Finally, U.K. takes off the P.C. gloves

Six months ago, I redeemed credit card points to discount our family's summer vacation. I had to navigate a telephone obstacle course to make it happen. I'm convinced the airlines deliberately make it a burden to redeem their prizes, but I endured, because the destination sounded ideal.

London.

A lot has changed since we booked passage. Now, I'm just hoping my wife will still go. And I'm thinking about what awaits us overseas.

I've been eager to show our kids the sites, including Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. It's really something to see. Grievances of every kind get aired here by the citizenry on Sunday afternoons from makeshift platforms. In 1998, I visited this spot with my father. We were taken aback by some strident anti-Semitic speakers, outright advocating the destruction of Israel. I remember thinking that some of the guys seemed dangerous, and then rationalizing that it was better for them to vent through words than actions.

Apparently, it wasn't an either/or. It appears the Brits became too accommodating. Londonistan is a pretty P.C. place. And a constant target. Maybe that's no coincidence.

My favorite example: In 2005, a woman in the United Kingdom named Mary Magilton was chastised by a police officer filling out a hit-and-run report, after she described the motorist as "fat." The officer told Magilton that description was "too offensive."

Then came U.K. financial institutions Halifax and NatWest, where they scrapped piggybanks, time-honored symbols of savings for generations of school kids, because they feared that the image would offend some Muslims.

And there was the black bodyguard who was removed from his post as protector of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. He won a racial-discrimination suit against Scotland Yard for being "overpromoted." (An ingenious, self-undercutting argument: Because I am black, you gave me a job I couldn't handle, so when I messed up, it was your fault, and you owe me.)

Even after the attacks on a double-decker bus and three subway lines July 7, 2005, things remained P.C. in the U.K. Within days, BBC coverage dropped the words terror and terrorist from many stories and even deleted those words from past stories. Instead, articles spoke of "peacetime bomb attacks." The BBC literally purged all mention of the T-word from its coverage.

The explanation? "We recognize that the word terrorist can look like a reflection of editorial bias rather than a statement of fact."