I just watched last week's Question Time, which of course had a long section on the Carol Thatcher affair. Shami Chakrabarti, the head of the our premier civil rights organisation, Liberty, gave the most pathetic performance it's possible to imagine. She managed to mention freedom of speech not at all. Thatcher had used a bad word and she wasn't sure about the BBC's handling of it, but not a single solitary mention of freedom of speech.
With civil liberties campaigners like this to defend us, it's no wonder we've turned into a banana republic.