How To Be Right… in a World Gone Wrong

by James O'Brien

workforce and trousered epic amounts of moolah for himself (Desmond is estimated to have taken £350 million out of the company during his 17 years of ownership) while enthusiastically telling ‘British’ workers that their wages were being reduced by immigrants.

So, a newspaper which routinely peddles the notion that immigration drives down the wages of ‘ordinary’ workers had its offices cleaned by adults earning about £15,600 a year, while its editor received £2.37 million.

He’s angry because he has spoken his mind but has now been asked to explain himself; he is being asked to think. The conflation of ‘freedom of speech’ with ‘freedom to say silly things without being challenged’ and, more, ‘freedom to insist that people have to listen to me even if they think I’m ridiculous and/or dangerous’ is rarely quite as glaring as in this case.

It’s fascinating to see people who are offended by pretty much everything – gay people getting married; students removing poems or portraits of politicians from college walls; toilets that anyone can use; councils putting up fairy lights to mark religious festivals – insist that they are the implacable enemies of people who take unnecessary offence at the world around them. I could, on any given day, fill the switchboard six times over with callers primed to rail furiously against ‘snowflakes’ and ‘social justice warriors’ who take offence too easily.

innocuous actions which they wouldn’t be remotely aware of if the media wasn’t committed