EVERYTHING I SAY IS RIGHT
THE DEEP AND PROFOUND THOUGHTS OF CITIZEN STUART, MANCHESTER BASED LIBERTARIAN, TARGET SHOOTER AND SPACE ENTHUSIAST. EVERYTHING I SAY ON THIS BLOG IS MY OPINION, AND NOT NECESSARILY THAT OF THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY.
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Robert Kilroy-Silk is by no means my favourite politician, he's a bit too arrogant, I think he was wrong to ditch UKIP and his general political outlook seems to be stuck in the 70s, but when he's right, he's right. In this week's Question Time, the subject came up of the acquittal of Nick Griffin (Spit!), and the implied threat by Gordon Brown to change the law so people could be convicted for criticising religion. In full oratorical mode, Kilroy gave the most impassioned defence of free speech of any politician I've heard for a while: "I fervently believe in free speech… It’s the foundation of our democracy and our civilisation and everything that we have that is important in this country… Without free speech you can’t find out whether Tony (McNulty, also on the panel) and I agree with each other and want to join the same party, you can’t form associations, you can’t form trade unions, you can’t form a Countryside Alliance, you can’t demonstrate, because you can’t know what other people are thinking if they’re not allowed to express their views freely, and we have to be able to express our views fearlessly and fervently about religion. I don’t like religions. I think they’re all false. I think they’re stupid. I think they’re full of fairy tales. I think they mislead people. I genuinely believe they’re the opium of the masses. Why should I not be allowed to say that? If I wasn’t, if people hundreds of years ago weren’t allowed to say that, we would have no progress, no science, no civilisation, and we would be back in the Star Chamber and the Inquisition and prosecuting Gallileo.” It's not very often that I see a politician on TV and agree with every word he says. The full programme can be seen on the BBC's Question Time page here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/default.stm
KILROY ON FREE SPEECH
18.11.06 22:12
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Mr Free Market / Website (30.11.06 12:51) I saw that as well ... good speech, shame about the perma-tan! |