Joe Offer wrote:

"But Ake has a point. As an American visitor, I witnessed both shocking racism and smothering and ridiculous political correctness when I visited England, and neither one was pretty. Maybe the issue requires discussion and a reasonable consensus. I'll monitor this discussion, but perhaps it's not quite time to shut it down. Please remember to keep the discussion civil, and to use a consistent name when posting."

Well, I hope you'll visit again. Like in most countries you'll find bigotry and racist attitudes here if you look hard enough. I was a schoolteacher in east London for 13 years and I'm proud that I never let a racist remark pass in my classroom. God knows what good it did but I was doing the right thing in my book. Racist remarks in classrooms are never OK whatever the context. You'll also find here huge numbers of decent, thinking, measured people who want the world to be a better place. Same mixture as your end, Joe. Depends how and where you look! As for all this "PC" stuff, like I said two hundred miles up the thread, any discussion of dodgy comedians will inevitably bring the anti-PC brigade crawling out of the woodwork. And if that is an offensive allusion, it's meant to be. I strongly suspect that most people who denigrate "PC" do so because they have a conscience about their inability to get through life without making offensive remarks. It could be a fear that they lack the social conditioning to avoid such behaviour so, instead of getting to grips with their problem, they pre-emptively lash out at their "PC" critics to salve their conscience. It's a lack of understanding of how to behave appropriately in whatever circumstances you find yourself. It isn't "PC" to avoid racist jokes in front of black people or impressionable children. It's decent common sense, actually, and only ignorant thugs like Mr Manning would fail to recognise that. I personally find any joke about the Holocaust to be extremely offensive and if you tell me such a joke I'll tell you what I think of you and it in no uncertain terms. If that's "PC," so be it. I'll wear the bloody badge with pride. But I laughed my socks off at an Irish joke up the thread. I even texted it to my mum! Am I being inconsistent? I don't give a monkey's mickey, actually!   In the men's room of a forum I'm on I made a joke today about a woman with boobies big enough to polish her shoes with. But I did it in the men's room, right? Call me PC for finding Mr Manning offensive and I'll call you a lazy, cloudy thinker.