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Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, urged the Polish community to do more to learn English and integrate into local parishes, claiming the Catholic Church in the UK was in danger of dividing along ethnic lines as the number of Polish-speaking churches rose.

And the response of Polish community representatives?

Leading Polish community figures said they felt “violated” and “spiritually raped” by his words and called for talks on the issue.

The Telegraph, Catholic leader claims Poles could split Church

Now, Poles new to the UK may argue there’s no requirement for them to speak English and join local Catholic churches; that there’s no need for them to do that; that it’s not advisable for them; that they are trying because it would be a good idea but it’s difficult. But to describe the Cardinal’s suggestion in the language of a sexual attack – ‘violated’, ‘raped’ – is overheated, histrionic and fails entirely to get to grips with the argument.

I do hope that the ‘community leaders’ of Polish Catholics won’t turn out to be like the community leaders of the Muslim population of Britain. Self-appointed, self-serving and unrepresentative.

And now for Gary…

There’s actually a very strong argument that rather than subsidizing the BBC (or any other broadcasters) we should be taxing them. They use a scarce resource, spectrum, and they don’t pay for it (the ITV channels do, in a minor way). They should be forced to pay for it, in the same way that the 3G telecoms companies were.

Something of a problem though given that we don’t in fact have an economically literate political party in the UK.

Tim Worstall, Silly, silly idea

Just look at the movies. Why is it that the bad person is either a right-wing crazed billionaire, or the CIA as a government agency. Go look at the Bourne Ultimatum. Or a movie like the one that George Clooney made, which was an absolute lie, in which it implied that if you were a reformist Arab prince, that probably the CIA would kill you. It’s a total lie. We actually have SEALs protecting people all over the world. We actually risk American lives protecting reformers all over the world, and yet Hollywood can’t bring itself to tell the truth, (a) because it’s ideologically so opposed to the American government and the American military, and (b), because it’s terrified that if it said something really openly, honestly true about Muslim terrorists, they might show up in Hollywood. And you might have somebody killed as the Dutch producer was killed.

And so we’re living a life of cowardice, and in that life of cowardice we’re sleepwalking into a nightmare.

• We’re exploring large-scale machine learning as a means of improving search quality. Our spelling correction system is one excellent example (spehl korector? phonitick spewling? who needs a dictniary?). People searching for Britney Spears have clearly found it useful on many occasions. (Google Labs, Why Google)
• First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs – Peter Ellis

One of the critical differences between America and the rest of the west is that America has a First Amendment and the rest don’t. And a lot of them are far too comfortable with the notion that in free societies it is right and proper for the state to regulate speech. The response of the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security to the Danish cartoons was to propose a press charter that would oblige newspapers to exercise “prudence” on, ah, certain controversial subjects. The response of Tony Blair’s ministry to the problems of “Londonistan” was to propose a sweeping law dramatically constraining free discussion of religion. At the end of her life, Oriana Fallaci was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland and sundry other jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely disagreeable but criminal. In France, Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other “anti-racist” groups who believed opinions held by a fictional character in one of his novels were not merely disagreeable but criminal.

Mark Steyn, Dead man writing

Faking a tilt-shift photo in photoshop: nearly at the summit of Scaffel Pike:

A GANG of 25 men dressed all in black and carrying guns marched through Manchester streets

Chief Supt Dave Keller, Moss Side’s top policeman, said: “While on the face of it, this seems alarming, we had a lot of support around us.

Manchester Evening News, ‘Gunmen’ march through streets