This week’s debate on whether we should ban online anonymity was a well fought battle between two diametrically opposed schools of thought: does anonymity give us freedom to be who we want to be, or does it merely supercharge the nastiness of online abuse, feeding a no consequence culture where we can say the most harmful things, and making our society horribly toxic? This time the Government – the Proposition – didn’t do quite enough to describe the status quo – how things are at the moment – as irredeemably bad, so bad that we needed to take such drastic action as banning online anonymity. The opposition indeed showed how the motion would introduce more harms than it redressed. The key point being, we have bullying in the real world in which we are not anonymous, so why would banning anonymity necessarily get rid of bullying online? A great debate. Next week we’ll be debating whether we should prosecute parents for the crimes of their children, which should make for a lively debate.