Comment not so free

CENSORSHIP is such a spineless and pointless idea.
The futile thing about trying to ban something is that the persons being gagged are likely to find another way to express themselves and get their "offensive" material out some other way anyway so the censors may as well not bother in the first place.
Aside from raging against a universal human right, censorship reeks of supremacy and panders to creation of a nanny-state, where everyone walks around with blinkers on without an opinion, unable to deal with a bit of confrontation or whiff of a thought provoking idea.
Journalism is about pushing boundaries, and yet, in some parts of the world the idea of this terrifies those in power so much, you are more likely to be killed if you are a journalist than an endangered animal. It's worth mentioning that the internet is censored in North Korea, so
perhaps we should count ourselves lucky for our freedoms in this country.
But free access to Google doesn't ignore the fact that censorship that results in dumbing down a public that's perceived as incapable of making their own decisions does exist this side of the Atlantic.
Banning something that "might" provoke outrage is clearly used by those in power as a way to avoid dealing with issues that are being raised. It's being in denial, and it's patronising, to think yourself qualified to decide what information the public can and can't have access too. Did I mention it's arrogant?
It's unlikely that we'll ever have a world where free expression never leads to offence on occasion. But that's no reason to snuff it out and render it altogether invisible.
Turn the television off if you don't like what your seeing, hurl your book aside if you don't like what you're reading. Problems are not solved by banning words. Everyone knows that supressing something so as not to rock the boat doesn't work, and the boat rocks anyway so you may as well set it free and deal with it.