Freedom of speech

While he was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, Tony Judt found the breath to educate those who believe they could ameliorate pain with soft words and bans on 'inappropriate' language. “You describe everyone as having the same chances when actually some people have more chances than others. And with this cheating language of equality deep inequality is allowed to happen much more easily.” Worry about whether you, or more pertinently anyone you wish to boss about, should say 'person with special needs' instead of 'disabled' or 'challenged' instead of 'mentally handicapped' and you will enjoy a righteous glow. You will not do anything, however, to provide health care and support to the mentally and physically handicapped, the old or the sick.

If you’re reading this on Firefox, you can rest assured that your custom is not going towards any hateful, disgusting, evil people who might disagree with you on something. Not now that Mozilla boss Brendan Eich has been forced to quit for supporting Proposition 8, the Californian bill opposing gay marriage. According to the BBC: ‘Mozilla's executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker announced the decision in a blog post. "Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn't live up to it," she wrote. "We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it's because we haven't stayed true to ourselves. "We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started.

What form do you reckon the government’s consultation on cigarette packaging is going to take? Given that health minister Jane Ellison has said that the government’s intention is clear and the consultation short, I rather think it’s going to be like the gay marriage consultation – which ignored half a million objections to the thing in principle, and just focused on asking how to implement a decision already made. So this business of seeking out the views of ‘stakeholders’ is, I rather think, entirely cosmetic. I don’t know whether you could call me a stakeholder because I’m not exactly a smoker – I’ve never got the hang of inhaling – but I do like a nice cigarette packet.

Index on Censorship defends free speech and debate for all – so we defend Nick Cohen's right to write a blog highly critical of Index. The problem is, however, that what he wrote was wrong, both in broad outline and finer detail. As a consequence Nick threatens to undermine the very cause that he claims to hold most dear. Index is not ‘falling apart’ nor is it even ‘in crisis’. In common with many other organisations in the charity sector it found itself, last year, facing a shortfall in funding. There are complex reasons for this but one of them, ironically, may be due to the very opposite problem to the one Nick suggests.

Index on Censorship, once home to the most important defenders of free speech in Britain, is falling apart. Seventeen full-time staff members in place when Kirsty Hughes, a former European Commission bureaucrat, took over as chief executive in 2012 have been fired or resigned. Among the recipients of redundancy notices are Padraig Reidy who was Index’s public face and its most thoughtful writer, and Michael Harris, who organised the lobbying to reform England’s repressive libel laws, the most successful free speech campaign since the fight to overturn the ban on Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the 1960s.

A number of interesting things have happened recently: The Law Society has provided legal guidance to ensure that Muslims in Britain can have their wills judged according to Sharia. BBC Newsnight hosted an in-studio row between three Muslims over whether one Muslim should be allowed to say or do anything that is deemed religiously insensitive by any other Muslim. Majority opinion seemed to be ‘no’. Then there has been huge excitement that, after decades during which tens of thousands of girls in Britain were genitally mutilated, charges have for the first time been brought against some suspected perpetrators of this horrific crime. Just in case anyone is lost in all this – this is Britain in 2014. So what do these things have in common?

Just to ring the changes, I’ve written about the BBC and political correctness for the mag this week. Yeah, yeah, I know – you haven’t heard enough about that subject. But one of the writers of the 1970s situation comedy It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum has complained that aunty isn’t showing the series any more as a consequence of political correctness. My suspicion is that it isn’t being reshown because it was humourless unmitigated crap, but there we are. The bigger issue, though, is the one raised by the excellent (for a Blairite) Dan Hodges. As it happens, I was invited onto this show and now wish I had accepted. The irony of it all seems entirely lost on the BBC. Thank god they’re going to get rid of the channel entirely.

I like Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake of the Sunday Times. I will not pretend they are anything like close friends or family. I doubt if I see them more than once a year. But before you read any further you should know about our acquaintance. It is important for journalists to declare their interests. Readers must be free to make up their own minds, even if I believe – especially if I believe – that a friendship or family bond could never influence my writing. In a few days, the Sunday Times will apply for the right to appeal against a decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat from July last year. Peter Cruddas, a former co-treasurer of the Conservative Party had sued the Sunday Times after it sent undercover reporters – Calvert and Blake – to interview him.

BBC3’s Free Speech programme is a good example of why the channel deserves to be shut down. Aimed at giving a voice to young people it is endlessly dumbing-down, seeks validity through instant Twitter reactions and all in all is a very degrading programme to appear on. I know because a couple of years ago I was on the first series and spent an evening at an ice rink in Doncaster debating the key issues of the day with a ‘Page 3 model’ and Owen Jones. Even now it makes me shiver. Anyhow – last night the show came from outside the Birmingham Central mosque. The panel included Mehdi Hasan and Julie Burchill’s friend, Paris Lees, who complained in the early part of the show that nobody had given her a job.

West Midlands Police’s announcement that it had ordered the closure of the blog and Twitter account of Inspector Michael Brown - 'the mental health cop' – has caused astonishment and anger in equal measure. Thousands of grateful patients, police officers and doctors have followed Brown online ever since he realised that he had had only two hours of mental health training. He decided to remedy his ignorance in 2011. He went about finding ways to cut deaths in custody by 'providing officers with information about how to handle mental health calls and to manage clinical risks'. Numerous prizes, including the Mind Digital Media award, followed. Everyone loved him apart from the Corporate Communications Department at the West Midlands Police.

When I first read, many months ago, that the notorious US climate scientist Michael Mann was suing the notorious right-wing bastard Mark Steyn for defamation, I admit that I felt a little piqued. Obviously a libel trial is not something any sane person would wish to court; and naturally I’m a massive fan of Steyn’s. Nevertheless, after all the work I’ve dedicated over the years to goading Mann, I found it a bit bloody annoying that Steyn — a relative latecomer to the climate change debate — should have been the one who ended up stealing all my courtroom glory. What made me doubly jealous was that this was a case Steyn was guaranteed to win.

The other day Mumsnet asked whether I would talk to its audience about my Spectator pieces (here and here) on the universities’ plans to authorise the segregation of men and women on campuses. Why not? I thought. Mumsnet has a large and interesting audience. More than five million people visit each month, and politicians beg to go on to a site that is a successful online publisher, rather than some cowboy outfit. As the Financial Times said in a profile of Mumsnet's CEO Justine Roberts, ‘It is owned by the founders,  staff and a “couple of mates” – and so any pressure to make more money comes from within.