Last Saturday there was supposed to be a Leeds Speakers’ Corner.
However, a couple of days before, the council pulled the plug on the event because they said the area was in use for Sky Ride, a large cycling event. Or so I was told anyway. So just to clarify, freedom of speech in Leeds is cancelled, in case it interrupts Rupert Murdoch’s bike ride.
What I think is more concerning however, is that the organisers of LSC, decided to accept this and call the event off. Not turn around and say in a polite voice “do fuck off, we have freedom of speech in this country and if we want to turn up to a public space and speak our mind, we will do”, but say OK, that’s fine, we’ll just stay at home and keep our traps shut then.
Perhaps we can stay in and watch some serious analysis on Sky News instead.
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Tags: cycling, freedom of speech, leeds, sky ride
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 11th, 2013 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Religion & Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.