There are no words...

Fuck off and die. In the 1980s, that wee gem of coinage was common currency. And here’s the thing; nobody died. Boil yer head, fuck your mum, I’ll rip your head off and piss in your neck... I’ll fucking kill you! Words, people; mere words. And no they don’t incite violence, they don’t encourage others to act; if anything the extreme hyperbole of these wafer-thin threats merely makes the utterer look like a bigger knob than the insultee at which it was aimed.

So where did it all go wrong? When did sticks and stones fade into impotence against the far more hurtful impact of - gosh - words? The epithet ‘snowflake’ has perhaps been overused of late but how apt a metaphor to describe the way in which our upcoming generations have been rendered weak without a fist being raised? The Orwellian spectre of the language itself being policed has long been warned about, even by those now doing that policing.

‘Free speech does not permit hate speech’ goes the mantra of the millennial, but who gets to decide what that means? Currently ‘hate’ seems to consist of any opinion which isn’t in accord with the approved doctrine, but like the secret password, today’s hurty words compendium is administered by the select few who, alone, determine whose choice metaphor is the more likely to bring about the next holocaust.

Seriously, it is that bad. To those who would curtail your speech privileges there is nothing so urgent today as to cut off the fabled rise of the far right; but even those nasty, hard bastard Nazis are today reduced to whining about mean girls pulling their hair. Jo Brand, whatever personal grudges you may harbour, was no more encouraging people to engage in acid attacks on politicians than Nigel Farage was seriously suggesting he would take up arms to pursue Brexit.

And so the argument moves on, not to what people genuinely find offensive but to which side has shouldered the greater burden of hypocrisy. Come on, guys, you must be able to be better than this. When one side is making a complete horses-arse of themselves it is fair game to show them up for it, but when it descends to this tit-for-tat, my-gang-is-less-of-a-twat-than-your-gang malarkey, the tired old wit of Oscar Wilde begins to look like sparkling zeitgeist repartee.

...wearing an appropriate emblem...

How about: All speech is free speech and we judge you by your words? If you choose to be offended then poor you. If you choose to repeat the unwise words of your youth then so be it. Back in the day, back when the word ‘tolerance’ actually meant something, the idiots soon revealed their idiocy... and we avoided or agreed with them accordingly. But maybe, in these virtue-signalling days we should warn people before we open our mouths? Given that everything I say will be judged to be ‘far right’ before I even say it, I’m thinking of maybe wearing an appropriate emblem...