Mr Batsby defends freedom of speech

'It appears to be hateful and loathsome and vile to drunkenly utter on social media a racist taunt which you then withdraw, but it is fine to loudly and widely revel in the death of an octogenarian and hurl abuse of the most extreme kind at any who defend her legacy. And now it turns out that being from Liverpool places you in a special class affording you protection from nasty words, presumably because you can't handle them when they're coming your way.

Thus it was that Twitter stalwart @Old_Holborn  was by all accounts arrested yesterday (although this is yet to be confirmed at the time of writing) for tweeting harsh words about whiny Scousers, yet no such action seems to have been taken against any of the many that took it upon themselves to call for a mob to descend on his home and take the abuse from the merely verbal to the physical level.
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We even allow frequent Islamic protesters to loudly and fanatically call for the actual death of all non-Muslims, yet quickly deploy police to turn away those holding counter protests, denouncing those views as hate crimes.
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Arresting somebody for merely saying 'out loud' what a significant number of people are thinking is one step on the way to making opinions a legal matter.

And when we get to that point (this year, next year?) who will decide what opinions are acceptable? In fact, will we allow individual opinion - let's call it dissent - at all? I believe such things have been tried before and Winston Smith would easily recognise the sort of world that creates. What thought crimes have you committed today?'

More here http://batsby.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/to-death.html