NO offence, but I didn't join in with the Je Suis Charlie hashtag thing.

I found it mawkish.

It was encouraging that the world was outraged at the murder of journalists, the all-too-rare appreciation of the profession heartening. And on a purely human level one cannot be but shocked and disgusted by the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

But I didn't know these people. I wasn't grief-stricken. The murders of Irish journalists Martin O'Hagan and Veronica Geurin by paramilitaries and gangsters for doing their job too well had far greater personal resonance.

More so though, I'm loathe to join a bandwagon, however well intentioned, where Je Suis Charlie has been adopted by those with at best a partial and qualified notion of freedom of speech, expression and the press.

The front page of this week's Private Eye features the global leaders at the march in Paris after the attacks with the text "Je Suis Charlatan".

But you don't need to go to that level for double standards. There's an irony in supporters of Scotland's party of government throwing their weight behind freedom of speech when the most contentious legislation of this administration, the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, can see imprisonment for potential offence caused to a hypothetical person hundreds of miles from earshot of the 'crime'.

How many who used the Charlie hashtag in recent weeks have been supportive of flags and placards being waved outside media organisations because they didn't like elements of its output or the opinion of someone paid for their personal views?

That isn't limited to those picketing the BBC pre- Referendum.

Football fans believing their team has been wronged have not been slow to protest outside the broadcaster or have considerable sums of public cash spent wanting perceived slights by individuals righted.

Yet the zeal for free speech of late has seen some of the same people post gratuitous images of religious figures to potentially millions on line.

I'm no fan of the age of the serially offended but for a few the Charlie Hebdo spirit has been about insult as an end in itself, hurt as a virtue, with little or no purpose. Because you can doesn't automatically mean you should.

I've also seen instances where critics of Government free speech 'crackdowns' have become enraged when the media applies the same principles they claim to support in situations not to their liking.

By all means criticise, you're free to, but disagreeing with something doesn't make it wrong to say.

More recently I've been made aware of party political functionaries whose leadership has trumpeted their free speech credentials of late ordering probes of the phone records of politicians they suspect of speaking with the press.

Where to start?

At best, genuine revulsion over the Charlie Hebdo murders has become convoluted with notions and principles other agendas and interests make it impossible to properly embrace. At the other end of the spectrum, its immediate legacy is also hypocrisy amongst the narrow and sectional.