Think of the horrors that censorship and repression of free speech have engendered over the years. Genocides were swept under the carpet, whole ways of life were eradicated, uncountable lives ruined by imprisonment just for criticising those in power. I try to remember every day that it was as little as twenty years ago that countries we now count as members of the European Union suffered under such a repressive yoke. But even in the democratic west, this cancer still figures large, a boot stamping on a human face forever. You might sit there, comfortable in your Guardian-and-polenta lifestyle, subdued by the television and videos of kittens on YouTube but on the front lines people are still throwing and breaking themselves against forces that would deny them these basic articles of civic faith.
“What are the limits of freedom of speech ?”
A fully moderated HYS is a good place to start for one.
Cyrus P Turntable, At The Races
The irony of the BBC asking is there free speech on a forum where they moderate (ie censor) the comments does not escape me.
steve thornhill
I find it highly ironic that the BBC pretends theres a debate on this subject, considering the organistion has been at the forefront of introducing “thought crime” in the name of “political correctness”
Michael P
One day, tovarisches, the sun will gaze bright and proud upon your names, carved – by the trembling hand of a cowardly HYS moderator, appropriately re-educated – upon a hundred foot-high monument to your sacrifice standing where the CRE now stands. From the Ford Focus-sized eye of Paul Dacre’s image will drip a tear made of the biggest diamond we could pry out of a dead African’s hand. But the path will be hard. Not all of us will make it. But know this, that those who fall on the march will cheer us from White Heaven. Well, when the Celestial Black and White Minstrel Show isn’t on, anyway.
24 Responses to “Fight The Power”
“what are the limits of free speech”
you can’t call a policeman a cunt, beyond that, its open to interpretation
You can still call them cunts, but you can’t express yourself by photographing them any more.
But ignore that, photography is for gays and arty-farty dolescum, the big problem is that you can’t say “wog” on HYS.
Kelvin. I don’t think you realise what you are unleashing here.
If Cyrus P Turntable HAD been allowed to tell his gollywog joke then the very tenets of our society might have collapsed and we’d be in anarchy.
No one can ever see these people’s theories. They put Copernicus, Marx and Darwin in the shade. If just one of them escaped the moderators eye then we’d face global revolution.
Maybe you can’t photograph them incase they are standing near children, and as we all know, anyone taking photos of children must be a paedo. Of course by association, the copper in the photo would also be a paedo and thus facing the dilema of how to arrest himself and beat himself up in the van.
I’ve been a way for a while, i’ve missed the HYS attitude on paedos. and where the fuck did Gary Glitter go, has he still not been hung by the ballsac?
what is this country coming too.
Funny that. I had polenta for lunch today. It’s like you know me.
I like polenta. But only when I’ve run out of wallpaper paste.
@Fucko the clown. When last seen, Gary Glitter had thrown himself from the QEII bridge in an apparent suicide attempt and was clinging to a small bouy.
surely that was clinging to a small boy given his previous?
I’ve seen a picture of polenta. It looked yellow and bollocks.
Does it taste yellow and bollocks?
Not when you turn it into corn bread.
Say what you will about the poor, but they sure know how to eat!
Polenta is the worst case of false advertising I’ve ever seen. It lurks, looking like delicious custard, waiting for the unsuspecting diner, possibly on his first visit to the charmingly restored Victorian townhouse in an up-and-coming area of East London with the rattan floor matting and the electric oven that looks like an aga, to take a mouthful of what appears to be delicious yolky dessert. And then it pounces, filling his mouth with cold, gritty effluent that tastes like a corn cob’s chilled diarrhoea and cannot be swallowed. The polenta, now safely ensconced in its victim, laughs heartily as he tries to extricate himself from the conversation about how property prices aren’t falling as fast as you’d think from the papers so he can eject it into the toilet bowl. Silly human, didn’t you know the host’s husband and the babysitter are doing blow in the toilet because “it’s just like being back at freshers’ week”? And even if you manage to dispose of me in the garden, foolish optimist, you’ll walk straight back in to a table full of cleared plates a eight pairs of redbrick-educated eyes demanding to know whether something was wrong with that, we bought it from this charming little man at Borough Market you know, it was the best I’ve ever tasted! No. Fuck off Fearnley-Whittingstall, go and kill me a chicken and feed me some proper food and not this smug fuel for people who wouldn’t know real flavour if it arseraped them.
Is my experience of it, anyway.
I bought some polenta once. I didn’t know how to cook it, and after I finally worked out how, well, my experience was largely the same as Kelvin’s except without the babysitter or the offending my guests.
I once met this woman at a party and she said she’d eaten her own polenta.
Someone saying wog isn’t going to destroy a whole society. You dont need a Martin Luther King or a Rosa Parks to stop a couple of racist jokes. The over protection of minorities in this country is going to adversely affect them in the long run.
i wouldn’t even eat my own polenta, let alone that of a new mom.
” Someone saying wog isn’t going to destroy a whole society. You dont need a Martin Luther King or a Rosa Parks to stop a couple of racist jokes. The over protection of minorities in this country is going to adversely affect them in the long run.”
No, sorry, I don’t get it. Did you leave the punchline out? Of course, the minority that really needs protection is the lower middle clas white straight male who reads the Daily Mail. Think of their daily struggle against the evils of not being allowed to scream “DARKIE” at passing strangers and their frustration at not being able to give their womenfolk a damn good pasting when they need it. These brave men should be given special protection, maybe in a reservation. With barbed wire.
Wot iz potenla aneway? Why oh why cant’ peepul eat proper english grub like currey, burger’s, Piza adn kebab’s, eh?
Soon the EUSSR wil ban it for being un-eurupeen. British food for britihs worker’s!
You couldn’t make it up!!!
More on the joyous Mr Turvy – wasn’t he going on about his lengthy army career and/or business interests ?
Yet, he’s only done A Levels in 1999 ?
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I remember discussing this very same thing when I was studying A-Level Computer Science, a decade ago. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now.
Can’t we discuss a topic that is actually relevant to current affairs, instead of this distraction??
Topsy Turvy, England, United Kingdom
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True. To really erode a society you have to say something more like “salaam alaykum,” right?
As far as I’m aware, there is an ‘Occam’s Razor’ test to demonstrate that unlimited free speech is impossible and it has to have certain practical limits. The oft-quoted example is to imagine one runs into a crowded theatre and shouts… “WHO WANTS TO HELP ME LYNCH THIS GODDAMN NIGGER?”
Not that I wish to defend Topsy Turvy in any way, but he could just have taken the Computer Science A-level out of general interest (or a mistaken belief it would make him employable) long after leaving school.
He’s still a guillemots gash if that helps.
I was looking at people fighting to defend us from the totalitarian state that is NuLiarbore and found this delusionist:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/profile.jspa?userID=8126132&edition=1&ttl=20090217141324
Best of all I saw this from months ago, which made me guffaw:
Oh how you must have laughed. Laughed laughed laughed. I’m laughing now as I read about your laugh. What a laugh.
Kelvin you are hilarious!
I love the fact that each HYS person has written that thinking that it is an original idea… Bless ‘em.