Yes, Charlie would probably have loathed today’s gathering, but he isn’t why I’m going – I don’t really care about him, I never bought its paper and probably never will. However I do care about freedom of speech – I have been annoying people about it for the last twenty years and will keep doing it for at least twice that. I care even more that this is it about the practical exercise of freedom of speech in the country where I chose to live. Hypocritical politicians be damned, see you in Paris this afternoon so that we can count ourselves ! I’ll be silent, especially if someone attempts singing the Marseillaise – now is not the time for warlikeness and our interior minister is an idiot for calling ’war on terror’ : even the British government announced publicly eight years ago that it was abandoning the use of that phrase as they found it to be less than helpful… Anyway, let’s celebrate freedom of speech with Benjamin Netanyahu, Sergueï Lavrov, Ahmet Davutoglu, Ali Bongo and Viktor Orban to remind ourselves that it was all really about satire…