Swine Quarantine

England has a list of people who are banned from the entering the country, held since October. They recently published it.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publish the "name and shame" list -- which identifies 16 people banned since last October -- for the first time to clarify what behaviour Britain will not tolerate.

"I think it's important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it's a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won't be welcome in this country," she said.

"If you can't live by the rules that we live by ... we should exclude you from this country and, what's more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded," she told the GMTV broadcaster.

Between October and April the Home Office excluded 22 people for "fostering extremism or hatred" included preachers Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Yunis Al Astal and Amir Siddique, said a Home Office statement.

Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan leader Stephen Donald Black and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe are also on the list, as is controversial radio host Michael Alan Weiner, also known as Michael Savage.

Thankfully I'm not on the list because me and my high school chum are traveling to London this month while the dollar is strong enough to fool us into thinking we can afford such a crazy thing.

But Michael Savage! Wow, is THAT gonna give him some material! My own feeling about Savage (nee Weiner) is that he's harmless, a kind of SNL parody of right-wing radio hosts. Even Joe The Plumber (nee Wurtzelbacher) won't quote Michael Savage. The only people who take him seriously are the kids in the black raincoats with rifles, and they'd find their twisted nourishment elsewhere if Savage wasn't available.

By the same token, it is therefore not particularly harmful to ban him. It wouldn't fly here because we guarantee freedom of speech, but England is more of a "right to speech" situation. And if you really are jonseing for Savagery over there, you can always buy his books or listen via the internet. Me, I'm jonesing for Rowan Atkinson in OLIVER.