I put free speech in the same category as I do with playing with language itself. I'm not necessarily as concerned with the rights, because people will rebel against their right to speak being removed anyway, it's about the language passing into the general population. I think with a lot of broadly ridiculous political people they should be invited to take their place at the table and involved in the discussion, then they should be roundly debated and sent packing. We saw that with the BNP and Nick Griffin a while back, whilst University's were banning him from speaking under a ridiculous 'no platform' rule, he was generating so much air-time for himself that it became problematic. As soon as he came onto a BBC debate, the nearest intelligent person made him look like the knuckle dragging fascist idiot he was - and he never politically recovered.

I'm all in favour of free speech and unless it is a direct call to violence, I don't think it should be regulated at all. 'Nasty words' if they can be called that, are only as powerful as the credence you give them. I'm far more concerned with subversion of language and 'you can't say that' - I think we should be encouraged to say absolutely everything and deal with the consequences thereafter. :o)