Victory and the price of freedom

WE WON!! No-one was more surprise than me when the camera swung round to table one in the conference room at the Holiday Inn as it was announced that thisisplymouth and The Herald had won a Media Innovation Award.
One year, well 15 months, messing around with this multimedia stuff and this was our second awards ceremony.
The last one we got beaten to the post by the Financial Times and had to settled for 'highly commended', this time we got the prize.
I was so sure we wouldn't win, after all as I say we're real newcomers to this, that I had no speech prepared. Fortunately the Editor took to the stage with us and said some very wise things. I mean they were probably wise, I was dumbstruck by all the lights and cameras and trying to hear what was going on through too much Venetian red wine. Well, they should have put our award earlier on.
The prize came for our nativities minisite, which allowed all you out there to view the hundreds of pictures of photographers took at nativity plays last year through an advent calendar.
Of course the real reason I'd had too much red wine was that our photographers couldn't make the gala meal, so the wine we'd ordered for them accidentally ended up in my glass.
If I had been able to say anything, it would have been a big thank you to all involved in putting the site together, a big thank you to the judges for giving us the award, and a big thank you to the media industry for welcoming us with open arms. I'd also like to thank all the Herald readers and thisisplymouth visitors for putting up with our experimentation over the last year. Our tarffic is 100 per cent up on November 2006 when we first started improving the site with multimedia content - so I take it you like what you see.
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After Friday night's ceremony it was back to reality with a bang, weeding through story comments again. For every comment on the Ben McBean story praising 'Harry's Hero' for his bravery, there was another decrying all Royal Marines for taking part in the conflict in the first place.
Once again, each comment has to go to that subjective test - is this an honestly held belief? How far do we allow freedom of speech to intrude on the feelings of others?
There are no answers. The Royal Marines, whatever else they are fighting for, also stand for democracy and the right to say what you want - rights that did not exist under the Taliban. If Ben McBean has the cojones to face extremist insurgents in one of the harshest environments on Earth, if he has the bravery to come back from what those insurgents have done to him, I believe he would want us to allow people in this country the freedom he is fighting for in another. I would hope that even those that cannot support the conflict, would be able to support those ordered to fight in it.
We should allow people freedom of expression, and all endeavour to consider others when we freely express ourselves.