When I logged on tonight, I was greeted with the following anoynomus message: Welcome back Peter H. Some of your recent posts to this forum have been reported to us for being unnecessarily offensive. Can we draw your attention to the statement below: If you find a comment you think is unnacceptable please report it - we will remove any comments that are deemed to be wilfully offensive". end of quote. tell me, whoever you are, what you mean by "unnecessarily offensive"? Does that mean that some things are acceptably offensive, or necessarily offensive? And who is to be the judge of what is acceptable or unacceptable offensiveness? You? And what do you then regard as acceptably offensive? That you call my MP a liar? Is that acceptability offensive? And if I tell you to grow up. That is unacceptably offensive? Why? Because you are offended that I should tell you to grow up? So, it is "acceptable" that you should insult my MP, which I find extremely offensive, but it is "unacceptable" that I should tell you to grow up because I find your arguments juvenile? The definiton therefore of acceptable or unacceptable is who said it and if you agree with it or not. All I have done is to put my point of view, argue against what views expressed here I have disagreed with, and upon occasion opined on the quality of those arguments. Democracy depends on free speech and exchange of ideas. Sometimes they are forcefully expressed - ask John Prescott, Dennis Skinner, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson. When you squash free speech, you throttle democracy too. The way to deal with something you find offensive is to fight back, which is precisely what I have done against the nonsense you've written about John Leech. As for your comments, Alan, the key is not to move with the times. The key is to move the times. My comments about the mockery of what Labour has become are not about returning to the past. They are about the core principles which Labour claims to represent but which it has abandoned.

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