Free speech isn't so free any more

If limits are placed on what can be said can we still say that we have "Free Speech"? I've been thinking about this over the weekend in the wake of "The Twitter Cunt Trail". You won't have heard about it in any of the mainstream media probably for the very reason that it involves "The C word" but in essence what happened is that someone who goes by the name of Olly Cromwell was convicted, in effect, of calling someone a cunt on Twitter. You can read the background to this here and some more on Max Farquar's blog here.

I'll leave to one side for a moment the fact that this does appear to be a vindictive, politically motivated prosecution intended to shut up a individual who certain people in power find to be "troublesome" for actually holding them to account and just look at are there "limits" that can be placed on free speech.

I do not believe that there are, any restriction on what can and can't be said or written means speech is not free. That's not to say that there are repercussions from that freedom. The famous example is shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre; you have the right to but you would have to suffer the consequences of that action. Also if I were to start making untrue allegations in the intent to slander a person, say by starting a blog that makes post after post insisting without any evidence that Councellor Whatsisface enjoys the intimate sexual company of farmyard animals, then it is only proper that Councellor Whatsisface would be able to seek some form of redress.

However that's a very long way from someone having an opinion on Councellor Whatsisface; in this case a crudely worded opinion that he's a cunt but that's as valid an opinion as any other. Sure if someone called me a cunt I'd be somewhat upset but I'd just call then a goat sperm gargling cockwomble back. What they said was probably just a heat  of the moment throwaway remark and I certainly would not go running to the law because I was "offended". Likewise if I was to say something on Twitter like "White people are smarter than black people so we should have no black politicians" the correct response to me would be to say back "Bollocks, you're wrong and stupid and this is why...", not go off screaming for the tumbrils to haul me to the guillotine for "racially aggravated hate speech"  On that latter point it's worth bearing in mind that for many years that was the prevailing orthodoxy and it took brave people to stand up and using speech and the written word to challenge that false assumption and I am sure those in power at the time found the idea that all men are of equal talents regardless of the colour of their skin "offensive"

And it's this "offence" that's the problem here. The law in question (2003 Telecommunications Act I think) makes in illegal to cause offence. Now I'm sure that this piece of NuLabour control freakery was conceived with the nobler motive of being able to go after the worst kind of cyber-stalking but with "I was affronted" seemingly now meaning "I was offended" and people being dragged to court for saying "cunt" and "Dead black footballer. LOL" by what appear to be the "professionally offended"

And this is a problem, a big one. These laws and judgements put the dead hand of fear onto free speech so speakers and writers are constantly checking themselves, not entirely sure if what they are going to say will see them thrown into jail and their lives destroyed because someone found their idea "offensive".  At the very least this idea that seems to have seeped into society and is now enshrined in statute that any person has the absolute right not to be affronted needs to go lest we all fall slowly into the perpetual silence of fear.

For now we see through a glass, darkly

Last night's Channel 4 drama "Black Mirror - The National Anthem", written by Charlie Brooker, was quite superb; by turns hilarious, suspenseful, horrifying and illuminating. It certainly lived up to its title, holding up a dark reflection of ourselves in the age of 24 hour rolling news, social networks and the hive mind.

I don't want to spoil the plot too much if you haven't seen it (you can get it from 4OD) but the story revolves around a Kate Middleton figure who has been kidnapped; the kidnappers don't want money, their demand is that the Prime Minister has sex with a pig, live on TV.

What we see is a government, and it could be any government, utterly at a loss at how to cope with the new world that's been created under their feet, unable to control their citizenry empowered as they are with the new tools of the social network age. "Why haven't you taken it down" says the PM when informed the ransom demand video is on YouTube. "We have," says a Whitehall mandarin "but every time we take one down ten more spring up in its place". This is a world where government can issue as many D-Notices and super injunctions and subtle (and not so subtle) leaning on journalists and it makes no difference. In the past the saying was that a lie could be half way round the world before the truth got its boots on , in the Twitter age an embarrassing truth can be three times round the world and have nipped down to the pub for a pint before the government censorship machine has even woken up.

In the drama even when the story leaks with Fox News and Al Jazeera (who,lets face it, wouldn't give a shit about a UK Government D notice at the best of times) broadcasting first the networks are coy, referring to "an indecent act'. "What indecent act" says a drayman to a barmaid as he makes a deliver "'e's got to do it wif' a pig" says the landlady's kid, hardly looking up from his BlackBerry. Now not only is it impossible to hide the story it's impossible to edit out the gory details.


I believe Charlie Brooker's main point he was trying to make is make us ask "well if this did happen, would you watch it, would you really watch, on live TV, a man utterly humiliating himself in a depraved spectacle... of course you would you sick fucks, we all would, we're human, this is what we do" and we see deserted streets as the minutes tick down to the deadline, crowds gathering round TV's giving lecherous cheers and "go on my son" encouragement which morphs into a sort of horrified cross between revulsion and fascination; a worldwide "Two Girls One Cup" reaction video*

But for my money what is more interesting is the what this drama says about the power we, the common man, the sixty million to their six hundred, now carry around in our pockets. We have seen this year that this shit can bring down governments in the so-called Arab Spring. Our lords and masters must be truly afraid.




* for the love of Fafnir if you are at work and you don't understand the reference  DO NOT Google that!

Slow Motion Train Wrecks

The first of these happened between 5 and 6 pm yesterday when Labour leader Ed Milliband for some utterly unfathomable reason decided to get "hip" and "down" with the youth and host a "Ask Ed Milliband" session on microblogging site Twitter (follow me! go on, there's a little button over there on the left). Now if you're not on Twitter you might not know that generally the posts on there tend to lean more to the left than the right so do doubt some fresh faced SpAd^* in Millipede's office thought that this would be a wizard wheeze for Red Ed and he'd get a nice smooth ride.

Wrong. Very Very Wrong.

What followed was everyone, nicely anonymous, proceeded to fire of a metric fuckton of generally witty put-down questions poking holes in the pretentious prat who was no doubt expecting fawning questions along the lines of "Why are you so brilliant and the nasty Tories so rotten at everything?" Generally speaking we really don't like politicians, especially when they make such obvious faux "engage with the people" stunts as this so what he got was more along these lines:

• "If a train leaves Paddington at 1136, carrying 200 commuters, what time will the RMT bring it to a standstill?"
• "Where did Ed Balls touch you? Show us on the doll."
• "Was Brutus an honourable man? Discuss."
• "If you fell through a crack in the universe would anyone notice?"
• "Lenin or Trotsky?"

And my favourite, which I retweeted "How would you solve the Kobayashi Maru scenario"

After answering six or seven questions and managing to lie on one of them (he claimed to have not voted for Labours' planned 90 day detention whereas he supported it fully) he buggered off, probably to fire the SpAd who came up with the idea in the first place.

And speaking of firing brings me nicely along to the second train wreck of the evening. my guilty pleasure^** of the schadenfreude which is "The Apprentice". Now if you've never watched this show what happens is that they pick twelve or so of the most loathsome "young enterpeneurs" they could corrall into a cage and then arm them with knives and the one with the most sticking out of their back at the end of the programme is declared the loser and is ritually humiliated by a man who gave the world shitty cheap lousy sounding HiFi systems and the em@ailer - a device so utterly pointless you really do wonder how nobody actually said "Er Alan... about this souped up telephone, you do realise that it's a pile of crocodile shit don't you?" to him at any point.

Anyway last nights episode was poetry in motion as one of the more loathsome charcoal-grey suited cretins, the one they are bigging up into the series bad-guy steered his team to spectacular defeat by not only creating a magazine more offensive and patronising than the rival's team mid 90's eaa "Loaded" rip off but proceeded to cock up the "sell ad space" bit of the task by failing to do that most basic of business activities, negotiating on the price. "He's gone," says Mrs Dragon as he gets hauled into the boardroom and poked by Lordsugar, "He has to go, his mag idea, his design, he lost the sale"

"Not a chance, he's here to the interview stage, he's this season's Tre Azam, the series baddy, they'll keep him in"

And they did. The Apprentice is a pure entertainment show, they don't even make a pretence at it being fair and you know damned well the winner has been selected before the cameras begin to roll on episode one.

Oh and the real kicker this year is that Lordsugar (I preferred Siralan) has had enough of employing the winning numpty and this year is giving the winner £250,000 to start their own business. But even accounting for the fact that £250,000 isn't actually a whole load of money these days to start any sort of business that needs any kind of capital spend up front it's not all cold, hard cash because the quarter million is in "cash and value" and I'm guessing the "value" is several hours of Lordsugars time (charged at 500 quid an hour) so the winner can benefit from his massive business brain.

The winner might want to take a long hard look at that e-m@ailer before he or she uses that "value" part of the deal


* Special Adviser: basically some young spotty gopher who one day wants to become a real politician and make shitloads of money off mine and your backs. They should all be rounded up and shot.

** Along with the Eurovision Song Contest, riding bareback and collecting 80's era digital synthesizers.

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