If we needed proof, it came in the form of Charlie Sheen: HIV didn't go away

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. When asked to apologise, Ken retorted: “I grew up in south London, where if someone’s rude to you, you are rude back.” In so many ways, that is thoroughly offensive – casually slandering thousands of polite Londoners in a whole heap of postcodes. There’s an ugly new trend which seeks to silence any speaker who holds a view considered unacceptable by politically correct students, clumsily dubbed “non‑platforming”, which I translate as “censoring”. York University had intended to celebrate International Men’s Day on Thursday but after a lobby group claimed that the celebration would “amplify existing, structurally imposed inequalities”, the university feebly gave in and said that in future its work on inequality would focus on women. Now, Cambridge University has decided to remove historian David Starkey’s contribution to a fundraising video, after protests from students and academics who claimed he had made “racist and sexist” comments.