In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the foul-mouthed and utterly inarticulate rant by a woman with her toddler on her lap bemoaning that “my Britain is fuck all” because of immigration, asking other passengers where they come from, telling them to go back (one person is told to go back to “Nicaraguaberra”)

It’s horrible, but it represents the views of many, many people who don’t yell it in public and who aren’t daft enough to do it in front of a camera.

But then I read that “Emma West (34) of New Addington was charged with Racially Aggravated Section 4a on Monday. She was remanded in custody overnight.”

It makes me uncomfortable that she was arrested and spent the night in a police cell. Before you call me a racist, let’s be clear: I disagree with everything she said, and the manner in which she said it. And, had she and a few of her friends surrounded a black person and started shouting at him, they would be obviously threatening and should be arrested.

But Ms West wasn’t threatening anyone. She remained seated, with her child on her lap. While her words are abhorrent, they’re only words. No-one was physically threatened. She wasn’t inciting anyone else to violence. So what’s her crime? Being a horrible idiot isn’t a crime. She’s offensive, but being offensive isn’t a crime. And no-one has the right to be protected by law from being offended.

It seems to me that those of us who believe in free speech must support the right for people to spout offensive nonsense.

Right. Who’s first to call me a racist?

“We very much want to see the human rights of the people protected, including right to assemble, right to express themselves” – Hillary Clinton on the Arab Spring.

Meanwhile, Oakland, USA:

“You can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail…mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens ” – Barack Obama about Bahrain.

Oakland, USA:

We’ll probably see similar video in the days after the Occupy Wall Street protesters were evicted and journalists covering it were arrested.

Apart from some hyberole and cliche (“watching my city burn”, “society is ripping itself apart”), it’s a good article. I find her statement “Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis” to be incisive.

But one thing really grates. Primarily, I find this to be disturbing: “The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays”

Firstly, and least importantly, why the word “foreign” there? Is it to imply that going abroad is the hallmark of a cigar-chomping, caviar-snorting top-hatted capitalist? It looks as if “going to Foreignland” is code for “disgustingly rich” which, at the turn of the last century it might have been. But it ain’t now.

Most importantly is the implicit assertion that if only our leaders had returned earlier (or not gone to Foreignland at all) everything would be alright. If only our wise paternalist leaders had their hand reassuringly on the rudder of state, there wouldn’t be unrest.

This is, of course, preposterous. This lazy belief in Leaders is prevalent in the right and the left (I’ve seen lots of comments on Twitter from left-leaning friends deriding the fact that our leaders have been on holiday. In holiday season, the bastards).

If only David Cameron hadn’t cut this budget, it implies, Dwayne Scumbag wouldn’t be nicking from an injured boy (video). If only Nick Clegg/ Boris Johnson / Ed Milliband were sitting in their office in a suit and tie, it’ll be OK because it’s not the rioters’ responsibility and it’s not our responsibility – we can all turn on The X Factor and go back to sleep.

But David Cameron, tosser though he is, did not seize power in a military coup. We – as a society – elected him, and no-one seriously expected him to do anything else other than gleefully rekindle Thatcherism.

We – as a society – enjoyed the practically free credit that allowed us to stock up on the shiny consumer durables that are being looted now. And we as a society tell each other that ownership of Brand X or machine Y is so important to your value as a human being that you should break a window to acquire one.

And if we as a society are so infantilised that we believe that we’re helpless until a Leader comes back from Foreignland, smiling benignly to roll up his sleeves and clean up our poo, then we’re in even bigger trouble than it appears.

What worries me is that once Our Leaders come back to take charge, to the relief of both the right and the left, they’ll feel the need to show they’re in charge by Utterly Condemning the Mindless Violence and then getting out the rubber bullets and water cannons. Because whatever it is that’s going on, rubber bullets and water cannons won’t cure it.

Naturally, because he’s caring-and-sharing, he only has those people’s best interests at heart:

My concern about it is it prevents those people from being given the opportunity to get the first rung on the employment ladder.

But he’s not just caring-and-sharing. He’s also a True Blue Tory who lives in The Real World of laisez-faire economics:

The point is that if an employer is considering two candidates, one who has disabilities and one who does not, and if they have to pay them both the same rate, which is the employer more likely to take on? Whether that is right or wrong and whether my hon. Friend would or would not do that, that is to me the real world in which we operate.

(Full speech in Hansard)

Rather stupidly, I had assumed that the role of Members of Parliament was to enact legislation that protected the vulnerable by promoting equality, redistributing wealth from the very rich to the disadvantaged and ensure that people aren’t exploited in the workplace.

I realise now that, because inequality and exploitation exists in the real world, we should accept it and encourage it by exempting groups of people from laws designed to protect them.

So let’s have an army of ultra-low paid people doing menial tasks without legal protection of any sort. In the capitalist real world, there is no need to price those people out of the market with statutory maximum working hours, or the requirement for safety equipment as they go down mines or up chimneys.

The disabed are analagous to former prisoners, says Mr Davis:

The only way the former prisoner would be given a chance by the employer is if the employer was able to say, “I’ll give you a smaller amount for a certain period of time and we’ll see how it goes. If you prove yourself, I’ll move you up.”

From his voting record, I see that Mr Davis voted against equal gay rights, presumably so we can have minimum wage-exempt homosexuals staffing up hairdressing salons or kd lang tribute acts. I’m surprised that he voted for a stricter asylum system, given the opportunity it gives us to import squadrons of highly-trained professionals from war-torn areas of the world who could work as doctors for £3 an hour in the cash-strapped NHS.

Mr Davis believes criticism of his remarks is “leftwing hysteria”.

I’m not hysterical at all. In fact, if Mr Davis would care to attend my kickboxing class next Saturday, I will kick his arse for 60 minutes and not invoice him £5.93 for that hour at all. As someone with a disability (multiple sclerosis), I’ll happily do it for free. To prove myself.

Since meeting loads of quakers on CND marches in the mid-80s, I’ve always shared the aims of Amnesty and, since becoming financially solvent, I’ve always made sure they get a hearty share of my pay packet.

But I do wish that Amnesty would drop its campaigns on abortion and the death penalty.

Personally, I’m in favour of a woman’s right to choose, and completely opposed to the death penalty. (Saying “killing people is so wrong that if you do it we will kill you” seems morally and logically indefensible.)

But I know dozens of people who left Amnesty, or tell me they can’t support it because of these campaigns. I hope that the organisation will get back to its core message of freedom of conscience and return to a position of neutrality on abortion and the death penalty so that it ceases to alienate potential supporters.

• If the Pakistani military didn’t know he was hiding in a garrison town for years, it’s terrifying that they have nukes as they’re way too incompetent to look after them.
• If the Pakistani military did know he was hiding in a garrison town for years, it’s terrifying that they have nukes as they’re obviously no friend to us. They’re also a danger to neighbouring India, a democracy with 20% of the world’s population. (I had originally written “we should take their nukes off them”, but with the current fad for invading countries, it’s a dangerous thing to call for!)
• If Bin Laden was unarmed (as the Americans say) what type of resisting arrest did he need to do to make it impossible for 20 highly-trained special forces members to incapacitate him and take him alive?
• Where’s the evidence it was him as there are no photos and he was buried at sea? Surely the aim is to demoralise his supporters, but without proof that he’s dead it’s less effective.
• I object to the phrase “justice is done”. The desire for revenge is an understandable emotion, but it’s a destructive one. Summary execution is not the same thing as justice; it’s murder. The triumphalism is ugly and misplaced.
• I fear that the world is more dangerous after the murder of Bin Laden by the USA rather than safer. And I have to fly to the USA next month.