Im from the UK and agree, hes embarrassing, he may be a great coder, if so he needs to concentrate on that and let the people who are better at pr and communication do their stuff, like Andreas.
1) Amir has previously stated he does not have many bitcoins
2) Its not about free speech, its about representation. He is being portrayed by the BBC as someone who represents the Bitcoin community. But clearly based on the views in the thread, many people do not believe he is representative of us. No-one wants to shut him up, plenty of what he says is what many here believe. The problem is the professionalism and image he is portraying. It allows middle class British people (BBC News target audience) to neatly box up Bitcoin into the anti-establishment, hippy, anarchist type container, without making them think about what it really means. It therefore strengthens their prejudices and existing beliefs.
I am not blaming Amir here, he is doing his best and being true to what he believes. The fault lies with the bias in the BBC's reporting.
My other point, expressed earlier in the thread, is that I believe the BBC is not ignorant of this bias, so they are either negligent in their task of finding additional spokespeople, or the bias is by design.