Black Watch

As Len Deighton somewhere points out (I don't recall whether he was quoting), when Britain stood alone in 1940 it stood on the shoulders of several hundred million Asians. At the time, this doing of a British job by non-British workers raised few patriotic concerns; partly because there were more immediate problems at hand, and partly because the Greatest Ever Number One Briton Ever, Winston Churchill, was busily mortgaging the country to the Americans. However, now that we are engaged in a generational conflict of civilisations, the Ministry for War and the Colonies Including Scotland is expressing some concern about the number of wogs in the armed forces. Some senior officers are apparently worried that the army "could be seen as employing too many 'mercenaries'", there being no distinction in the military mind between a civilian contractor and a recruit of a certain shade. They are also apparently keen to ensure that the army should reflect British "norms and values". The number of soldiers from Commonwealth countries has increased from less than half of one per cent in 1998 to 6.7 per cent last year; and if present trends continue, the proportion of pure-bred Britishness in the army could be as little as ninety per cent by the time they are needed to impose martial law on whatever chaos ensues from the 2012 Olympics.