On Tuesday, The Daily Telegraph reported:

“Riot-swept Britain is tasting the “bitter fruit” of its failure to introduce Chinese-style controls on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, Chinese state media crowed on Tuesday, while raising questions over whether London could be trusted to stage a safe 2012 Olympic Games.”

Your humble Blog Goliard was inclined to play this for laughs, until he saw the latest report from the emergency session of the House of Commons:

The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.

David Cameron said the intelligence services and the police were exploring whether it was “right and possible” to cut off those plotting violence.

Even though he’s a PR man by trade and a bit of an empty suit (but I repeat myself), I never thought Cameron would be so ungrounded in the fundamentals of Western liberty that he would pick up an editorial in the People’s Daily and say to himself, “You know, I think these Chinese Communists may be on to something here…”