Cllr. Gavin Ayling

Many times I have been tempted to write something that is illegal just because it is.

There should be no limits on freedom of speech. If a Councillor from Hove wants to wrongly suggest that all gay men are paedophiles, he should lose his seat at the next election, but he shouldn’t be hauled before a Magistrates Court. If Ann Robinson wants to suggest that Welsh people are boring or if David Cameron wants to describe English people as ignorant, they should be able to without being interviewed by the police.

If a girl wears a T-shirt saying “Bollocks to Blair”, she should. And if I want to say that all sheep are secretly big marshmallows, I should be allowed to.

When Little Britain shows people being treated poorly by others our reaction is shock that someone (a character in the show) would say such things. Our shock is because we really have been brainwashed about political correctness.

Political correctness is absolutely a good thing in principle. Saying nasty things to people is clearly silly and won’t lead to a cohesive and happy society. But this is about what “should be”, not what “must be”; this is about what we’d like, not what should be law.

Amnesty International is probably more concerned about Iranian, Chinese and Zimbabwean bloggers than the English, but there’s a problem here too.

Comments for this post are here

Time for some lazy blogging:

I generally find Samizdata a little heavy going so I only dip in there from time-to-time. So if you’re the same as me, there are a few recently which really cannot be missed.

When Johnathan Pearce asked Which law would you like to break? Michael Farris’ excellent answer was: “I would love to break the law of unintended consequences but there would probably be a down side I hadn’t counted on…”

The folly of always voting for the lesser evil is an excellent post by Perry De Havilland which raises some important questions. Do read it.

And finally, in reference to my last post about Michael Crichton some more people have noticed that having the audacity to question the ‘truth’ is risky.

The BBC’s recommendation feature on “Have Your Say” allows the public’s opinion to be heard in a public place without BBC/political interference. Surprising the result, No?

A friend lent me Michael Crichton’s State of Fear.

I don’t want to say too much about it because, I have discovered since I finished reading it yesterday, people don’t want to hear what you have to say when you’re talking about it. I might be sounding a little evasive here, but that’s necessary. Crichton provides links etc. for some of the claims his characters make and, to be quite honest, it’s a little perplexing.

What troubles me most is that a quick look around the internet finds sensationalist propaganda like: “We must act now to stop climate change”. How exactly are we going to do that when even the most scurrilous self-publicist knows that global warming is not a pure human-caused (anthropological) event. Global warming describes the warming of the globe. Climate change is something that has happened since we first had an atmosphere — why would we want to stop it?

I am not naive enough to think that Crichton doesn’t have an agenda, but I urge you to read the book and at least see something of the alternative argument that is never made on the MSM.

I’m afraid there will be no apologies for sharing this video with you. I think it is entirely appropriate and in the public interest.

The Hamster’s Dragster crash video:

Hat-tip to: The England Project

I have received private comments on a post I made the other day about an immaculate conception in Vietnam. When I normally make a post about atheism or the truth that if there is a God, he’s not worth worshipping, I get unreasonable numbers of comments. Even though, apparently, society is getting more and more secular, those who are religious are getting more and more intolerant of their religion being mocked. So I must assume that because it was in a “Gav’s Brief Thoughts” box it was mostly missed.

Joy of Curmudgeonry has an excellent Fewtril up today which is a succinct answer to the question: X is amazing, how can it not be created by God? The truth is there might be a God, and there may not. You, my loyal and in some cases new, readers will have your own beliefs and while that doesn’t affect me I’ll let it pass. I am not an evangelist for non-theism.

But you’ll also know I am a strong believer in freedom of speech. I should be allowed, were I so insensitive, to stand on a street corner and proclaim my beliefs. I should be allowed, through the new media and old, to tell people what I think without fear of state-sponsored censure. I should expect, if I were to say unpopular things, to lose an election and I should expect people not to like me; but I must be allowed to say them.

I think most people would agree with that. But where does that line end? If I were to call a friend a name (whether it is true or not) I may expect to lose that friend. And if I call a stranger a name, I should expect them to be unhappy with that too. But if I criticise an opposition politician (whether intelligently and accurately or not) should the media get involved? Should the media investigate the item or should the media stick only to facts?

The news is unable, due to time constraints and competing stories, to give much more than the headlines of a particular story. If a complicated scientific report is released in Nature, Science or any other journal and if the broadcasters consider it interesting, then the equivalent of a headline will be given to the public (see also yesterday’s post).

Headlines or truth?

But how often does the public get the wrong idea from that? How many times has a broadcast implied that some scientific breakthrough is around the corner or that the result of a particular study was D when it was actually somewhere between A and G? It has been said many times before, and it will be said, I suspect, forever, that the media has responsibilities and that it does not manage them well.

I have an alternate suggestion:

Rather than reporting the headlines or trying to explain complex discoveries etc. in a too-short period, the news should just advise its readers/listeners/viewers that a new scientific paper has been released and explain to people how to get a hold of it. Spin in politics has created the mess that the UK and EU are in right now, and it could be argued that spin in science has misled many thousands of others. But there is a difference: Spin in politics affects everyone only because there is no alternative — I know very few people who care enough about politics to know enough to be educated in their opinions.

But it is orders of magnitude worse when we are talking about science; whether we are discussing evolution, global warming or SARs. The media must not mislead or even, if their intentions are pure, try and extrapolate.

Alan Drew (co-founder of Prison Works with the hilarious John East) writes today about the environmental benefit that would be brought about by replacing aging aircraft with modern, more efficient aircraft.

You cannot but admire the conscientious way he goes through the data that eventually shows the government’s headline grabbing, but deeply flawed policy for what it is: rubbish.

It’s political TV for those who hate the BBC’s bias in both directions!

This is the future of TV… It really is.

But the Devil’s Kitchen has some alternate observations.

As probably many other Councillors have, I today received a manifesto from The New Party.

The UK has a major problem with new political parties. Inertia amongst the membership of the other parties (and those who are not members of a party) means that new parties must have some major backing to make any headway at all. UKIP is the only recent new party to have gained any sort of significant political power and the last party to start and gain power from the incumbent two is the Labour Party.

So it is interesting that The New Party is offering free membership; it is interesting that The New Party introduction letter is written by a former Labour Councillor; and when you read the detail you can see a bizarre mix of Labour’s social ideals alongside genuine free market economics to reform, positively, the NHS, welfare, pensions and education. In truth, the economic section shines.

But there are problems:
1) Their policy on drugs is out of date and will, inevitably, fail as badly as the other parties’ policies have. Cameron’s hinted at a more relaxed drugs policy and this is right.
2) The Party notes the ideological and practical problems that Planning regulations introduce. But their solution is odd — very odd. They would allow local Councils to set up Planning-free zones. I don’t think I can say anything helpful about this policy but it strikes me as a half-measure. It would be better to limit planning authorities’ powers in some areas (and strengthen in others)? Actually, in my opinion, the single most important area of planning reform needed is a reduction in the number of appeals processes available to people — it should be simpler and much, much quicker.
3) The lovely glossy manifesto completely ignores devolution and the fundamental constitutional problems that it has created.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great policies in there — some that Cameron would do well to incorporate into a radical first term’s manifesto — but there doesn’t seem to be a single message. I may be wrong here, but I suspect each section was written by different people completely independently of the other sections. The “wills” and “woulds” are particularly jarring.

If you agree with the Manifesto of The New Party you should join it — inertia is a result of people not doing what they should. But you may want to wait for Cameron’s policies to know whether that party reflects your opinions more closely than do the Conservatives. I strongly suspect the Conservatives policies will be excellent with only a very few mistakes (like the Barnet formula’s continuation etc).

Peter Luff makes himself seem daft when he says “When you go over the top like this, you bring all of us in politics into disrepute.”

It’s a bit of light-hearted fun… just not very funny:

I thought about using the Comedy category but changed my mind!

Terror raid receives no news headlines shock: West Brom Blog has more.

The argument for secret courts was dealt a blow today.

I understand the need to protect intelligence sources etc, but if MI5 et al cannot be trusted, as is clearly the case, then they must not be allowed without some form of citizen oversight.

It has previously been shown that if the obvious cause (Joseph) can be discounted, the child born must be the son of God: And so it is in Vietnam.

In a letter to Yorkshire Today James Bovington of Leeds said:

“The Scots and the Welsh want to have their economic cake and eat England’s.”

Excellent stuff. If you agree (actually, it’s a fact so agreeing or disagreeing is moot), join the CEP and stop the subsidisation of Scotland and Wales’ socialism.