What Americans joke about, we actually do

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6322545.stm

There is an episode in Friends (the Sitcom) where Joey loses Ross's family-heirloom wedding ring. When Ross asks him what he's done about finding it, Joey says "Well, I phoned the Police, and they said they'd look right into it, right after they'd solved all the murders and stuff."

In Britain, the Police are not interested in the murders, armed robberies, rapes, Islmic terrorists and steaming gangs. They have tracked down all the people who may have voiced some disparaging remark in public about people from some other country than Britain with darker skin colouring than you. Those other trivia will just have to wait. How is it that a country can lose its common sense so dramatically in just a few years?

I'm no fan of racism and bigotry. But racism and bigotry are part of every nation, every culture in every country. They cannot be legislated away, and are as permanent as poverty and criminality. You can legislate to prevent discrimination of course. Discrimination is the enactment of racism and bigotry, and actions can be legislated on perfectly adequately. We have excellent and effective laws that cover them already.

But policing attitudes, thoughts and opinions should NEVER be the remit of government. To the greatest extent possible, people should be able to voice their true opinions in public. Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun would be legal organisations in Britain if it was up to me. The BNP would be free to voice whatever fascistic nonsense pleases them this week. The black power guys should have a public stage for their conspiracy theories. The marketplace of ideas is littered with very poor thinking and demonstrably idiotic notions- but all ideas should get their own airtime. America is a vastly freer place to air opinions than Britain, and its done their society nothing but good. We should want to copy their 'best practise' rather than gradually going down the route of Russia, Egypt, China and many other countries where expressing an opinion can get you locked up for decades.

Being the object of racist abuse is not fun. I have been in that position and I didn't like it one little bit. But I survived, and I have a perfectly good life, and an excellent job, and a house and a wife- I just got up every morning and went off and created my life. Blaming racists because you live an abject life is easy- and wrong. And Shilpa Shetty is a pampered actress who wanted to make some easy money on British TV. She found that it wasn't quite such easy money...