In my latest Spectator column I’ve written about Justin Trudeau’s dystopian Online Harms Bill. Here’s how it begins:
You’d assume the reaction to the SNP’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar legislation. Humza Yousaf has become a laughing stock and his approval ratings have fallen by 15 points. But apparently not. The new Irish Taoiseach, Simon Harris, is determined to railroad through the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, Donald Tusk’s government in Poland wants to introduce a new law that would make it a criminal offence to ‘defame’ a member of the LGBT community and Justin Trudeau is pressing ahead with an Online Harms Bill that makes our own Online Safety Act seem like the First Amendment. It’s as if all these ‘liberal’ leaders are saying: “You think Humza Yousaf is the West’s foremost opponent of free speech? Hold my beer.”
The Canadian proposal is, by some distance, the worst. It’s so dystopian, even George Orwell and Philip K. Dick failed to anticipate it. Discrimination is already banned under the Canadian Human Rights Act, but the new law will expand the definition of ‘discrimination’ to include online speech “likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group”. To those worrywarts who are anxious about the risk that this new law might be weaponised by woke activists, the government has said that ‘detestation’ and ‘vilification’ are not the same as ‘disdain’ or ’dislike’, which will still be permitted (thank you, Mr Trudeau), or speech that ‘discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends’.
Which raises the question: who gets to decide what speech falls foul of this new standard? And what qualifies them to make these Solomon-like judgments, parsing the difference between ‘dislike’ (acceptable) and ‘detest’ (verboten)? That job will fall to a new national agency called the Digital Safety Commission, comprised of five commissioners and an army of bureaucratic busybodies, which will have the same powers as a federal court, save for the fact that it won’t be bound by ‘any technical or legal rules of evidence’. (Points to Kafka for anticipating that.)
Worth reading in full.
I end by inviting anyone interested in helping me set up a Free Speech Union of Canada to contact me on tobyyoung@freespeechunion.org.
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Michael Gove – Mr Scotch Egg. Something of the night about that bloke.
I always think of something slightly green and yellow hacked up and spat out when I hear the name Gove….
Shortly before masks were made mandatory he said they wouldn’t be
And Zahawi said vaccine passports are….”not the British way”, before introducing them in Nightclubs. He also told a woman concerned about an adverse reaction she had to “get the booster”….He is an utter scumbag!
He is is good company.
It’s called The Spectator.
Add to the carbon tax which is applied to businesses and passed on to consumers.
These taxes are Pigou Taxes designed to change behaviour.
Use less of everything.
I tend to think that taxation should be limited to a series of mechanisms that enable the cost of providing non-excludable services that make sense for a state to provide – defending our borders for instance (lol). I don’t know when they started to be a social control mechanism. Sadly that now seems to be accepted as legitimate.
It won’t change until we have a government that forces people to take responsibility for their lives and not expect the government to mollycoddle them.
I hope things will swing back to that, just maybe not in our lifetimes.
I think life is ultimately better for people if they try to be as self sufficient as possible.
Whoever wrote the headline must be guessing. In the real world, it’s likely that the trade will change things to mitigate the extra costs in various ways, ranging from smaller containers (inflationary for the consumers), or at the other end of the scale, larger ones might be more efficient (higher off the shelf costs, but lower unit prices for the customer). If they’re clever they might take the opportunity to increase the profit margin at the same time across the store. After all, selling a kilo of carrots in a plastic bag for 10p at Morrisons the otter day wasn’t a charity donation!
However it’s handled it won’t be good for consumers or for the economy. If firms absorb the cost it will affect their profits which will hurt people who have shares in those firms, a lot of those shares will be owned by pension funds, or firms will employ fewer people or pay them less or cut corners in some other way. That’s socialism for you!
This tax is not intended to be good for consumers or the economy which is precisely why Kneel is introducing it. Furthermore, as this is being introduced at the start of the year I suspect it is in effect a marker outlaying what is to come through the rest of the year. Kneel and his bosses are not messing about, they fully intend to bankrupt the country in 2025. People need to wake up. This government is openly committing treason against the population and they will not give up until they are made to. Sadly, I do not believe peaceful discussion will suffice, we are long past that point. It is us or them.
But they want to get us to Stakeholder Capitalism by 2030, part (or most) of the Great Reset. When most people who think of the Reset (those that don’t think it’s all a conspiracy) they think Agenda 2030 on steroids. Green everything, but forget the Stakeholder aspect.
Vobes did a good interview in Stakeholder Capitalism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QspdOcEwa3s
Sadly most people have bought into these ideas. It’s quite common for people to think of “evil” and “capitalist” in the same sentence.
However it works out it is economically illiterate and morally reprehensible.
I used to get shopping bags for free, which would be used as rubbish bags. Then, when they introduced the bag tax, I happily paid because I found the bags useful, but they decided my bags were killing sea life (even though I live in the middle of the country), so they stopped selling them and now I have to pay for bin liners, so still throw away a plastic bag, only now the money goes to the supermarket rather than charity, as it did for the plastic bag charge. Now I will have to put my raw meat and unwrapped fruit and vegetables into the supermarket trolley, where, no doubt, some delightful child will have been stood with their grimy shoes prior to me using the trolley. The food will have a much shorter shelf life, creating more waste. Surely public health and waste reduction must take priority over this lunacy.
Public Health is not a consideration of Kneel and Co, well except in as much as it can be ruined – physical and mental.
The sooner a householder dies, the sooner another immigrant scumbag can be given a home.
Jim Dale on TV now sat under an air conditioning unit. Wanker
Oh and if that electrical item with an opening and closing flap underneath it that looks like every air conditioning unit in every office I have worked in, is not by some chance an air conditioning unit but is some clever heat exchanger and energy saver, I humbly apologise for maligning Mr Dale and reducing any high esteem that people may have held him in before my comment.
Glad I am watching the football and not that ignorant twat, Dim Dale.
And there was Rachel from Accounts bleating nonsense about her actions having pushed up inflation and along comes something else to keep it rising steadily. It may seem wrong but I am now hoping to see the UK in recession to cause the Student Union government to melt down.
These inflationary pressures don’t just force up prices but they lead to food being produced with cheaper and cheaper costs and this is more serious in some ways. For one thing it is hidden and it is also likely to lead to food becoming less healthy and nutritious. And the quality wasn’t too good to begin with. Maybe they won’t have four people fighting over a bag of flour. They will just adulterate and cheapen it to such an extent that all four plebs still feel satisfied even as their life essence is being drained away.
Old films will remind them how far their society has fallen, unless they ban them too.
The Uni-Party: deliberately making poor people even poorer ….. at the behest of, and to suit, the mega-wealthy.