Good !

Thank you, Melanie.
I usually find your articles/posts very thoughtful and thought provoking.
Unfortunately, I often skip the comments because of the things you say will now be banned.

Thank you, again.

"I often skip the comments because of the things you say will now be banned"

You and the comments here, Terrence, me and the BBC.

Terrence,

But no one reads postings for obscene material or personal abuse. People who write that sort of stuff aren't into politics much. They're into, well...obscene material and personal abuse. Posts like that aren't lively or especially witty. They are usually infantile, evoking groans and eye-rolling from the readers. We don't need them, as they do detract from the fun of reading a Web site.

I'm puzzled. Why was the following removed? Which rule does it violate? It's not offensive. It's not defamatory. It's not a breach of any law. It does not commit the heinous crime of quoting from one of the increasinly odd e-mails Melanie Phillips sends me.

All it appears to be is critical of Melanie Phillips. How does it removal square with her (rather selective) defence of free speech?

"It's your site so you can make the rules and I have to abide by them.

But I find it hard to reconcile your supposed defence of the right of free speech – which seems to include support for Kilroy Silk's ‘right’ to publish a racist, ignorant and probably illegal article - and yet prohibit others from quoting your own words on this site. It seems to me utterly bizarre that on the Melanie Phillips web site one is prohibited from quoting words written by Melanie Phillips.

I was told that I was not to refer to anything Melanie Phillips had written to me if her words might “embarrass” her. I take the view that if they’re likely to prove embarrassing, you should not write them in the first place. If you e-mail me - someone you have never met – and don’t even mark your mail as private or confidential, you’re not in a strong position if I subsequently and accurately refer to what you have said.

In any event, you should not be embarrassed by anything I might say here. Rather, you should be embarrassed by your own ridiculous articles and diary items. Embarrassed by the fact that you stoke the fires of Islamophobia (much more prevalent in Europe than anti-Semitism and much more dangerous too) and give comfort to those who espouse such vile hatred.

Embarrassed by the fact that on the very day a murder victim gives up his fight for life you can accuse his family of making political capital from their son’s death. And for what? Because they put pressure on government officials to do their job properly when they should have been at peace to nurse the wound of their own terrible grief and – solely as a result of their work – because they prevented a killer from literally getting away with murder.

Embarrassed by the fact that you can call for the prosecution of someone who seeks to understand what drives people to commit awful acts of revenge, as if the judge who tries to understand the circumstances that turn people into criminals should be sat in prison alongside them and the vicar who appreciates that, born in different conditions, he might be amongst the drug addicts he now seeks to help is in fact advocating drug addiction.

And of course there is your routine description of anyone who even dares criticise Israel or Israeli government policies as anti-Semitic, in an egregious, dozy, meaningless smear which is meant to invalidate the other view point and silence all criticism - right or wrong – of Israel and Zionism.

Of course all of this would be explicable – indeed, if I may risk saying this without being prosecuted, I might even understand how such embarrassing words flow from Melanie Phillips’ pen or PC – if she were one of the slow witted extremists who appear to frequent this site. But she’s not: Melanie Phillips is well aware of the truths she twists, the smears she spreads, the hurt she can cause and the nasty bigots she inspires.

So, Melanie, don’t worry that I might embarrass you: you’re doing far too good a job of that to need any help from me."