// Thoughts for May
reaction from a certain sort of person (I use the term loosely) to that one and you would probably not cover it all! The result has been that there have been various attempts to ban her from several university campuses, presumably because many of those who attend those institutions are offended by her remarks and only want to allow speakers onto campus with whom they agree.
Surely universities are there, in part, to develop open minds, to encourage students to become receptive to wide-ranging and diverse opinions (many of which they won't agree with) and to be inculcated with a sense of freedom of expression, the appreciation that there are always two sides to every story and the value of tolerance that will hopefully last a lifetime? Ms Greer is not alone in her fate; the poor little sensitive souls at our major seats of learning are banning speakers with whom they disagree all over the country. They will form a snowflake generation; when they take their blinkered view of the world out into the rough and tumble of that thing that hits us now and again called life, they will melt away, crushed, like yesterday's flake of snow. Being prepared for 21st century globalised, competitive living they are surely not.
These accurate stories take us slap bang into the overwhelming urge to indulge in a Victor Meldrewesque cry of "I don’t believe it!" What we are experiencing is an appalling loss of sight by many of the wood because of a blind fanatical hunt for the trees.
It has always been a truth universally acknowledged (hasn't it, Jane Austen?) that common sense is not all that common.
The irresponsible, unaccountable, selfish, often hypocritical use of social media is to blame for a lot of this, but the bullying and often disgusting unilateral communication of the tweeting mob only succeeds if those in charge of making the subsequent decisions don't exercise common sense and pathetically cave in to baying pressure groups.
Whatever happened to the forthright, very public exercise of common sense? Why was an 83-year-old man put through hell and prosecuted for what "the man on the Clapham Omnibus" would have recognised from a thousand paces was something most of us would have done, or wished we had the courage to do? What a waste of money, time and effort and what a strain on an old chap who'd had enough.
When there is now an industry where people earn a living regularly checking up on the accuracy of individual Wikipedia entries because of intentional falsehoods being entered and then taken by the public as fact, it is time for a fightback. It is time the Googles, Facebooks and Twit- ters were brought to task and treated as any ordinary newspaper would be. You can't print in a paper defamatory material (or worse) no matter who said it so why should they be allowed to do so on Social Media? Why shouldn't these 21st century Power Barons be made to pay for substantial checks on what goes onto websites and the like? Oh…and why shouldn't they be taxed like any other business?
But we also need to start chalking up some loud and very public victories for Common Sense. The vociferous, vicious, blinkered minority energised by their new toy, Social Media, must not be allowed to inhibit freedom, polarise opinion and destroy so much that we cherish.
And to those whose blinkers, whose insularity and disconnect from the "real world out there" are preventing the implementation of a good cold shower of Common Sense, I would remind them of what one of the 20th century's funniest men observed. Eric Morecambe once said that the trouble with Sigmund Freud was that, "… he never had to play Second House at the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday Night".
....................................................................................................... Lord Digby Jones / 53 Find solution on page 124
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