It is with the greatest reluctance

that I am asking the Guardian to removed a post I made. I am not doing this by choice but because the comments that followed it were, to say the least, vile. 
I suppose I should have learned by now. I should simply stop posting anything there - although it has been a good while since I put anything up - and perhaps I should simply stop looking at their website. (The problem is that it can, at times, be useful to know what they are saying about a situation.) 
I don't know what happened to the so-called "moderation".  They should simply not have been letting that sort of thing through.  It was not what the so-called "respondents" had to say about me but the way they ridiculed the idea of an indigenous friend that was so appalling. 
These are the same people who are, if their other comments on other issues are anything to go by, all too ready to criticise anyone who doesn't fully agree with them. The government naturally gets a bashing. That's to be expected. But a lot of other people get a bashing too. Meanings are deliberately misinterpreted, words are twisted... and much more. 
It is clear they see this as some sort of sport. Their "contributions" are prolific. They must spend hours each day at the website finding snide remarks to make. 
They don't contribute to debate in any meaningful way. That apparently isn't their intention. Their intention appears to be the opposite. They are there to put people down, to stifle any opposing point of view. 
It is the sort of behaviour which will eventually cause such sites to close for comments. That may take time to occur but it will eventually occur. I am not sure they recognise this. They are almost certainly having too much "fun". They are cowards and bullies - of the worst sort.  It is the sort of on-line behaviour that encourages much younger people to bully and make the lives of their peers a misery - so much so that some of them end up taking their own lives because they feel so bad about themselves. 
I have asked that the post be taken down because the responses were disrespectful to the memory of an indigenous woman. They upset her family (who approved of my original post). I am upset because I don't believe I should have had to ask the original post to be removed. It simply presented an alternative way and rather wonderful way of viewing something which should bind us all together - our flag.
It is time the respondents were told their behaviour is unacceptable.