Goodbye freedom of speech?

The situation has changed, but I think this petition needs to continue – please read this and decide for yourself… First, they said they took the petition down because of sexist comments – strongly implying they were made by people signing the petition. Then, when people asked to see these comments, they said they were on other sites. Then yesterday, there was an email from the person who set up that petition to all signatories saying don’t’ worry, we didn’t lose your signatures, they have been handed to the BBC. I’m afraid that just won’t do. The petition had reached 37000 in a few days. That suggests it could have collected far more if allowed to continue. The BBC is used to getting that many complaints in a week. They have been let off the hook. Worse, in yesterday’s email the petition-writer said he had taken it down because of the negative response in the media – because it was ‘scary’. So the hate-campaign against non-tory commentators is working, it is suppressing freedom of speech and the right to protest. Please keep sharing this petition. I will re-write the letter to 38 degrees, explaining why we need to stand up for the right to protest, why we are desperately disappointed with38 degrees. Here’s an except from Craig Murray’s article. He also publishes his conversation with 38 degrees (see link at the bottom) “For 35,000 people to be outraged enough to seek out and sign an online petition, millions must have felt that outrage. But the real furore started after 38 Degrees cancelled the petition due to “sexist abuse”. Unfortunately for them, they were forced to admit there was virtually no sexist abuse from the 35,000 people who had signed the petition. They next claimed the sexist abuse was on unrelated social media, but refused point blank to present any evidence of it. Then an extraordinary group started to coalesce in defence of Kuenssberg – Laura Bates, Yvette Cooper, Jess Phillips etc – all of them denouncing this widespread sexist abuse. Not one of these people produced a single shred of evidence of the existence of this sexist abuse. "Probably some abuse is there. I am a much, much less well known figure than Kuenssberg, but since I started writing on this topic I have been the subject of numerous extremely unpleasant tweets and facebook messages.” The use and abuse of accusations of abuse and sexism appears to be the only argument people of Kuenssberg’s political views have. Don’t let them silence you. Kay Green 13th May 2016