AMANDA PLATELL: The Postie who's truly talking my language

Updated: 16:56 EST, 20 March 2009

In this oh-so-politically correct climate, it takes real courage for a small businessman to stand up and refuse to serve customers if they will not speak English.

And how ironic that the only reason Deva Kumarasiri is able to make such a stand at all is that he is an immigrant who left Sri Lanka 17 years ago to start a new life in what he still regards as ‘the best country in the world’.

If a white shopkeeper had refused to serve non-English speakers, they would have been charged by the police with inciting race hatred.

But the plucky postmaster in inner-city Nottingham says neither a fear of being branded racist, nor intimidation from his landlord, will stop him from fighting for those things that are intrinsically British — not least, our language.

As he says in an interview for this paper today: ‘All I’m doing is telling people if they want to live in Britain, be British. Don’t boo our soldiers.

Don’t live without embracing our culture. Don’t stay here without making any effort to learn the language. And if you don’t want to be British, go home.’

It’s a sentiment shared by a vast number of Britons who have silently seethed as PC zelaots have condemned any form of patriotism as ‘racist’ while handing out thousands of pounds in benefits to fanatics who hate everything Britain stands for.

So much unrest now stems from this Government’s uncontrolled, and now uncontrollable, immigration explosion. The knock-on effects in education are already being felt, with English now a second language for one in seven pupils. In London that figure is one in three.

One in three! How on earth can teachers cope with such language barriers? And what damage is all this inflicting upon British-born children - whatever their skin colour?

How, indeed, do you protect a nation’s cohesion and culture at all when it is not bound by a common language?

The statistics speak for themselves: a report this week revealed that 11-year-old, white, working-class boys are now under-performing when compared with all the other groups, including ethnic minority pupils, in - you guessed it - English.

It isn’t racist to say that while immigration has benefited Britain in many ways, there are now simply too many people settling here who don’t share our values - and, at worst, actively despise them.

Mr Kumarasiri, the Post Office Patriot, shames all who refuse to stand up for Britain.

Spot the boobies

Exciting news in the year of Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. In the Galapagos Islands this week, there was a rare sighting of a species that’s seldom seen outside its native Gloucestershire - the Blue-Blooded Boobies, sometimes known as the Lesserspotted Royals (pictured).

The male of the species is recognisable by his diminishing plumage and his habit of puffing up his chest with ferocious self-importance when provoked.

The female, on the other hand, is an idle creature who seems curiously reluctant to undertake any recognisable role whatsoever, thus endangering the very future of the royal breed.

This will be Liam’s toughest role

By sheer coincidence, I was watching the rom-com Love, Actually a few days ago.

One of the most poignant moments in the film is when Liam Neeson’s character attends his wife’s funeral, and watches tearfully as her coffin leaves the church to the sound of the Bay City Rollers’ Bye Bye Baby (Baby Goodbye).

That scene will now take on an unbearable poignancy as Neeson adjusts to life without his beloved wife, Natasha Richardson.

‘Life imitating art’ is a familiar expression, but the haunted look on Neeson’s face this week makes you realise how trite it is in the face of such all-too-real grief.

Give our D-Day veterans the respect they deserve

Thanks to this paper’s campaign, Gordon Brown is finally shamed into attending the 65th anniversary of D-Day and providing assistance for the few remaining veterans to make one last journey to France.

Strange, though, how the PM initially couldn’t find the £500,000 to honour our dwindling band of D-Day veterans, yet didn’t blink to put £90million into trying to placate young Islamic extremists through spurious ‘community projects’.

Threaten our liberty and you get rewarded; fight for it and you are humiliated.

Not keeping mum

Bucking the trend of actresses who say they just want to be ‘stay-at-home moms’ and are giving up their careers for their children - yes, I do mean you Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow et al - Jennifer Lopez admits she’sfinding motherhood a bit of a drag.

J-Lo wants to take a break from her one-year-old twins and have some ‘me, me, me time’ to enable her to make another album, a film, launch a new fashion range, more perfume. . .anything but babies.

You may not admire her motives, but isn’t a bit of honesty from a Tinseltown mum as rare as it is refreshing?

Lessons in bigotry

New Monument School in Woking was the second most improved primary in the country, until the headmistress was hounded out by a vicious smear campaign.

The local mosque packed the governing body with Muslims in an attempt to turn it into an Islamic faith school.

Erica Connor nobly resisted. She was met with utterly groundless charges of racism and Islamophobia.

Driven to despair and depression, she finally left.

This week, she was awarded £400,000 compensation after a High Court judge ruled the local authority, fearful of accusations of racism, failed to support her against unfounded accusations.

A victory for common sense, indeed. But in the end, it’s the children who suffer, losing a fine headmistress and learning first-hand the ugliness of religious bigotry.

'Real-life Teletubbies' guilty of parental cruelty

They've been dubbed ‘the real-life tellytubbies’ - a British family of four who weigh in at a collective 83st.

And guess what? We’re paying the bill for the junk food that’s made them such heavyweights.

The Chawner family, from Blackburn, claim thousands of pounds in benefits because they say they’re too fat to work - and that dieting is far too much effort. Why on earth do we indulge such layabouts?

Yet, while I have nothing but contempt for parents Audrey and Philip, both 24st, I do feel a measure of sympathy for their obese daughters Samantha (18st) and Emma (17st). To have allowed any child to get that fat is nothing short of parental cruelty.

Rod's got it right!

Sean Stewart has branded his father Rod ‘very cheap’ for demanding that his son repay $5,000 he lent to settle a personal trainer’s bill that Sean had run up.

Given that this is the same Rod Stewart who has pledged £7,500 to enable 15 Essex war veterans to attend the 65th anniversary of D-Day in France, I’d say it’s just that Rod knows a worthwhile cause when he sees one.

And bailing out spoilt sons is not one of them.

Keep the dirty talk out of plain speaking

The Government has launched a £5.2million sex education campaign to encourage young women in their late teens and early 20s to get men to use condoms.

It suggests using lines such as: ‘If you make it clean, I’ll make it dirty,’ and ‘Let’s get ready for the ride of your life.’

Never mind whether this crude tactic will serve any useful purpose. If you have to talk like a Soho hooker to get a man to use a condom  before having sex with you for the first time, may I humbly suggest you’re with the wrong man.

Put it away, Phillip

Bleary-eyed, with his huge champagne gut spilling over his trousers, Sir Philip Green stumbled out of Annabel’s nightclub in the wee hours with Kate Moss.

Cocaine Kate was special guest at his 57th birthday and looked almost as seedy, with a gaping jacket that left nothing to the imagination.

And to think they see themselves as the Tsar and Tsarina of High Street style!

Westminster Noticeboard...

• Well done David Cameron for taking the first, if tentative, steps towards being honest with the public and acknowledging that taxes may have to rise if we are to have any chance of recovering from this recession. Margaret Thatcher saved this country with tough love and tax increases — followed by cuts and great prosperity. Let’s hope Cameron is cut from the same cloth
• Of all the stunts this Government has pulled, the £50 fee they are proposing to charge to new migrants (to cover the costs of the public services they will use) is surely among the most dishonest. Fifty quid wouldn’t even cover the cost of their first check-up on the NHS, let alone the interpreter to accompany them.
• John ‘Bruiser’ Prescott has been put in charge of the Obama-style online campaign for the next election. That’s one way of keeping him out of punching-reach of the voters.