McGrath claims the "true brits" site (to which Milk Monitor gave a link near the top of the thread) is a joke. Or at best "not necessarily too reliable" (good example of qualifying an opinion to the point where it is absolutely meaningless). I read the entry about gurning at Egremont crab fair, which is a tradition I've been familiar with for years, and thought it was spot on. On that basis I am inclined to accept the report about Padstow. I am sure the racial elements were not invented, nor were inserted as a joke.

I still would not be in favour of any prosecution, because as I have said in other threads I support freedom of expression. Accordingly I don't like some aspects of the UK law; I think it is a mistake to prosecute people for what they say, as opposed to what they do, even if they are preaching British National Party filth, and I am outraged by the obscenity law and the intention to widen its scope rather than abolish it.

I'd just make one other point about something El Greko said: "Britain, while far from having an integrated multicultural society, does not have the "rich" history of racial bigotry and persecution that America has."

I suspect that this line of thought underpins a fair amount of UK thinking about attitudes to race in the US, but it is not entirely fair. The US is where many of the slaves traded in earlier centuries ended up, but Britain was at the heart of that trade and played a despicable part in it. Several UK cities owe their (now faded) grandeur to the wealth it created, Bristol probably being the worst example. Almost as bad as the trade itself has been the subsequent hypocrisy and the extent to which a shameful past has been airbrushed out of the histories of Britain and some of its cities.