Apologies for the tabloid-y headline, but there's no more accurate way to accurately introduce this. Read all about it here.
Apologies for the tabloid-y headline, but there's no more accurate way to accurately introduce this. Read all about it here.
Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:
*This* puts text in bold.
_This_ puts text in italics.
bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.
To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.
Britain is a country remarkably immune to domestic unrest. The Luddites, the "Red Republicans", the Union of British Fascists, the IRA - none of them made a dent. I don't think they take such threats very seriously. The British have a kind of genius for peaceful social change, but they are some of the most conservative people who ever lived.
And they pride themselves in not being as hysterical and repressive as the continental Europeans, who are always getting their knickers in a bunch over every little thing.
Above all, they maintain appearance of normalcy. So they casually engage in this kind of "censorship". Civil disobedience and defying the government are not big things in Britain either, so they get a small amount of flak over it.
Oh, I don't know about that. Britain has a long history of domestic unrest, which often manages to effect social change. I can remember quite a few riots in my lifetime.
The Poll Tax riots in the late 80s, for example, was a major factor in government's decision to abandon attempts to introduce a very unpopular tax.
And the Brixton riots (early 80s) and the Burnley and Bradford riots (early 21st century) were partially about race (although you'll more likely hear 'social and economic deprivation' as an explanation).
And, if you want to go back into history, take a look at this story about riots in early 19th Century Britain
A little more digging on this story reveals this Wikipedia article that quotes Mark Steyn saying his column is no longer in the Telegraph as he and the paper couldn't agree a contract.
He only hints in the email I link to above, but I'd assume that the "legal reasons" the Telegraph cites for taking down his article are contractual ones - ie, they are in dispute over payment for the article. No sexy freedom of speech scandal here, unfortunately.
Andy,
The article in question was written by Alasdair Palmer, not Steyn. When digging, it always helps to get the location correct before going for depth.
Whoops. Sorry, I'm getting two similar stories mixed up.