I heard on the news this morning that a man from Cheshire has been jailed for four years for using facebook to try to incite a riot. Now, is it me or does that sound like a very dangerous precedent? If you think about it, we must all now be much more careful about what we say on facebook, twitter, and on blogs. I’ve written on here before now about my hatred of David CaMoron; I may have even called for his assassination once or twice. Of course, I’d never seriously want the guy dead, but I’d claim I do to be provocative and as a display of my anger and frustration with him. Now, though, we can’t state such things for fear of risking a jail sentence. In effect, then, this judgement acts like a censor – we no longer have the ability to write entirely as we want to, but must now be careful that we don’t incite acts of violence, intentionally or otherwise. Thus this Tory government has began to erode our civil liberties, using the riots as an excuse. The riots may have worried us all, but the way in which they are now being used by the government is even more worrying.