Sunday 19 October 2008

'Comment Is Free' - Unless It's An Inconvenient One...

That euthanasia for the sake of the budget advocate Mary Warnock has a comment piece over at 'Comment Is Free' regarding the death of Daniel James, the 23-year-old rugby player paralysed from the neck down, who flew to Switzerland to take up the offer of a dignified end via Dignitas.

Now, I sympathise whole-heartedly with his decision, and condemn the action of the police and CPS in attempting to harass his parents (though I suspect that any such attempt will be quickly dropped for fear of the publicity). But I thought CiF'ers ought to know the past utterances of the fragrant Mary Warnock, on the advisability of those with dementia seeking euthanasia so as not to be a burden on their family and - more importantly - a drain on the NHS's resources.

My first comment was quickly removed by a moderator (despite not breaching any rules). Oh dear, did I let a rather mangy, flea-ridden cat out of the CiF bag, mods..?

My second is still up (for now). Let's see how long it lasts...

Update: Well, it lasted a couple of hours, and has now been deleted. Let's see how my third does. They don't like free speech much, do they...?

Update 2
: Not long at all! Must have been the link to the 'Telegraph' that drew the ire, surely can't be drawing people's attention to Warnock's comments, and the duplicity of the mods?. But now others are picking up on this - let's see if they can ban everyone...

Update 3: They've reinstated my first post! But kept the deletion on my others. Inconsistency, it seems, is also free...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The standard of moderation on CiF is absolutely dreadful. It's rapidly losing my respect and I feel will lose an audience if it carries on like this.

My user profile "FourQuartets" was put into premoderation for "borderline racism".

My crime was suggesting that the 7/7 bombers were "effectively not British" (even the BBC described them as "British born" rather than British).

I also said that many recent immigrants do not consider Britain home. How many Brits in Spain consider themselves Spanish?

So nothing about race at all, just culture, religion and immigration.

When I put these points to Alison (my moderator), she failed to respond. I wonder why?

My other identity "WatchingWonderland" was kicked off with no explanation.

I get angry about it for five minutes but then I remember that if it wasn't for this kind of idiocy and simple-mindedness Britain wouldn't be in quite the mess that it's in. There's also a certain schadenfreude to be found in the fact that such suppression of facts and the truth is behind a shift to the right in this country and when the mob comes the first place to be razed to the ground will the the HQ of the Guardian.

Anonymous said...

Funnily enough, I've just received an email (from 'AlisonWhite' - your Alison?) from them advising me that my comment has been reinstated:

"it was orginal (sic) removed as it seemed to attack the author early on in the thread without referring to the piece explicitly but in context of the resulting thread it has been allowed to stay. "

So, that's something. No apology for the mistaken assumption, but then, that's 'journalism', I guess.

I wonder if I'd have got a reply and reinstatement if I were the only person who raised the issue? I suspect not.