From: y77878g78tg6y767f6f@fdtgs.co   
      
   According to the OED censorship means the official suppression of published   
   material on grounds of unsuitability or national security. Gibson's dog's   
   name is censored from the film and your article states this clearly and your   
   approval of it being censored; and, given the way intellectual life in the   
   West is going, the censoring of the dog's name in a TV screening of the   
   Dambusters seems to me be just another increment on the royal road to   
   censoring it as fact  and you are the first person to bewail the de facto   
   censorship of aspects of British history in our schools.   
   The fact that a few BNP morons take pleasure from hearing it and wearing   
   insulting badges is neither here nor there: I am surprised to find a   
   conservative like you legislating for a tiny group of fools. Also, I don't   
   think I can be blamed for the interpretation I put on your words when you   
   said this: 'Who could possibly get any pleasure out of hearing it?' as if   
   the sole purpose of the word being transmitted in the film was to give   
   people pleasure.   
    Of course, there are a great many people in England who have an antipathy   
   towards ethnic minorities and I think a large factor in this is the dominant   
   media telling them how wonderful a multicultural society is - and also how   
   contemptible anyone who disagrees with this view is - when their own   
   experience of it is often quite different. The censorship reinforces a   
   message: we'll give you a lot of our own licensed obscenity and if you   
   object to that you're a prig, but we shall censorship on the grounds of our   
   own dislikes and hang ups. In other words, when Michael Grade says that   
   programmes will have to contain many elements that are clearly objectionable   
   to the majority of the audience ('we must reflect society as it is') then I   
   say that, with a prefatory warning, it is right to transmit a film   
   un-censored that shows - to an extent - society *as it was*. When I think of   
   the gratuitous (and that is the key word) violence and sex on tv each week,   
   it makes me laugh out loud sardonically about the preciousness over The   
   Dambusters (incidentally I agree with you about Andrew Roberts - he ought to   
   see a few more war films before gushing so ridiculously about the film).   
      
   When I said 'so close to the war' I meant that the type of film you clearly   
   thought The Dambusters should have been would have been a slap in the face   
   to audiences of the early 50s and struck me as being a sort of agitprop   
   dream. However, I don't disagree about your comments about the feebleness of   
   the British army and foreign policy of the 30s.   
      
   I don't think that my referring to your 'hardcore toryism' is facile, since   
   the type of conservatism you mourn the decline of could reasonable be   
   construed by an educated member of the public as being a much tougher form   
   of conservatism than has prevailed in the tory party for many years - after   
   all it is one of your amusing swipes to say that the tories have been   
   stealing socialist policy for fifty years. Such a comment doesn't make me   
   classify you as a liberal monetarist tory of today. I understand that given   
   your position and history you will be made uncomfortable by having the word   
   tory used to describe you (your 'new party' proposal is a good way of   
   avoiding it and a good idea in itself). Facile means ignoring the   
   complexities and I think I'm well aware of them, having read and enjoyed   
   your books.   
      
      
      
   Hope this clarifies.   
      
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)