A story reaches us from Oslo which is shivering as daytime temperatures struggled today (3rd) to reach a chilly minus 5 Celsius (23 F in old money). The country's reindeer are in their element!

The Immigration Directorate over there has applied for a government grant of £87,000 to carry out a feasibility study on a proposal to import up to 20 camels to make African refugees more at home!

Helping the newcomers

Wenche Stenseth, head of refugee welfare for the district of Loeten in southern Norway said that the animals, usually found in the warmer climes of northern Africa could help the 100 or so migrants from Sudan and Somalia to integrate and become independent of welfare handouts!

Stenseth told Norwegian reporters that “This is a multicultural society. The market is there." The camels could be farmed by the migrants to provide demand for camel milk, meat, skins and hair and may also boost tourism.

"Why should Norwegians travel to Morocco or Egypt to ride camels if they can do it here?" she asked.

Classic cast of characters

This might seem a trivial and amusing story for a winter’s evening but the reality is that multi-culturalism is no laughing matter for the victims. Here we have a classic case of politically correct madness involving the usual cast of characters; a silly white liberal trying to misuse the national wealth; the hard working indigenous taxpayers who have to fork out for some hare-brained scheme which only those whose minds addled by years of chemical abuse while at college could concoct, and the newcomers who must look on with a mixture of amazement, mirth and expectation that having travelled some 3000 miles to end up in a snow bound part of rural Norway they are expected to take up camel farming!

Let’s examine the elements here:

• 100 migrants in an otherwise homogenous Norwegian district does not constitute a “multi-cultural society”, it is what is says on the label; a small number of inassimilable foreigners who are probably this January, which is one of the coldest and snowiest on record, regretting having left such a pleasant climate 2000 miles to the south.

• Camels are not native animals to Norway, so the presence of these humped backed beasts of burden can hardly help newcomers integrate into Norwegian society.

• It is questionable that any of the African refugees have the first clue about looking after the ships of the desert, in much the same way that a group of “average” British refugees stranded in the Andes would be capable of farming a herd of pedigree pigs imported by Bolivian Refugee Welfare Agencies!

• Just who is demanding camel meat and hair? Aside from a few middle class liberal types does the average Norwegian have an insatiable taste for exotic bush meat?

• Who pays? As always the fleeced European taxpayer; insulted by liberal idiots for being racist and thoughtless, instilled with a false sense of guilt by a broadcasting media packed full to the gunwales with Marxists and liberal who haven’t thought through what an Islamic takeover of Europe actually means; namely the end of so called “women’s’ rights”, “gay rights”, “equality” and “democracy”.

• Animal welfare! What of the camels themselves, which one minute were bathing in almost constant African sunshine, munching on a veritable feast of lush grass and wheat with figs and dates for pudding, suddenly let loose on the Norwegian landscape with few of their nutritional requirements readily to nibble? A manger of dried hay and vitamin supplements just doesn’t cut the mustard and should quite rightly be a cause for Norwegians concerned about animal rights to get involved!

We can all rightly laugh at the daft little episodes that multi-culturalism sometimes present to us, whether in Britain or other closely related kindred nations in Europe, the Americas or “down under” but we should also remember that for every laugh there is some tangible financial cost to us as fleeced taxpayers and some huge but immeasurable costs to the structure and viability of our respective societies.