Don't drop the soap in the showers that don't exist

David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Europe's recently much vaunted freedom of speech - it's glorious tradition of allowing dissent, however offensive, stupid or plain wrong does not exist. Irving espressed an opinion and was jailed for his trouble. Is it important that what he wrote is a twisted anti-semetic load of cock?

It's precisely when a big fat blowhard with shit for brains says something you find appalling that you need to test these things. It's only a principle when the decision is hard, the rest of the time it's a convenience.

The next time you hear somebody loftily say that although they "do not agree with you, they will defend to the death your right to say it" 99 times out of a hundred you're listening to a lying self-agrandising shit.