedroom light?"


"Close the car door"

I wish you and America only the very best.

Yours Sincerely

Paul Weston

Grant said...

I thank you for your response, Paul, but I'm a Canadian, not a "Yank", and I tend to defend my American neighbours. I feel they'd certainly defend us under similar circumstances.

It's quite different for a Brit to critisize the people of Essex than for an American or Canadian to do it. In fact we wouldn't.

You do write with wit, clarity and insight but referring to overweight people in Arkansas lacks any of that.

I feel the same way about the Muslim problem as you, as well as sharing your deep concerns about Barrak Obama, his background, and America's future (and thus ours) under his Presidency.

I suppose what I'm saying is that it is the time democracies stuck together and I don't see that happening. Instead I see a continuous drift apart, which doesn't bode well for our collective futures. or for peoples everywhere. The Americans have become too aware of the insults they're receiving from the Western Europeans and those who care should try to put a stop to it.

These gratutitous insults against any part of the American people is taken as an insult against all, just as it would be if foreigners were to laugh at the people of Essex. You might make jokes about them but that's quite different.

I don't like to quibble about a small item in an otherwise excellent article but feel we should all give further thought before we insult each other. Let's continue to focus on where the real problems lie.

Thanks again,


gormo said...

Grant, jeez, stop. Can't you see how you've been sucked into the PC world? Why are you offended by Paul's crack about corpulent Arkansans. It's true! We Americans are fat, and unfortunately the working ones are a bit too happy as well. Your HRC's and PC police are so ubiquitous, that you don't even see how silly being insulted (for us) is. Paul's response plays right up to your agrieved tender molson drinking, "Eh" saying soul. Now if THAT truly offends you, I would say it pales in comparison to a large chunk of the world's population screaming "death to America, Britain, Canada...whatever it is we are shouting death to today, which incidentally is a work day, but ya know, Alah calls, and who can find time to....." Sorry, I know there's a word limit here.
Most Americans love Canuks and Brits, even though the former likes hockey and the latter speaks our language funny. Let's get the average Joe (Pierre?) to stop worrying about global warming (sorry, gettin colder so its now global climate change), and start worrying about the ubiquitous mosques springing up everywhere. And lets be okay with insulting EVERYONE. Fact is, if you and I can't make fun of each other, who can we make fun of?

Grant said...

"Grant, jeez, stop"

I did stop, Gormo, after I figured my point was made.

"Why are you offended by Paul's crack about corpulent Arkansans".

Because, as we are seeing, it distracts from the otherwise excellent points he's making. It's unnecessary and out of place.

I realize it pales before other world problems but while we're discussing serious concerns why also mention that many residents of Little Rock are overweight? So are many in Moscow and, I understand, it's becoming a problem in the UK also.

How sensible is it when writing of those chanting "Death to America", or concerns of global cooling (or warming) to mention that the people of Little Rock are fat?

But as it is, Dipstick, you feel we can insult each other and a lardass like yourself might feel its a good idea. I don't.

And I didn't enjoy insulting you in that last paragraph, perhaps because it was absolutely insincere and meant only to make a point. I'll apologize for saying them anyway, because we Canadians are so damned nice. Cheers!

GJ Tryon said...

Britons, know this: Islam's deluge comes not from its own force but from your vacuum. You forsook your own faith, work ethic and families, so reap the whirlwind. Your new anthem: Fool, Britannia, Britannia fool of the migrant waves; "Britain is he-he-he-he-he-headed for the caves!" (The quote is from the Shah of Iran circa 1979)

rerevisionist said...

Dear Paul Weston--

A very effective and convincing presentation. It deserves wide ciculation.

At the back of my mind is the BNP's mailshot 'Racism Cuts Both Ways' and their new 'Bring Our Boys Home' leaflet. The printing and postage - to selected 'opinion former' types taken from addresses of business, media, Times readers, even some church types - is an expensive business.

I wondered if anyone has a list of email addresses of such people? I know most will just delete messages, after the fashipn of chucking leaflets in waste paper baskets; but relatively speaking it's free. It could be a new way to get messages into distribution.

Just a thought. Messages would have to be in the body of the Email, as probbaly most people wouldn't open an attachment.

rerevisionist said...

Can I support Graham Dawson's comment on border controls - we had no real need for them, so they aren't there. (This may not be 100% true - before the Union, I take it Scots, Welsh, and English may have been viewed as aliens to each other; and there must have been some sort of border as 'reivers' indicate).

But in addition, there's the issue of ownership. Some countries (e.g. Mexico, France Germany) don't allow foreign ownership of certain assets. But, as with borders, we have no analogous history. Assets were either state controlled (e.g. king's dockyards) or owned by people who, simply because of the difficulty of travel, were local. The exception is the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, but the Reformation is remote enough to hardly count as a memory. Only in the 19th century did this change....