A bottle lies on the sands of Bournemouth beach. There is no rolled up scrap of paper inside, recording the thoughts, hopes or pleas of a lost soul, stranded alone on a tropical island in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles away. Which is a shame. It is in fact, simply the acceptable face of litter. A photogenic piece of litter. Something that makes me pause on my morning walk, to take a quick snap.
It is more than just litter. It is absolute proof that there is no such thing as censorship in the West, beyond that which is patently illegal. Anyone who complains otherwise, bemoaning the limitations on the freedom of speech, is talking out of their rear end. I’m right, you know. Perhaps I ought to start a new business, to prove the doubters wrong. For the miserly sum of £1million, Aqua Media Ltd will drop the customer on a desert island, with a decent supply of bottles, pens and paper.
This, the media platform of last resort, is very much a win-win idea. The sort of folk who whine endlessly about freedom of speech will finally have somewhere to say and write what they truly think. And the rest of us? Where is our win? You read the bit about them being dropped off on a desert island. It’s a one way trip.
Behind me, out of shot, is the unacceptable face of litter. Hundreds of pieces of plastic dumped on the beach. I’d also walked past a dozen closed down shops in the high street and just as many homeless folk in the town centre drinking strong cider at eight in the morning. There’s half rotten flowers on a wall next to them, left in memory of an 18 year old lad recently stabbed to death.
I’ll end this by simply suggesting that there are probably many more real, and more pressing social issues than the ‘right’ of @Drainplug354836256 to repeatedly post cryptic variants of ‘let’s gas the Jews’.
The Mexile 
Here in the west, free speech is close to a free-for-all, bodies flying through the air kind of free-for-all. The people who own the internet social platforms try to keep the party down to a dull roar, even though they make more money on the truly outrageous speech. This freedom to make an ass of oneself is not present in many dictatorships. I think the rule of thumb is that if you want to speak on someone else’s platform, you have to respect their rules of acceptable speech or take your rant somewhere else or publish yourself. The bar is not set very high by our governments in the west.
On litter: We still have many places in our world that dump their garbage at sea. Just a boom across the river mouth would keep much of the trash out of our oceans. The dumping of trash at sea is coming to an end, we’re twenty years from a serious effort of keeping the river carried trash from entering the ocean.
I’m a proponent of landfills, well designed, lined pits that are set up to capture the methane produced by the rot of the garbage. In my grandchildren’s old age, humans will mine the old landfills from our time and be grateful for the resource . I’m sure of that ‘free speech’ statement.
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Agreed on all points.
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I will add that there are reasons to be concerned. A lot of the reasonable folk who are ‘free speech absolutists’ have faith that the population at large are adult enough and sensible enough to be exposed to all the information that the world has to offer and to reach considered and rational conclusions.
I think that’s a bit nuts. And with every passing day, the body of evidence to support my view point grows a little bigger.
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The early childhood friends are mostly dead. Kip Black died of cirrhosis by age 16. a heavy drinker that one, Ivan Rose died from a blood ailment 20 years ago. My old nemesis Gary Kidd, I knew from playing down on the river in Orangeville died from his smoking habit a decade ago . That’s just the dead from the crew from before I started school. Sadly it is a long list when you add in the later friendships. I’m a very social person. I’ve put on more bonfires, sledding parties , ski trips, camping and canoeing trips than anyone I know. I’ve always been good at keeping the peace, even when the crew is drunk on their ass. We don’t drink as much these days-a good thing, Gary.
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I’m sorry to hear that there is so much litter on Bournemouth Beach. I was in Bournemouth many years ago, and I don’t recall seeing trash on the beach. Have things gotten that much worse?
Someday I might have a chance to say hello to you in England because my cousin recently bought a home down the road in Highcliffe.
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It’s gotten worse in recent years. And yes, I know Highcliffe. Not far at all. So if not in Mexico City, then a coffee in Christchurch…
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