GeekLawyer’s Blog

Sodom and Gomorrah by Sea, or ‘Brighton‘ as its inhabitants have nicknamed it, has a problem with hate music. It seems that the council is concerned that those members of the right sort of minority group need protecting from being mocked by members of the wrong kind of minority group.

Apparently my Nigga Homies are dissin‘ fags. Geeklawyer will pause now to check with his younger cooler friends to see whether this is correct ‘yoof’ street speak.

[pause]

Apparently not, but it is supposedly comprehensible, if barely.

The UK Blawgosphere has been positively on fire recently with at at least two people attempting to wrestle VictorianMaiden into a straightjacket (an insane job with her 10 petticoats plus bustle) after commentators made the fundamental mistake of pointing out that one really really really could justify using the words “free speech” and “anti-zionist” in the same decade let alone the same paragraph.

With trepidation, therefore, Geeklawyer offers a lit match to a bucket of petrol on this story.

Brighton counsel council have said that since the Lord Chancellor has seen fit to desert not only existence but his moral duty to safeguard the, err, morals of the nation by no longer censoring plays and musical theatre they will step ‘once more unto the breach’. Of course the law doesn’t permit this, so what’s a self appointed moral guardian to do? Why, of course, use ancillary legislation and hope no-one knows how to say ‘it’s ultra vires, baby‘. The irrelevant legislation being, of course, public entertainment/drinking establishment licensing policy.

None of this is necessary. Where hop-hip, morris dancing and Chamber Music ensembles incite the heady passions of audiences with inflammatory lyrics, they can be charged with the standard Neo-Labour criminal charges of ‘thought crime’ and not ‘being an approved person’.

Denoting it as ‘murder’ music is as transparently manipulative and phoney as renaming french fries ‘freedom’ fries.