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  1. Just want to point out to team free speech denial that the two most powerful positions in New Zealand are held by woman. So how does that effect your ideas of patriarchy, power and enfluence – positively, or negatively?

    1. So how does that effect your ideas of patriarchy, power and enfluence – positively, or negatively?

      That it is a long, slow process with some obvious success, Sam – but with still a long way to go…

  2. Cheers, Bomber. I kinda agree with you, which is why the link to the piece on the front page of the Standard has this teaser:

    “There’s never been Free Speech and that’s not actually much of a problem according to Te Reo Putake, who is no stranger to the downside of Saying Things.”

    My crack at Chris is about his siding with the class enemy. And, for the record, if Chris is a treasure to the left then I’m Alladin’s fucking cave.

      1. This? http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2018/07/doing-right-thing-for-wrong-reasons.html

        “If you were wanting to run a principled free speech campaign, then simply as a matter of PR, it might be a good idea not to have so many outright racists in it. Or people who have been outright hostile to free speech in the past. And be led by someone who hasn’t called for critics of the government to have their arts funding cut.”

        As they say in the union movement, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

        1. @Te Reo Putake – you’ve got anger spilling out all over the place – are you sure Chris Trotter is the right person to direct it at because you seem way over the top right now.

        2. Except when you follow the links Jordan Williams didn’t call for Cattons arts funding to be cut.

          What he said was “If Ms Catton isn’t thankful for the substantial support by the New Zealand Government while she wrote The Luminaries, maybe she could use some of the substantial royalties to pay the money back.”

          Give “some” of it back as a point of principle perhaps?

          Yeah… nah.

  3. Well said Martyn,

    I was banned from The Standard in 2014.

    Just 10 days before the Election of that year, but we at The daily Blog have always experienced total free speech positivity, without any sharply critised reactions from our moderators and we are so very grateful for this wide level of tolerence, that makes free speech real and better than any other medium.

    I myself was injured in a large scale chemical poisoninng incident while overseas and have many years in recvery and learning about our environmnet so my principal focus is on chemical science and caring for others in health matters so I have always been about sending my expressions of my knowledge learned through my life, and sadly have several times been highly critised by a pack of right wong trolls over on the Standard as several roam there freely.

    They dont appear to believe chemicals are dangerous to humans apparently, but if they had been poisoned as 40 workers in a ‘wrongly left’ unventilated building were like me whoo contrated life long disabilities they may change their minds.

    This lack of respect on some blogsites for others point of view is sadly still today an issue, that is now being internally discussed inside The Standard, we were told in a blog just earlier this week by the moderator.

    But we are very grateful those same right wing trolls are not able to hunt people here in blogs on The dauly blog, so top marks to you sir Martyn Bradbury as youn run a very warm and effective socail blogsite that I would highly recommentd to everyone who has an itch to scratch.

    Thank-you from our family for running the best social blog in NZ.

  4. “but this attack on Chris is beneath you.”

    ….. except obviously it wasn’t.

    I am quite amazed at how many authoritarian leftists inhabit The Standard , all doing Alex Jones et al’s work for them, recruiting for the right wing.

  5. Part of the fight against prejudice involves getting people to stop saying prejudiced things – I suspect this might be why we’re having this debate right now.

    There is a obviously a contradiction between the need to preserve free speech and the need to stop making prejudicial statements. I don’t know exactly to manage the contradiction but I think that another ideal – respecting all life – should be adhered to here. Which is to say that the people we are debating with are life forms that deserve to be treated with respect and dignity :-). If we can’t do that then we’re no better than our friends from Canada.

    One thing is for sure those 2 have really succeeded in making the left look silly

  6. The best thing would have been for an all left wing coalition to challenge Phil Goff’s decision. That way the essential issue of free speech versus censorship could have been debated, rather than spiraling into a deep hole of partisanship. Which, incidently, is going to hurt the left far more than it is going to hurt the right.

  7. It’s more ironic that TRP posts about free speech on the Standard whos owner and certain moderators have a long history of actual abuse and banning of those who don’t fit their personal clique.
    What a bad joke.

  8. Chris Trotter is wrong about this:
    The trouble with the idea of free speech, is that so few are capable of delivering to the responsibility of it.

    Though we may have a right to our opinions, none of us, no-one has a right to be wrong. Such a right would completely undermine our public education institutions. If people have a right to be wrong, then the role of public education would reduce to nothing more than the moulding of our children into useful cogs for the military, and industry. There could be no greater learning and understanding, no creative achievement, and together we could not make progress towards any improved future.

    No-one has a right to be wrong, … and so no-one has a right to lie and cheat, or mislead and delude, or deceive and con, or to carelessly stir up trouble and strife. Rather, as reasonable and rational members of a healthy society, we each have a civic duty-of-care to stand-up those amongst us who are wrong, those that are false prophets and sowers of discord, and to correct them; and they have a civic duty to stand corrected. The great responsibility of free speech, then, is the reason and rationale necessary in recognising right from wrong in the first place – surely an exercise of our very best intentions and goodwill.

    It is Chris Trotter’s mistake to equate the civic management of false prophets and sowers of discord, to the undermining of free speech: especially when it is those same liars and cheats and troublemakers that are doing all the damage.

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