The right to free speech is an obsession of you yanks, Bill. Over here, most of us not on the far right don't see that as a cherished right at all. We see it as both a right and a responsibility and we see limits. You simply can't just say what you want. If what you say isn't measured and carefully considered, if it's hurtful, hateful or prejudicial, you have forfeited your right to say what you want. This is a massive problem with this forum. The moderators here, who don't actually act as moderators at all, seem scared of shutting up even the most hateful kind of speech. In the last couple of days, two of them are actually indulging in it themselves. The upshot is that decent (yet combative: bejaysus, not exactly a mortal sin...) people are openly insulted (currently by one man, Iains, and, unlike those "mods," I'm not scared to name his name). Now I don't know about you, Bill, but I personally don't care to be insulted openly on a public forum. You keep yourself carefully off the front line, as it were, a fine strategy for avoiding insults, and I recognise that as a valid ploy. But decent and lusty political discussion requires heads above parapets. Political discussion walking on eggshells is a total con. But lusty discussion shouldn't invite "shaw/backwardsman/little jimmie" (and I wouldn't blame you had you not seen any of that, but it happens. A lot). Yes we can avoid it by caving in to our resident idiot-troll. Of course. But we love talking and we are human beings, and I wouldn't take his insults in the pub or in my house, so why here?