It would mean going short for a few weeks, while we drift through shark-infested seas on a rickety trawler held together with staples surrounded by our own shit and vomit and groaning from dysentery, but the extra 90 quid a month wouldn’t ‘alf come in handy.”To which she’ll reply “I’m sure you’re right, dear” – as anything else would render her liable to be stoned to death for being too lippy.But the tone of the Australians is similar to that of most Western countries. The British Government has just decided to maintain the system that denies cash benefits to asylum-seekers, granting them vouchers instead because, as yesterday’s Daily Mail gleefully reported, “scrapping vouchers would encourage more asylum-seekers”.Because once word got round in Kabul that refugees were entitled to cash, Britain would seem like a game show beaming at you to come on and try to win 56 whole pounds. Afghans would be running through the mosque gulping vodka and baring their arses in the hope that the Taliban might chop off an arm so that they could cling to the bottom of a Eurostar train with their remaining fingers and frolic amid the nightlife of Margate.Now they are taking seriously the call to deny jobs to foreigners who can’t speak English, an idea first mooted by Labour MP Ann Cryer. Just as the English never fail to master our hosts’ language before we set foot in another country.

If a group of English tourists are in Rome and one of the party, having listened to an Italian speaking fluent English, says “Oh well, arriva derci then”, the others will say: “Oooo, aren’t you clever? Where did you pick that up?”The language test would be fair enough, if they were allowed to employ English methods of speaking to foreigners. Then asylum-seekers could go up to a stranger in Canterbury and yell “Which way is the Post Office? I said WHICH WAY IS THE POST OFFICE? THE POST OFFICE. YOU KNOW, THE POST OFFICE, PO-ST-OF -ICE.” And all in fluent Arabic.Then they would have to throw their arms in the air and tut loudly before miming licking a stamp, and finally declare that this old dear was obviously typical as she didn’t speak a word of bloody Arabic.For the English could be in the middle of the rainforest in Borneo, come across a remote ancient tribe sitting in a clearing and ask: “Excuse me mate, you don’t happen to know if there’s a cashpoint anywhere round here, is there?”Like the reaction to the poor sods on board that boat, there is a complete lack of logic in the language theory. It’s not that all those who support it are racist, but they surrender to the racists. So now Britain gets rebuked on almost a weekly basis by bodies such as the United Nations for breaking international laws and standards on refugees.

But the Government behaves like the hard kid returning from a caning in the headmaster’s office, proudly smirking that his beating proves his toughness.Then, however draconian their plan, they claim that it’s to ensure healthy race relations. You can’t help thinking that if the current leaders of Western governments had been in charge of Nazi Germany, they’d have made a statement that went: “There’s nothing anti-Semitic about our plans. We’re only gassing these ones to allay the fears of the German people, and to ensure a healthy prosperous climate for the genuine Jews that are left.”
More from Mark Steel. Every day this week I am bringing you a complete holiday novel for those moments on the beach when you don’t want a blockbuster, just an 800-word novel to fill in three minutes.

So far we have had a thriller, a comedy and a marriage drama, so I thought today we might venture into more modern and controversial territory, with a complete interactive novel! What this means is that YOU are the hero of the novel and at certain points YOU will have to choose the right option before you can carry on. OK? Then let’s have our interactive novel: Old Boys Never Die..!Your name is Thomas Ellis. You are a young man of about 30, unmarried, unattached, who left school in 1988 and never went to university. At school you specialised in three subjects: physics, biology and chemistry.
Now, a dozen years after leaving school, you are one of the following:1 A top physician.2 A top physicist.3 A top biologist.4.