h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>We should adopt the Australian robust and practical attitude, and a lot less wafty liberal handwringing

What, you mean have a Prime Minister who lies about boat people throwing their babies overboard?

We're not very good at free speech in Britain really.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14638515

A student at St Andrews University has been found guilty of a racist breach of the peace after he insulted the flag of Israel.

Paul Donnachie, 19, put his hands down his trousers then rubbed them on a flag belonging to Jewish student Chanan Reitblat.




I'd like to think that our laws are based around basic common decency and manners leading to a polite society. Extremism is terribly rude.

>>We're not very good at free speech in Britain really.

I have to agree. Rubbing one's pubic hair on a Jewish person's Israeli flag strikes me as being a terrible way of communicating.

Worse, the guy claims to be part of anti-racism work and bemoans how this conviction will smear him. What an idiot

I think suspending him from University for year is OTT though.

X UNBLAND:Maybe you need some of the usual Italian talent to liven up the conversation. Just kidding, of course ...

Thank you, dear SWL.

SWL: Italian tourists.

Of course I'm with Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips on this issue

Yes we are good at it. There's a lot of subversive art goes on. And nothing is perfect. I think we're good at it. Maybe that's just me irrationally insisting on it though.

But if you look at the history of *England* no real violence since the English civil war.

For goodness sakes there's always going to be some suppression because of the nature of the way we are governed. But ordinary people are very outspoken and governments know that.

>X UNBLAND:Maybe you need some of the usual Italian talent to liven up the conversation. Just kidding, of course ...<

Yes I've an annoying habit of straight talking mixed in with a lot of playfulness and humour at my best

Hope you are settling in and finding your feet.

>>..history of *England* no real violence since
the English civil war. <<

Well there was all that Luddite trouble with the smashing
of machinery... and Bonnie Prince Charlie... and the sailors
revolts during the Napoleonic wars... but yeah, the Civil War
was the last real biggy.


~jwf~

My! This is *so* much more interesting than The Dulla Wars, isn't it?

"I think suspending him from University for year is OTT though"

Kea - read the news report again. You think suspending him from university is OTT?

What has in fact happened is that he has been summarily EXPELLED from university, permanently. His life and possible future career have been ruined. It's his friend - against whom no case has been proven in court - who has nevertheless been suspended for a year and banned from halls of residence.

And all for what? Crudely expressing their disapproval of the actions of the state of Israel.

Frankly, given their support for and presumed knowledge of the oppression meted out with impunity against the Palestinian people by Israel, you'd think they'd know better than to express ANY kind of negative opinion to an American Jew. If ever there was a group of people crudely stereotyped as thin-skinned, bolshy and litigious, then by crikey their "victim" lived up to it in spades.

Free speech, we should all know by now, does not apply when one is speaking about Jews. Austria criminalises Holocaust denial. I'm not sure hether Germany does the same. I honestly don't know how any country with pretensions to civilisation can countenance such a law. I certainly don't know how it squares with the convention on human rights, as it seems to fly in the face of the right to freedom of expression.

I'll second all of that before it gets yikesed, Twiggy!


~jwf~

(Christ how many names does he have? I'm going to start calling him yidtwig )

Just the one name, and I haven't changed it for ages. The confusion arises, I think, from this thing of having a name and a sort of aftername, and the aftername being the only one that's shown in the only skin worth using, i.e. Brunel.

Yes but we're all being playful about it. Tiggy, Twiggy, the twigster, twiglet..and then there's the past SoRB, Hoo etc. I like it..its fun).

<Just the one name, and I haven't changed it for ages. The confusion arises, I think, from this thing of having a name and a sort of aftername, and the aftername being the only one that's shown in the only skin worth using, i.e. Brunel..

Which is the best of the four skins...isn't it Yidtwig.

I think the student was expelled more for touching the flag with the hand that had touched a foreskin...I believe Jewish people get rid of them ASAP for some reason.

Yidwig it is then

Sorry Yidtwig. What the hell is wrong with me? Though Yidwig might be fun as well