Martin McKee Just Doesn't Get This Liberty Thing

The redhead has posted a fine filleting of Martin "bubblemug" McKee's most recent extremist cockwaffle in the BMJ, I can heartily recommend that you go read it.

However, I think it's useful to add that he also seems to have learning difficulties when it comes to  the concept of freedom of speech on Twitter.

For those who advocate for healthy public policies, social media are both a blessing and a curse. They offer a means of communicating instantly to large audiences. Yet they also offer the opportunity for those seeking to undermine public health to undermine you.

Yes, this is the very essence of freedom of speech Martin. You and your pals have the freedom to pump out your nonsensical garbage and promote it on social media, and those who disagree have the same freedom to object to it via the same medium. It's how freedom of speech works, it's a two way mechanism, d'you see?

If you don't understand that basic tenet of freely accessible social media, perhaps you shouldn't be on there.

Your words are taken out of context and twisted. You are insulted and abused on Twitter.

Completely different to McKee's approach, of course. He'd prefer to twist, insult and abuse in the integrity-free, paywalled, lefty tabloid BMJ.

Some seem to be deeply troubled individuals, who in the past might have spent their days on a soap box in the marketplace, holding forth to anyone who was prepared to listen to them.

Yes, and very useful those individuals in the past were too, I'm surprised committed socialist McKee is so dismissive.

The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for workers' protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men. 

Although many of its regular speakers are non-mainstream, Speakers' Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and William Morris. Its existence is frequently upheld as a demonstration of free speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, although always at the risk of being heckled by regulars. Lord Justice Sedley, in his decision regarding Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999), described Speakers' Corner as demonstrating "the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear." The ruling famously established in English case law that freedom of speech could not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to "the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such speech did not tend to provoke violence", and that the right to free speech accorded by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights also accorded the right to be offensive. Prior to the ruling, prohibited speech at Speakers' Corner included obscenity, blasphemy, insulting the queen, or inciting a breach of the peace.

In the late 19th century, for instance, a combination of park by-laws, use of the Highways Acts and use of venue licensing powers of the London County Council made it one of the few places where socialist speakers could meet and debate.

Once again, we "deeply troubled individuals" find ourselves firmly on the side of the angels - with history in our corner too - while McKee prefers to ally himself (accurately, as it goes) with those in the past who would bully, censor, disenfranchise, abuse human rights and deny political debate.

You can read the rest of his incoherent explanation of how - because a book was published in New Zealand - everyone who disagrees with him in the UK is paid by the tobacco industry here.