Before i edit and include far more user friendly essays and reflections, and examples of a variety of germane situations, many years i have been toying with, and am a perfect administrator so have superb paper trail, the summary if i can simplify.
As a person who became tagged with the term 'freedom of speech' i always prick my ears up at any public especially BBC chat on the subject - though it was never entirely the right term, far more a case of real human stories are the bedrock of all causes and concerns. You don't start a cause on behalf of a Teletubby as you know they aren't real, and don't have their own valid and valuable inner life, even if nowadays I am sure some silly person may.
What i do know is this, that the 'official' chatterati version of the right to be able to express oneself and even share painful truths has become far too murky and as usual in UK lost. It is the 'other end' of the spectrum maybe i care more about. In one role or other the last decade i have acted as an occasional 'citizens advice bureau' for the downtrodden and disadvantaged. My dreadful county was in fact the first in UK to lose its official branch of that not very august organisation - even they seemed to start to rather spin themselves a decade ago, like everyone else: imply genuine help when they would never in truth be able to do much. Often a load of well meaning but ineffectual semi retired do gooders working sometines at home alone on their pc... many occasions i would find just that. 'Fighting' unlawful benefit denial and such requires these days really very with it counter attack. The 'system' - from |DWP to council to courts really do have their act together the last decade in the clever brush off and then if you aren't brushed off then when they truly get their knives out quoting back at the citizen their (interpretation of) riukes regulations and the like ohh they became efficient in industrially scaring away a prospective claimant - claimant meaning someone who may have a genuone lawful claim to a council tax reduction or special needs place for a child etc.
But what i found - being often quite happily at times among the 'bottom 1/3' - to use the Gladwell approved descriptor, so often one would be with people who with their dreadful big tellies in the corner screaming out their plastic Sky news or the like, and this got only worse as 2016 began, there would be a gobby voluble cynical rant every time someone's 'rights' were in the news (I dont disagree with some of Moral Maze a few days ago in an ideal world responsibilities is far more valid ) ... be it the 'rigts'of immigrants being cruelly treated or rights of people to protest last year....i express NO opinions, except some i playfully throw around. A fact is that almost everyone i have spent time with in the last 10 years is extremely unsure of what to say about 'rights' and almost none even know what the HRA is... many of course assume we are no longer part of the ECHR after Brexit... (wrongly if you don't know!)
And this often even does include the more educated 'middle class' I have many blowin "Guardian Reader" types my region that mainly as a dedicated environmentalist i spend time with... and their 'causes' are often close by. And a cause is almost defined as standing up or against big business of the chumocracy of politics in one way or other. Which again in the final analyses may come down to simplest 'rights'... in all sorts of ways. But no one can ever speak so... it purturbes me. I never never heard anyone really even use the term 'freedom of speech' until last year. It is almost as if some endless nonsense melodrama version is all people respond to. The mob - including the middle class Grs...
Until....
the neighbour has a cancer and benefit payments go wonky. Until ...social services fail to act in accordance with simplest mandated obligations....until.... the surgery is so useless they endlessly change doctor on a patient whom has been told continuity of enquiry via one doctor is essential....until.... until our last NHS dentist for miles has just been shut down....until some idiot council worker tells you it is unlawful to record her phone conversations with you to protect yourself from their endless dysfunction...until....
It is funny how all of a sudden a few basic rights get shouted and spat out around their kitchens... the angst is palpable sometimes frightening (i never have one atom of it bully for me)
The thing is one must learn a little of what these rights are for and how to protect them BEFORE the personal crisis comes along.... perhaps ill and feeling awful and unable to sleep
And i do know that everyone is ina pickle about the right to express/be informed/ speak....and that has certainly become a far harder to speak with people... about...
Every single economics commentator has for some years shown charts of serious fiscal Armageddon overdue. Even mainstream. And when that happens, 'rights' to not be bullied by bailiffs, 'rights' to indeed go to the press when your local surgery messes up your legal right to free prescriptions if a UC claimant....etc etc.... i know i shall hear a lot more of this angst.
So, some engaging way of focusing even a few viewers into a time immemorial need to understand some basics that Kafka wonderfully described but no one reads decent books any more like Tolstoys Resurrection has all you ever need to know - a good example contained herein, legal aid to fight first High Court injunction despite even an appeal - quite well presented by yours truly... they respected me the LA pannel but found "as the law you wish to challenge by going back to the High Court is so cast in stone and there is no chance of success, this we cannot grant public funds for you to try to do that.."
In other words the LA are gatekeepers and may aswell be judge and jury. 99% of citizens would take on board what they most authoritatively said - very polite, very decent in their delivery. Very charmy and not really even smarmy. And subsequent matters proved they were very...wrong... pure Kafka.
Even though a tremendous arthouse deep meaningful culture snob, I said 10 years ago some 'Full Monty' version almost is needed...i have not changed my mind. Or at least part Full Monty. earnest does not work. The sport of the voluble plasma screen viewer is to...be voluble. There is only one way through that and it is to make them laugh, at least a little, and maybe cry a little too....but it must be real Thats all i know.
please also note the 2006 case - the introductory phase i alone presented, was probably the first case in the 'test case' (to quote most senior judge, Highest Courts) where i introduced the concept of the fledgling social media world being a feature,. My representation (i have the official wording ..later) was that as social media was beginning the citizen should have the right to indeed publish their own truths on matters unimpeded ... this was at a time when almost all judges would cough and look blank and let some papers shuffle as they didn't know what the internet was. Pretend they never heard the word. Interestingly the most interesting Lord justice Wall did indeed pick this up in his at times wonky summer public judgement (they had 4 months to word it!) it may be the first time in highest (definition 3 most senior judges) automatic primary legislation - i.e. immediate new precedent that overrides existing actual statute, cases where this was a feature. I don't wish to claim too much but i am not aware of other cases, where that which of course then became literally almost all of word-jousting law, was seen. In fact no disrespect to the then superstar QC who i had to turn to - and we had so little time to really work out all the strategies, it was notable how even in his august chambers (media law supremo central) my words (already in to Appeal Court in stage 1 of written submissions) were sidestepped as not really relevant. I don't think that line was further pursued in stage 2 but it was very much a part of what is the official representation from the start (by me)
hahh hahhh history went and pivoted that one rather...
