What the dickens is going on over there across the Atlantic? Laura Harris tells me that last week an email circulated claiming that the United Kingdom has banned the teaching of the Holocaust in school to avoid “offending some Muslim communities.” Fortunately, it was just a rumor, but it was based on a report that British teachers are reluctant to educate their students about the historical horrors because they don’t want to “challenge contentious or charged versions of history taught to children at home.” Which is a veiled way of saying the British Muslim kids are getting major doses of Holocaust denial (and presumably, hatred against Jews) with their tea and crumpets and they’re bringing it to school with them.

England’s Department of Education assures that nothing in the curriculum has changed and that Holocaust education is “compulsory” for 11-14 year-olds, not an age group known for its maturity. Though JTA reports that $3 million has already been earmarked for more teacher training, but it’s going to take a lot more than dollars to change the minds of angry junior high schoolers steeped in passionate ignorance and puberty’s juices. Though perhaps when confronted with the photos and the stories, perhaps some of these youngsters, who live in a free, democratic country, will crack under the weight of the truth.

Also last week, Britain’s National Union of Journalists passed a resolution to boycott Israel products, partly as a way to “reward” Palestinian journalists for their help in freeing BBC reporter Alan Johnston after he was kidnapped by terrorists in Gaza. Fair and balanced, my tuchus!

“It is astounding that British trade unionists should seek to ostracize the one country in the Middle East where trade unions enjoy freedom of association and expression while uttering not a peep against those regimes which really do suppress trade unions and intellectual inquiry,” wrote Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail. “But this is now the madness of Britain.”

A mad, mad, mad, mad world, indeed. Maybe we could get wildly popular British babe Amy Winehouse to clean up her act and start representin’?