Quacktors and Bureaucrats

What do people in power mean by freedom of speech? Especially politicians. Two recent events cause this to be one of my foremost mental preoccupations concerning culture in the past two days. The first being the suspension of Ken Livingstone from the mayorhood of London village, the second the imprisonment of neo-fascist David Irving, the self-professed 'historian', for denying the reality of the Holocaust.

Only one of these truly makes me laugh at the hypocrisy of our nation's leaders.

The incident which amazes me more is the mayor's detention. It's laughable that what he said (if you are not familiar with this - he told a Jewish reporter that he seemed more like a concentration camp guard ), while extremely foolish, should be taken so seriously that he's taken away from his work for a month.

Take for an example the affairs of John Major, David Blunkett, Robin Cook, Derry Irvine, and many other political figures whose actions have not cost them any significant loss of power, and not entailed any form of punishment other than their indiscretions being paraded in the media. And yet a man who, provoked, makes an insensitive remark receives a law-enforced reprimand.

Political Correctness is the new god of the aristocracy.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places"

- Ephesians 6v12