A NEW report this week suggested that Blackburn and Accrington were in the top ten of places that were the least integrated in the UK.

Also on the list were Halifax, Bradford and Oldham. Top of the list, though, was Boston in Lincolnshire where there had been an influx of Eastern Europeans.

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Whilst most people would agree there is always room for improvement I tend to find one common theme when reports like this come out. Those most likely to moan about this are people who actually wouldn’t integrate in the first place. And I’m talking about everyone here.

We will have a whole argument over this issue for the coming weeks and, on the back of it, we may even get a new ‘cohesion’ project of sorts.

And top of the pile of the resident moaners will be the folk who couldn’t care less if I walked around town with a Union Jack humming the theme tune from Dad’s Army. It doesn’t actually matter does it?

None of it does.

Let’s be honest about this, if, for instance, everyone lived side by side, you know for a fact you have some people who would soon decide to shift themselves elsewhere.

A lack of integration is blamed for a lot of things. But I think in many of the towns mentioned on the list people are actually oblivious to it being an ‘issue’.

Why would it be?

What you will find in many places across the planet are neighbourhoods where different communities have chosen to live separately for whatever reason.

I had a visitor from New York City recently and the idea there were all these different neighbourhoods wasn’t an issue whatsoever. He was almost surprised anyone would bring this up. They were all New Yorkers as far as he was concerned.

Some might scoff at the fact that he can say this because he lives in New York and not in drizzly Lancashire. The point is we are all after living here and dying here as ‘Blackburnians’ or ‘Accringtonians’ or whatever we might want to call ourselves.

The lack of integration may well be an issue to some but when I walk through the town and streets I see mainly decent folk and then I see the odd idiot.

Personally, I am all for segregation…where we put all the idiots on one side of town and all the people with some common sense on the other.

Problem solved.