If Kilroy wants to air his narrow-minded views then it is his right
We are now faced with even more home improvement programmes. This may seem like a trivial point to raise in the furore over Mr Kilroy-Silk’s Sunday Express article, but it is the easiest way to make sense of the chaos.
This episode serves to highlight the double standards that persist within British culture with regards to free speech and wider issues of racism.
Kilroy’s offending article was practically identical to one printed in the same paper nine months earlier; one goes unnoticed, one gets the bloke kicked off the telly.
His employer, the BBC, is a unique entity, in that it speaks for the country as a whole and is funded by the license fee payers. In its own words it is committed to impartiality.
The Beeb cannot continue with the haphazard way in which it decides that a presenter has compromised his or her ability to be impartial.
This weeks issue of Private Eye has picked up on the double standard too. His views on reducing the number of asylum seekers are something special. He suggests, “we station paratroopers a mile from the British end of the [Channel] Tunnel…The paras herd the immigrants together and cart them off to Dover where they are dumped on a secure slow boat to – wherever”. The astonishing fact seems to be that they didn’t sack him long ago.
But here I feel I must be careful to reinforce the fine line that exists between freedom of speech and appropriate comment. If Kilroy wants to air his narrow-minded and ill-informed views then it’s his right.
Freedom of speech is one of the most sacred provisions of democracy; it allows me to shed what I see as due criticism on Mr Kilroy-Silk. He can no longer honour his contract as a presenter with an impartial organization. .
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