Skiing In Euroland, Free Speech and The House Of Lords.

08/02/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Skiing In Euroland
I’ve just come back from a week’s skiing in Kitzbuhel, Austria. Before anybody accuses me of being a ‘fat cat’ can I just say that I generally don’t take any other holidays all year, that I work extremely long and demanding hours, and that I save up in order to do this with a large group of old friends each winter. Even so, with our current economic climate, like everybody else I’m going to need to reassess if I can afford to do the same things next year. One thing I noticed while being forced to trade in the Euro is just how very expensive everything was. Not just because of our poor exchange rate, nor just because ski resorts tend to be expensive everywhere. The basic cost of everything for those in the Eurozone is just much higher than the amounts we pay for the same items. The friends who I travel with are, in general, quite a successful bunch, yet they were all talking about how the recession…
(or is it depression Gordon?)… is affecting them. Another thing I couldn’t help but notice is that everybody had an opinion on the current government and, with one single dedicated left-wing exception, those opinions were not pretty. These are not political people, not the sort of folk who are given to care about the government beyond their yearly tax bill. But the venom that was apparent when the Prime Minister’s name was mentioned was all too clear. That, even if there were no other evidence at all, would be enough to convince me that Labour are doomed. Hat tip to Dain Jensen, who organised this year’s trip and was responsible for it being such a success.

Free Speech
We’ve got Princes using racist language, Carol Thatcher called people ‘Golliwog’ and the press enjoying the whole furore with their usual gusto. I’ve been reading it all with increasing surprise that nobody ever seems to say anything that gets to the heart of the matter. The whole argument seems to be whether or not these public figures “should be allowed to” say things which may be deemed, by some, to be racially, religiously or ethnically-offensive. Frankly, I think this debate is missing the point. I don’t think that the government (or anybody else) has any right to tell people how they should speak, what they are ‘allowed’ to say, or what opinion they should have about others. We used to have a thing called Free Speech and it meant that, as long as you were not committing perjury, or inciting to violence or crime, your right to say what you felt (however unpleasant or unappealing to others) was protected by law. I believe in free speech passionately. Even when people are saying things I don’t accept, don’t want to hear, or find offensive. When the Powers That Be try to smother free speech they don’t change anyone’s mind, or win any sort of debate, they only shove the whole thing underground, while increasing their mindless ability to meddle with our lives. This assault on free speech, aka political-correctness, is an insidious and dangerous attack on our liberty. Having said that, Carol Thatcher is clearly an unpleasant, mindless idiot. Anybody who thinks that using the term ‘Golliwog’ to refer to somebody who is black, or partially-black, is the right thing to do is worthy only of contempt. And that’s the right way to deal with people who talk like this. Not by trying to enforce some kind of ‘right way to speak’ or by resorting to top-down control. But by trusting decent folk to take a look at the individual in question and realise just what sort of nasty piece of work they clearly are.

The House Of Lords
There are some dodgy folk in every arena in the world. It doesn’t matter where you go. There are always people involved for the wrong reasons, or in it for themselves, or who are seduced away from an honest path. The wrong thing to do is to presume that because there are one or two bad eggs, the whole carton is bad. The press love to tell you the dirty stories because that is what sells papers. But The House Of Lords does its job extremely well, despite ill-advised tampering by the most recent government, and is full of honest, decent people. This is true in every arena in the world. Let’s get rid of the bad eggs as and when we find them, without letting it colour our opinions in general. That’s a healthy way to deal with sleaze, isn’t it? I’m tired of letting opportunistic journalists force one knee-jerk concession after another. It doesn’t lead to improvement. It leads to chaos.

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