Freedom Of Speech – It’s For Everyone, Or It’s For No-one…

Thanks to ‘Longrider’, I find out that we have a satisfactory conclusion to this case at last.

And at ‘CiF’, at least some columnists are waking up to the dangers of the creeping criminalisation of people’s views:

His sacking from TalkSport this week was a wrong and deeply worrying act, and it makes me think Gaunt may have been right in one of the favourite riffs of his Sun column and radio show: that Britain has gone barmy and is becoming a dictatorship of liberal opinion.

My, the penny drops at last…

The systolic readings of Gaunty, as he likes to be called, may be even more at risk from the revelation that a commentator connected with this paper and the BBC - despised HQs of the PC revolution - is also troubled by this week's public exposure of the membership list of the British National party.

Don't misunderstand this: I wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with any of them, and have never agreed with anything said by presenter or party. But one of the most delicate judgments in any society is where the line of acceptable behaviour should be drawn, and both of these cases suggest that the boundary is now being marked in the ink of self-righteous idealism.

Some of us have been saying that for quite a while, mind you. Still, ‘more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth..’, they say.

The point is that sacking shock jocks and demonising political parties are cosmetic measures. Banning attitudes removes them from view, but not from existence. Any politician who has campaigned in inner cities will tell you that both Labour and Tories have long had voters who are, frankly, racist. The one advantage of the rise of the BNP was that it became easier to measure, in elections, the numerical level of extremist opinion. But, now that the security of the membership list has been breached, such rumblings will be harder to calculate.

Remember, you don’t help to prepare for earthquakes by dismantling your seismographs…