I'm not fit to live here

We're constantly being told that the country is on the brink of being bankrupt. Public services are going to be cut. People are going to lose their jobs. We all need to save money.

Well here's my suggestion ... scrap the ridiculous citizenship test. I don't know how much it costs but a single penny spent on this worthless waste of time is too much. It's the test which people wanting to become UK citizens have to take to make sure they understand more about the country. Now in principle it's a great idea. But having just taken and FAILED the test I've got to question its validity.

I like to think that after living here for all of my 30 years I have a good grasp of the country and how it works. Working as a journalist I often pick up various scraps of knowledge that might pass some other people by, so I would have thought I'd have stood a good chance of passing the test. But no. I failed. Not just failed ... I failed by some margin.

Silly me. How foolish of me not to know in what year in the 1800s women got the right to divorce their husband, or what percentage of people (to one decimal place) were Muslim in this country in 2001. I jmean good grief, what absolute tosh. This is absurd. What are we trying to create? A nation of encylopedic bores who recite facts learnt by rote? Go on ... give it a go. See if you, like me, are also not entitled to call yourself a UK citizen ... http://www.ukcitizenshiptest.co.uk/