{"id":461,"date":"2007-04-24T12:46:02","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T12:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/04\/24\/noel-whelan-and-the-right-to-speak\/"},"modified":"2007-04-24T12:48:10","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T12:48:10","slug":"noel-whelan-and-the-right-to-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/2007\/04\/24\/noel-whelan-and-the-right-to-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"Noel Whelan and the right to speak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday’s Irish Times opinion page, like most Saturdays, had a piece by Noel Whelan. In this the former FF candidate and FF electoral advisor with a weekly column in a national newspaper laid out the reasons why citizens ought not be permitted to state their opinions publically. It was, he argued unpersuasively, a danger to democracy.<\/p>\n

I’ve been struggling to hold thoughts in my head long enough to put a comprehensive response together. Mostly, I’ve now been spared the effort<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I’ll only add the observation that the unregulated sphere of VoteTube<\/a> and the internet generally has seen, in only a few months, a more real sense of the public, of politics and of politicians than the last three elections of regulated speech put together. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Saturday’s Irish Times opinion page, like most Saturdays, had a piece by Noel Whelan. In this the former FF candidate and FF electoral advisor with a weekly column in a national newspaper laid out the reasons why citizens ought not be permitted to state their opinions publically. It was, he argued unpersuasively, a danger to democracy. I’ve been struggling to hold thoughts in my head long enough to put a comprehensive response together. Mostly, I’ve now been spared the effort. I’ll only add the observation that the unregulated sphere of VoteTube and the internet generally has seen, in only a few months, a more real sense of the public, of politics and of politicians than the last three elections of regulated speech put together.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[437,19,672,234,436],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irish-politics","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics","tag-irishelection","tag-noel-whelan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}