Banner
any day today rss X

News and Comment January 2015

Index: 2009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024

13 January - Je suis Charlie

HypocritesYou will probably recognise the picture from the front page of yesterday’s newspapers. If you don’t, clicking for the larger version may help. It's our Prime Minister and many of his counterparts from around the world supposedly marching in front of two million or so French citizens demonstrating their right to free speech following the appalling massacres in their city. Except they weren’t marching with those two million, they were posing in a side street for the benefit of the cameras. For security reasons it probably made good sense.

But what a bunch of hypocrites! With only a couple of exceptions the countries represented would lock up anyone who published something like Charlie Hebdo. In Saudi Arabia they give bloggers 1,000 lashes, in Iran they hang them, in Britain they imprison them and in Bexley they threaten arrest. In one infamous case false charges were brought against a Bexley blogger.


TweetI was even taken aside by a senior Bexley detective in the presence of my MP and given a warning about referring to the leader of Bexley council as The Fat Controller (from the Thomas the Tank Engine books).

In Scotland the police announced that they monitor Twitter for anyone who might cause offence. Have they really got so little to do?

David Cameron is one big hypocrite and he is far from being alone.


TweetIronically James Cleverly is in Braintree as I write to see if they will have him as their Parliamentary Candidate for May 2015. He’s another champion of free speech. He told Elwyn Bryant some years ago that Bexley is Bonkers was “well out of order”. I hope he got the job, it would be good to see the back of him as Bexley and Bromley’s London Assembly Member.

P.S. It would appear that Braintree was suitably suckered.

 

Return to the top of this page
Bonkers is a cookie free zone. Not a single one