Love Janice.
Orwell is my hill to die on.
Silencing of free speech, whether it be on the right or the left, inhibits the power to hold people to account because censorship is a top down power that is ultimately enforced by the state.
We strangely have a situation at present where the law is being misapplied to the general population through institutions over stepping the limits of the law, but the most elite in government are actually above the law when it comes to their behaviour and are not held to account because the culture mob are too busy hunting witches for their heretic beliefs rather than focusing on real abuses of power.
The only ones outside this bubble are those financially able to fight and protect themselves by arguing to apply the law as it actually is rather than how others have written it.
It's a perfect 'divide and conquer' situation for Oligarchy. And yet professed socialist Bragg is too stupid to see this.
Freedom of speech includes the right to be morally wrong but this means that we do not give unaccountable and unlimited power outside the limits of law to censor either.
Where we have failed most is in the unnoticed ebbing away of justice, where the powerless are not equal in law because of economics. This means we are unable to enforce our rights via the channels we are supposed to, meaning that our rights on paper have little practical meaning to the poorest. The erosion of the justice system has been sanctioned directly by the state by austerity and the rise of the idea of the 'undeserving' and ideas of how if you do wrong you should lose your rights.
It is a complete loss of all understanding about human rights, equality and liberalism being centred on the very concept of the truth, the pursuit of the truth, the promotion of the truth as what enlightens us and makes us progress as a society. And how this ultimately frees society from its prejudices.
This is what upsets me most about the Liberal Democrats and Labour. They are working against the very principles upon which they were founded. It just leaves the Right to colonise and exploit the fact that middle class managers are rewriting law and justice outside the channels of power, how the poorest are most vulnerable to this power and leaves them to be exploited and how the most powerful are then left to run riot at everyone's expense.
The fact no one seems to see it is the most upsetting this.
The idea that the truth will set you free, is no longer true in the UK. It is the foundation rock of justice. It simply no longer exists.