I was watching the breakfast news as usual earlier, when a quite unsettling item caught my attention, particularly as a blogger. According to the beeb, “The wife of a Conservative councillor who was jailed after she posted an online rant about migrants is due to have her appeal against the sentence heard on Thursday. [ie today]” Lucy Connolly had been jailed for 28 days after apparently tweeting that she thought a hotel housing asylum seekers should be burned down. If you ask me, of course, twenty-eight days in jail is nowhere near enough punishment for such a vile, disgusting xenophobe: being married to a Tory councillor, she obviously thought she had a right to voice such reactionary, inflammatory tosh with impunity. I find such arrogance sickening of course, and my gut reaction was that she had no right whatsoever to complain.

The obvious problem is, that raises all kinds of issues about the freedom of speech. I naturally believe that anyone should have the right to say whatever they want, online or off, no matter how disgusting or abhorrent other people may find it. Here on my blog, I’m sure I have written things plenty of people may disagree with over the years – does that mean I should go to jail? What would happen if one day I wrote an entry accusing Kier Starmer of raping chipmunks – does that constitute defamation? Thus as vile as any sensible, intelligent person will find what this woman tweeted, her right to voice her opinions must take priority. The moment we start censoring people, the moment we start putting people in jail just for voicing their opinions online, we all loose something extremely valuable.

Of course I am torn by this: I cannot deny that a large part of me thinks that what this repugnant woman tweeted has no place in modern public discourse. We see it more and more: such barely literate morons think it’s cool or trailblazing to go against the politically correct grain, resulting in a slide further and further to the reactionary right. It seems to be becoming fashionable to discriminate, belittle and bully, as people try to imitate so-called online ‘influencers’ like Andrew Tale. People are also feeling more and more pressure to attract attention online, resulting in ever more wild, distasteful things being spouted in an effort to stand out and get noticed. No doubt such factors were what was behind this woman’s vile tweet: I’m not sure she deserved punishing for them or not, but the fact that she has been clearly sets an unsettling precident.