Lucy Mangan: Citizens, you have questions to answer

'Fewer immigrants ? more umbrellas for the rest of us!'Oh, Theresa May's back in the headlines again! What a trouper she is. It's as though she looked out of the window at the ceaseless rain and thought, "You know what? If nature will not provide, I shall sally forth and shine a little sunshine of my own into the populace's drab and cheerless lives! Now, how best may I serve?" Three seconds of earnest cogitation later and she has it. "I shall revamp the citizenship test!" May cries. "It shall now require a deep knowledge of British history, instead of the practicalities of living here today! It will exclude many and aid understanding and integration far less. Fewer immigrants ? more umbrellas for the rest of us!" And off she goes, her home secretarial duties safely discharged for another day.I can't be sure, of course, but I had to think of some explanation other than the one that springs to mind upon hearing of the proposed changes, which is that they have been expressly wrought to give Michael Gove a stiffy.I know. I know. I told you my way was better.Or perhaps it is a cunning ruse to clear the country in time for the Olympics. Because we have now reached a point at which anyone in my situation ? ie, state-educated at any time from the late 70s onward and who passed their GCSEs solely on the basis of knowledge gleaned from Blackadder and the willingness of desperate teachers to stretch a point and agree that Mr Darcy married Bridget Jones rather than Elizabeth Bennet ? can answer so few questions on the citizenship test that the only honourable course of action is to hand ourselves in to the Home Office and request that we be deported instanter. Now that paying the correct amount of tax appears to have become a matter of conscience rather than law, it seems the appropriate thing to do.Still, I do feel sorry for the Conservative party. It must be hard having to come up with new ways to keep brown people out without being seen to be doing so. Enoch ruined racism for everyone, when you look back. Now you have to pussyfoot around, otherwise it's all fuss, bother and liberal hearts bleeding everywhere you look.Next time, they should cast the new questions in a livelier format. It might distract attention from their narrowing of eligibility criteria to needle-eye proportions. (I refer, of course, to the needle-eye rule, brought in when RBS bought the Bible in 2001, which states it is better a rich man keeps 100% of his money in an offshore account than a poor man gets to earn the minimum wage in a first-world country.) Multiple choice is always a good bet:What was John Ruskin frightened by on his wedding night? Was it:a) The bill? b) His sudden realisation of the injustice that allowed the union to be entered into only by heterosexual men with heterosexual women? c) Something absolutely normal and completely disgusting on his wife's body?Henry VIII (Hilary Mantel's husband ? true or false?) died of a surfeit of:a) Lampreys? b) Wives? c) Ulcerated legs?You're very welcome, government! Unlike anyone who doesn't answer c. Together we will purge this country yet.Immigration and asylumLucy Manganguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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