Knee-jerk revelation

I am not the only one to be alarmed and offended by the response to the BNP trial result. That Nick Griffin was even tried is faintly absurd (though it pales by comaprison to the gay horse, racially discriminatory revving and threatening jelly baby cases), that he was found not guilty is reassuring. At least juries are not prepared to find people guilty of crimes because they dislike them personally, or their opinions. Sadly the Chancellor (and presumably next Prime Minister) as well as a potential future Deputy are not so liberal.

For Brown to rush into the public sphere and demand that, because Griffin's beliefs are 'out of the mainstream' there should be 'no place for them' and that the legislation would be looked at agin with a view to criminalising it is concerning on two separate levels. The first is the constitutional one. A man is found not guilty in a court of law after due trial by his peers. Since the Chancellor of the Exchequer dislikes the result he all but pledges to change the law in response. Concerning. His rationale: that opinions that are out of the mainstream should be criminalised? Deeply alarming.

Compare this to Margaret Beckett's statement that people who are sceptical about the science of climate change are like holocaust deniers and should be banned from the media? Exactly when did the baalnce in this country change from a liberal democracy to some bizarre thought-crime homogenised hole?