Three
« Previous | Main | Next »

Free Speech - Episode Two Round-Up

Post categories: ,

James Emtage James Emtage | 17:58 UK time, Thursday, 5 April 2012

On set at Free Speech

Well well well… Free Speech was KICK-ING OFF last night.

In the red corner, Owen Jones, who spoke up for mercy.

In the blue corner, Douglas Murray, who spoke up for justice.

In the yellow corner, Sway, who spoke up for tolerance.

And in the glowingly gorgeous corner, Nicola McLean, who spoke up for the real women of the land. We're hearin' ya sista!

But Free Speech is not just about hearing what the panel have to say. In each show we hear from a RANTER, which is someone from somewhere saying something about some stuff. Simples.

Alice Carder

This week's ranter was 23 year old Alice Carder, a Sheffield dweller turned Londoner, who had a good old rant about sex. Well, sex education to be precise. Here's what she had to say after the show…

There was one person who tweeted in saying that condoms should be free in shops. I'd never thought of this as a way to promote safer sex, but it seems like a good idea to me. After all, nobody likes going to the sexual health clinic to wait two hours in a crowded waiting room to tell someone you're having sex, so they'll hand over a bag of mixed size condoms. And much less so when you bump into your neighbour/teacher/mum's friend.

On crime and prison, I totally agreed with Sway when he said there's a difference between petty crimes, serial murderers and rapists. The latter need to be removed from society to protect us, but petty criminals will probably not be reformed by prison, as the reasons they offended in the first place will still exist when they come out.

82% of prisoners have a lower writing ability than the average 11 year-old, which I think is shocking. It seems poor education is a big factor in why people commit crime, along with boredom and unemployment. I think we need to look at the causes, not the symptoms, and try to prevent people offending in the first place.

Here's another rant of mine, this time it's about online sentencing and whether or not I think it was right to send Liam Stacey to prison after his racist tweets about Fabrice Muamba. Have a watch and let me know what you think in the comments below.

View the full blog post to access video content. In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit Webwise for full instructions

If you've got an issue you want to get off your chest, have a good old rant and tell us about it.

Leave your comments in space below, or jump on to or to see what other topics we're discussing.

Or if, like Alice, you fancy recording a rant then drop us a line and say hello and we'll say hello back. Promise ;-)

Free Speech is coming monthly from across the UK.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Really enjoyed Free Speech the other night - excellent stuff. Owen Jones is an absolute legend and his point about term 'Chav' being just a modern day way of society mocking the poor and blaming them for their own poverty was right on. Also enjoyed the 'rant' of Alice; both the one featured on the programme and the one here on your website. Hope she's a regular feature on your show? It's great to see some intelligent new talent on our screens. Not just a pretty face for a change!

  • Comment number 2.

    People's views on 'petty' crime tend to change when they fall victim to it!

    My aunt had just lost her husband and went to stay with her nephew. I was looking out for her flat when I discovered she'd been burgled. As luck would have it I succeeded in tracking down most of the antiques that were stolen and the police eventually caught the burglar (thanks to our local post mistress....now redundant:( ) but it devastated my 84 year old aunt. She couldn't face living in the flat and moved away from Hampshire to Suffolk to be near another nephew. I lost a dear relative as I used to look in on her most days and I still feel a sense of guilt about the whole thing. We never recovered my late uncle's Imperial Service medal or his RAF medals (duplicates aren't quite the same!) or the pieces of jewellery he gave my aunt over the years. They couldn't have children so it was even more poignant.

    Would prison be the solution to this sort of crime? Probably not ......but what do you do with them? The burglars were drug addicts stealing for the next fix and the real villain was the 'fence' who got away Scot free as the police believed his tale that the goods he had were part of a job lot bought at a car boot ......they later apologised to me when they 'suspected' he had been selling stolen property around the country in auctions ....and they had let him go despite being caught red handed. These people not only feed the addicts addiction, they bring untold grief to victims of burglary and give the antiques trade a dreadful name (I should know as I work in it!).

    We are too soft in this country....too many petty laws restricting personal freedom yet too many human rights for villains ......so no justice for victims and very little incentive for the crooks to repent their ways! The people who carry out these. Sorts of crime may need help.....how about sentencing the illiterate to GCSE/
    A levels! Encourage them to learn whilst inside by not letting them out till they pass a set number of subjects....they will need clear heads to succeed and will come out of nick with qualifications to get a job! As for the likes of the 'fence' ......they should send round the bailiffs and strip them of their possessions to understand what it feels like!

    Of course it couldn't happen because there are too many do-gooders who would see it as a breach of their human rights......but should you be treated as a human if you behave in an inhuman way towards society......?

  • Comment number 3.

    The criminal justice system doesn't care about your opinions that are probably uneducated and misinformed by the media the newspapers who do a lot of muck stirring.

    If you're really worried about people being victims consider statistics regarding car Accident's there are many invisible victims of political negligence?

    This topic like all the others is cheap entertainments it is a smokescreen mixed in with irrelevant unintelligent childish questions to provoked stereo typical answers.

    Inferior education is cheap to maintain a with a constant supply of frustrated slaves. In the meanwhile the media takes control of manipulating young people to buy into fashionable hype, actually most young people brainwashed.

    Free speech is a myth the comments on this web page are censored, although the newspapers can slander people and do as much lying and cheating as they like this includings spying on people they probably have more spies than MI5.

  • Comment number 4.

    I completely agree with Alice, regarding jail not being the answer for Liam Stacey. It goes without saying that his comments were appallingly offensive, but making an example of one ignorant person only scratches the surface of a much wider – not to mention, complex – problem (although, speaking of ignorance, one has to start questioning just how far we are willing to reference this as justification for someone like Stacey, who is seemingly intelligent enough to study biology at degree level...)

    A quick scan of the likes of Twitter and Youtube shows that there is an endless amount of offensive language and abuse being put out online, and not just racist either: let’s not forget that aside from the media coverage’s emphasis on the racial element to Stacey’s tweets, his bile also covered everything else from bestiality and rape, to necrophilia and incest. However, these tweets were almost by-the-by, in what became a “man jailed for racist tweet” story.

    In other words, if we are now living in a society where sentencing for offensive online comments is the way forward, we are faced with a very obviously grey area, in terms of what can be classed as moronic yet essentially harmless (judging by its lack of mention in the reporting, then Stacey’s childish tweet calling for someone to go r*pe their dog, perhaps?) and what can be outright classed as inciting hatred.

    The mind boggles... In the meantime though, here's to more young people like Alice discussing these issues on our screens, and with thought & intellect!

  • Comment number 5.

    To be honest Alice hit the nail on the head,jail is not the case for people like Liam and others. To stop ignorance comes from more education from families, and schooling. There needs to be more schemes in place for people like Liam Stacey to understand their actions cause harm not jail.

  • Comment number 6.

    Did you know about the crippling side effects Gardasil can have , only protects against one strain of HPV . Only get injected if you believe the lies.

More from this blog...

Categories

These are some of the popular topics this blog covers.

© 2014 The is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.