A BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL LEFTIE FROM LONDON (BHLLL) who emigrated to Arizona, U.S.A on 30th September 2006

Tucson, Arizona Monday 2nd October 2006. 9.30am

Hello everyone. I hope my very first blog posting finds you well and full of vim and vigour at the start of a new week. I certainly feel energised as I listen to a stonkingly good recording of Hendrix live at the Albert Hall. Just the ticket when it comes to brushing off jetlag (I got here 36 hours ago)

OK, so first things first. Why the BHLLL label I hear you ask? Well someone's gotta wear it, don't they? and I do so with pride. The first time I was called a Bleeding Heart Liberal (BHL) was in 1992 on my first day at Nottingham University. I arrived at my digs and the first thing I saw was a Daily Telegraph on the kitchen table. I place my Guardian beside it and said to myself 'Let battle commence'. As I looked down at the table, I caught sight of an outsized foot entering the room. It reminded me of when, as a kid, I was lying down on the edge of the cricket pitch at Lords and a giant white cricket boot belonging to the 6' 7'' England captain, Tony Grieg, appeared beside me. Now, as I looked up, and up, and up, and up, I experienced a feeling of deja vu.

Mark, an abrasive, ex - merchant navy sailor from Blackburn, was a similar size to Tony Grieg and didn't suffer fools lightly. He made it clear from the off that he had no truck with Guardian reading, BHL, southern softies, like me. All of a sudden, my battle plans were shelved. Survival became my first priority. As it turned out, Mark's bark was worse than his bite and, in the main, notwithstanding a couple of bust - ups, he was quite good company.

As I write this, Hendrix sings a song called 'Bleeding Heart'. Just the kind of quirky coincidence that I love.

I am sure that my fellow immigration and asylum legal practitioners will verify the fact that we are looked on with utter disdain by the tabloid reading masses, so-called Middle England. In recent years, New Labour's attacks on human rights lawyers have given our detractors a lot more confidence. A BHL tag is normally used by the zero tolerance mob as a preamble to much more scathing vitriol. Nonetheless, it never seems to lose currency and rightists love to use the term. In the U.S, there are variants such as bedwetting liberal or bleeding ass liberal. Say no more. I even read a lonely hearts column (social research only!) which specified ‘No liberals please’. Christ, what would she have made of a BHLLL?) But more of the fascinating personal columns in a forthcoming post.

In the states, you often hear or read phrases like ‘liberal extremist’. That’s hard for us Brits to get our heads round. It’s an obvious oxymoron from where I’m standing. As far as I'm concerned, if you're called a BHL you must be doing something right.

I have just read an excellent article from the Independent on Sunday (3rd September 2006) entitled 'The Great Divide'. It is about the BHL's who counter the anti-immigration, vigilante groups by seeking out and helping illegal Mexican immigrants who are lost and in mortal danger along the 370 mile Arizona / Mexico border (124 have died in Arizona alone in the last 11 months and some 3,000 along the entire 2000 km US / Mexico border since 1998). All sorts of people join humanitarian groups, a 52 - year old schoolteacher from Massachusetts, an anarchist with 'Burn the Flag' tattooed on her knuckles and a young, middle - class, West Virginian student were 3 examples given in the Article. Apparently, there have been demonstrations in dozens of cities in America during 2006 in which hundreds of thousands demanded immigration reform and legal rights for the country's estimated 11 million undocumented workers.

There are good people in America who will not be cowed by the neo-cons.

That rebellious spirit within me just will not lie down and die. I feel a warm glow when I think about how I was able to smuggle in my red CCCP T-shirt, replete with hammer and sickle, my 'KGB - still watching you' T-shirt and my Lenin - Cocaine T-Shirt, not to mention my bag of magic mushrooms.....(alright, that last one may be a fabrication!?) without detection. Burgess 1 U.S. Immigration 0. Yippee!! As the pilot on the North West airlines flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix said ' Thanks for coming along folks. Appreciate your business.' Have a good day now!