Monday 8 June 2009
It's your democratic duty to be offensive
Originally posted: July 25th 2008.
This is the title of an excellent 300 word article by the wonderful Germaine Greer in The Observer, 20th July '08. You can see it all if you google Observer, but here are a few tasters: 'Freedom of speech cannot be maintained in a society where nobody ever says anything subversive or inflamatory... As long as we fail to challenge the Americans about Guantanamo, Guantanamo affects us all... The most important legacy the British left the old Empire, now the disappearing and despised Commonwealth, is the package of British liberties, of which the most important is probably habeas corpus, by which no one is to be imprisoned without trial... When David Davis threw away his political career, the very newspapers whose liberties he was desperate to defend sneered at him, even though they must have realised that what they were witnessing was tantamount to self-immolation...So far has the erosion of British liberties already progressed that most people were not aware that Davis had anything to defend.'
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It has to be said that David Davies is just as inconsistent as anyone else. In his blog, he hands out praise to the execrable Jack Straw: "I pay tribute to Jack Straw MP for having the courage to point out that Muslim women who insist, or are told, to wear the veil could be exacerbating tensions within our community. Around a quarter of Jack Straw's constituents are Muslims so he must have a greater understanding of issues related to Islam than most. I hope that instead of condemning him out of hand he will be listened to with courtesy by people on all sides of the religious and political divide." (Nicely split participle there)
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