I’ve written an open letter to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak in today’s Sunday Express, urging whichever one of them becomes Prime Minister to do more to protect free speech. Here is an extract:
As we were reminded on Friday, free speech isn’t some airy fairy idea. For writers such as Salman Rushdie, it’s a matter of life and death.
To start with the most urgent issue, you need to have a major rethink of the Online Safety Bill.
This legislation was originally intended to make the internet safer for children – a laudable ambition – but it has now gone way beyond that and poses the greatest threat to free speech in a generation.
I welcome the fact that you have both said you’ll look again at clause 13 of the Bill, which relates to legal content that is supposedly harmful to adults. It is quite wrong for the Government to try to protect grown-ups from seeing or saying something online which isn’t unlawful offline, as you said on GB News last week, Liz.
But there are other aspects of the Online Safety Bill that also pose a threat to free speech.
For instance, it would require providers likeYouTube, Facebook andTwitter to remove content that’s illegal in any part of the United Kingdom. So if something is illegal to say in Scotland, but not in the rest of the UK, the big social media companies would have to remove it in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Do we really want to empower Nicola Sturgeon to dictate what the entire British population is allowed to see and say online?
That seems flat out insane, particularly as Scotland has just passed the Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which will make it illegal to say a large number of things that are currently lawful to say in the rest of the UK.
Liz, you said a couple of weeks ago that Nicola Sturgeon was an attention-seeker best ignored.
You won’t be able to ignore her if you don’t do something about this major flaw in the Bill.
I’m also pleased that both of you have said you don’t think the police should be spending so much time investigating “non-crime hate incidents” on social media – something we have long campaigned against.These usually relate to something said that’s controversial, which someone else has complained about but which isn’t against the law.
Instead of telling complainants to grow a thicker skin, the police follow the guidance issued by the College of Policing in 2014, which compels them to investigate all reports of “hate incidents” and record them on police databases, even if they conclude no crime has been committed.
They can then show up in enhanced criminal records checks, stopping people getting jobs.
We calculate over 250,000 “non-crime hate incidents” have been investigated and recorded by police in England andWales since 2014.That’s more than 75 a day.
Not only is this an infringement of our free speech, it’s a colossal waste of police time.Why are they devoting precious resources to investigating “non-crime” when so many actual crimes go unsolved?
A newspaper investigation has revealed that police failed to solve a single theft in more than eight of 10 neighbourhoods in England and Wales in the past three years. I hope you’ll tell the constabulary to stop investigating our tweets and start policing our streets.
Worth reading in full.
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I’ll say this again, if we ever find on this forum that things we used to be allowed to say on here can no longer be said because of a UK government bill, the Conservative party can expect no support from me from that moment. And I hope that goes for all of us on here.
As for the Nasty Nats, I seem to remember they were seriously considering rules which would effectively criminalise the Holy Bible (among. other things). We must not be held to ransom by these loons. Get it sorted if you ever want to form a government again.
Democracy, if we ever had it as such is dead in this country. To repeat the well known hux aphorism:
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
Aye. And the revolution will never be televised.
I assume that means you will now vote otherwise?
I mean that voting for them will not be considered if I see previously accepted opinions starting to be removed on forums such as this as a result of a Conservative government’s actions, even for a relatively sensible candidate. What would be the point if the party has gone totalitarian.
I further hold that, unlike some believe (notably in the Conservative party) there are other places to go for people who might normally vote Conservative, a view reinforced by the 2015 general election results.
“A newspaper investigation has revealed that police failed to solve a single theft in more than eight of 10 neighbourhoods in England and Wales in the past three years”
imagine if firefighters failed to put out 80% of fires or if ambulance staff failed to turn up to 80% of medical emergencies. The public would feel justifiable contempt for them, especially as they are paying their wages. The police have politicised themselves into irrelevance for the public with their focus on woke issues while ignoring real crime.
Fire and death are such awkward, objective things. Harm, on the other hand, is a beautifully subjective thing – the gift that keeps on giving, it can mean whatever the cops take it to mean. And spending time with Mrs Indignant from Little Wapping about her neighbour waving a hedge trimmer in an offensive manner is so much easier than chasing thieves. Requires a lot less physical fitness and you even get a Rich Tea and a cuppa.
And they can do it online these days!
Can I still call my mate a Scottish bastard? This is important to me and also, I suspect, to him.
No. What if your calling your mate a Scottish bastard is overheard and it induces an attack of anxiety in the eavesdropper?
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
There’s nothing laudable in policies claimed to be targetted at making the internet safer for children by content-provider side censorship. It’s impossible to determine who is or isn’t legally minor over the internet. Hence, the default mode of operation must be to classify everyone as child in need of protection. Whether Dorries et al are too stupid to understand that or want exactly this to happen makes preciously little difference here.
This world is generally not safe for unsupervised children, especially if danger is defined as exposure to media content someone considers to be unsuitable for children, and the general solution to that is child supervision and not adult supervision. There’s also quite of a bit of a double standard here: Children must not be able to access so-called adult content online. But exposing them to all kinds of heavily sexualized advertising is obviously completely ok, everyone does that. A recent and very annoying example from Reading someone marketing some kind of lemonade with the line Take it up the taste bud!, an obviously reference to (gay) anal sex someone apparently believes to be a very witty wordplay. Depictions of people trying hard to look underage in sexualized poses are also anything but uncommon. Dorries could apply her energies much more productively in this area.
also the pernicious cooperation between BBC,Govt. and police as exemplified by the conviction last week of 5 people for “harrassing” BBC reporter when he suddenly appeared seemingly from nowhere at protest outside 10 Downing Street on 14 June 2021. Many will recall he ran away from answering questions on BBC bias and then managed to get immediate access through the security gates back to no.10
I have tried but failed to add links to latest film (well worth watching for full 20 minutes) on this from Resistance GB (who also filmed the original incident) and link for donations for the appeal, so suggest anyone interested goes to You tube, and film might still be there on cover page and if not search for “Convicted- the Nick Watt 5” or go to Resistance GB and its You tube , Odysee or Telegram sites