A fistful of freedoms

The most alarming thing about the Geert Wilders incident - and forget the Dutch MP whose only importance was the principle involved - is that our own MPs, the people we misguidedly thought were charged with defending and protecting our rights and liberties, have accepted the Government's shoddy appeasement of militant Islam with hardly a murmur.

While Jacqui Smith was hacking the freedom out of free speech and Foreign Secretary David Milliband was knowledgably condemning Wilders' film as illegal before being forced to admit he had not actually seen it, the majority of our representatives of the people kept their heads down and carried on filling in their expenses or whatever is important to them these days.

Give up freedoms without a fight and one day our MPs may well find they have lost even the basic freedom to put up any fight at all.