OT - Boris Johnson and the Freedom of Speech

[Andy_Faber]

Sorry gents, but maybe to turn our attention away from the excitement of deadline day, maybe a damp squib isn't so bad.

I don't see what's the big fuss about what he said. It's bleeding obvious!
I do understand some might find it offensive, but then the proper response should be

' 1 look at Boris Johnson, should erase any doubt that man descended from apes.'

He's a buffoon, a moron, heck, he even makes Donald Trump look like a genius!
The way he speaks, the mumbling, the choice of words and his mannerisms. God help us, if he becomes Prime Minister.

Looking down my Facebook feed and there’s an interesting divide. Maybe 90% of those who have a public profile and who have expressed an opinion condemn BJ and defend the right of Muslim women to wear burkas. Of those who are just ‘normal’ people I would guess 95% to 99% who expressed an opinion back Boris’ right to have an opinion AND agree with the point he’s making. That demonstrates yet again the massive disconnect between the elite and the proletariat in this country. He’s made a statement which has from
What I can see increased his appeal with ‘the great unwashed’ who continue to rail against those who in the past they would have had to doff their caps at.

Yes by the way he does come over as a bit daft

[ramAnag]

Looking down my Facebook feed and there’s an interesting divide. Maybe 90% of those who have a public profile and who have expressed an opinion condemn BJ and defend the right of Muslim women to wear burkas. Of those who are just ‘normal’ people I would guess 95% to 99% who expressed an opinion back Boris’ right to have an opinion AND agree with the point he’s making. That demonstrates yet again the massive disconnect between the elite and the proletariat in this country. He’s made a statement which has from
What I can see increased his appeal with ‘the great unwashed’ who continue to rail against those who in the past they would have had to doff their caps at.

Yes by the way he does come over as a bit daft

Ah Andy, thought you’d gone the way of all FM mods and disappeared.

Not sure what a survey of your ‘Facebook feed’ tells us. Know very little about Facebook or for that matter what you think a ‘normal’ person is, but I feel we should be in no doubt that Johnson and Co. have a not terribly well hidden agenda and will use the ‘disconnect’ you describe to simply further their own aims.
Don’t think anyone disputes Johnson’s right to have an opinion and voice it. There are both well founded and purely prejudicial reasons for objecting to the burka, the question though is whether Boris Johnson - sadly imo a potential leader of this country - raised the issue in an appropriate way.
Imo he didn’t, he has learned, from Trump, that tapping into the populist vogue for the language of reactionary ridicule, previously unacceptable and usually prejudicial statements can be a vote winner and he has acted totally irresponsibly in raising a divisive issue which, given the current state of affairs in this country, has little, if any, relevance.

This country faces a massive financial challenge to its future as a result of the Referendum result. Whether a few Muslim women wear a burka or not is utterly irrelevant to the challenges we face but I fear that Johnson recognises the probability of a second referendum and is already sowing the seeds of his ‘us and them’ campaign to achieve much the same aim as his bus and Farage’s completely misleading ‘refugee’ poster back in 2016.

Oh for a capable opposition!