Now Corbyn would deny me free speech
Widdecombe
DURING a recent radio interview I was asked about Jeremy Corbyn's view that Channel Five should not have aired my views, expressed on Big Brother, about gay rights. I had no idea that he had said any such thing but I trawled the net and yes, he told Gay Times that my views should not have been aired. So now we have proof from his own mouth that the man is not just a Marxist but is an out-andout totalitarian.
One of the reasons I survived to become runner-up on the said reality programme was that people were endorsing free speech in a society which increasingly suppresses any view that contradicts state orthodoxy. It is one thing for Corbyn to say he disagrees, nay fiercely disagrees, with everything I said but quite another to suggest I should not have been allowed to say it and that the airwaves should broadcast only those opinions of which he approves.
That of course is how Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany operated and how North Korea and China operate today. Let no opinion be heard which challenges that which the state endorses. It is appalling that a leader of a major party in a democratic country can trot out such views and for there to be no outcry.
INCREASINGLY universities “no platform” people whose views some find offensive but now it seems that under Corbyn no view would be heard other than the officially approved. He didn't actually threaten censorship of the media but it was the logical conclusion of what he was saying. I know many gays who themselves share my views on gay marriage. Should they also be kept off the airwaves?
I will debate with anybody: with proabortion speakers, people who believe drugs or prostitution should be legalised, holocaust deniers and atheists and I do not believe for one moment that their views should not be aired, however strongly I hate what they say.
For that matter I hate a lot of what Corbyn says but I will, to quote the old maxim, defend to the death his right to say it. Let us hear his defence of Sinn Fein or Hamas and then let us destroy it. That is what is known as freedom. What a pity that is a courtesy he would deny to me and to so many citizens of the nation he aspires to lead. A ROW has broken out in the Labour Party about a proposal to allow men who self-define as women to apply for selection in seats reserved for all-women shortlists.
Women activists are threatening to quit the party unless the proposal CLAIRE FOY makes a fuss about being paid less than Matt Smith in The Crown but actors are paid not just for the number of lines they utter but for their ability to attract viewers. At the time they were being recruited Matt Smith would have attracted cries of Doctor Who! Ms Foy would have been greeted with Claire who? OF course the Queen is right. The cream goes on top of the jam on a scone. My father was Cornish and my mother Devonian but the jam always went on first, even though it was my mother who prepared the scones. Indeed I always took it for granted that was the true order and have never yet been served a scone with the cream below the is dropped. I have a much better idea: why not drop all-women shortlists instead?
Then women really could compete on an equal basis with men, self-defining men, self-defining women and women. It would mean jam. At every posh tea I have ever attended from royal garden parties to charity teas at the Ritz to teas on vicarage lawns, the ready loaded scones have always been served with cream uppermost.
Right, that’s settled then. Pass the butter please. What, there are people who eat this feast without first buttering the scone? Surely not HM?
WHY DO WE NEED ALL-WOMEN SHORTLISTS AT WESTMINSTER?
they could look all the men in the eye at Westminster and know that they got there on exactly the same basis as they did instead of having their paths artificially and patronisingly smoothed by eliminating most of the competition at the outset. It won’t happen. Selection on merit is an idea far too radical for the condescending Labour powers-that-be, who believe that if you are a woman then by definition you need special advantages.