Free speech

The whole point about free speech is that it applies to people you disagree with too. If you are not inciting the audience to violence or hatred, then you should be allowed to speak. (No one is obliged to listen, after all.) The whole brouhaha about the Oxford Union's invitation to a couple of unsavoury characters is therefore rather troubling. I was a member of the Union for some years, and I heard a lot there I disagreed with and some I found offensive (not least the Hooray braying in the bar). But that is what the Union is for. If it degenerates into a bland on bland festival of middle of the roadery then it becomes nothing more than another place in Oxford for students to get cheap beer.