Watch What You Say in Britain

As I indicated last night, I've been spending a lot of time getting to know my Blackberry, and I've got to admit that the best part of it as far as I'm concerned is having a portable Internet. Yeah, yeah, e-mail, cell phone, address book, et al., are great, but I'd set them all aside if I'd still be left with a handheld Internet. Today I was able to take advantage of what would otherwise have been computerless downtime to catch up on the posts over at AMERICAblog. A couple of posts on Wednesday and Thursday stood out for me. Apparently the U.K. is having some problems in cracking down on free speech these days. This post related the sad tale of a man who was taken off a flight in Northern England and interrogated as a terrorist because he sang along to "London Calling" by the Clash in the cab on the way to the airport. (Note to Self: From now on hum, don't sing (or even mouth the words) to the Clash in public.) A short time later, another post highlighted a new British law that went into effect a little while ago that categorizes some protest activities as terrorist acts. The first two people arrested are grandmothers from Yorkshire. They were veteran protestors who participated in the Greenham Common protests against nuclear cruise missiles in England, and they were making themselves a test case, but it's good to know that the U.K. no longer has any tolerance for terror grannies.