The Online Safety Bill “like some zombie” is to be revived as proponents, including Prince William, use the death of Molly Russell to push forward their agenda. Toby has written about it in the Spectator, saying that the problem the Bill’s opponents face is that “those in favour of it are more powerful and better at lobbying than us”. He says his issue with the Bill is that it doesn’t just aim to protect children from disturbing material, but grown-ups as well, including content that’s ‘legal but harmful’.
We still don’t know exactly what legal material the proponents of the Bill think adults need to be protected from – this Index Librorum Prohibitorum isn’t included in the Bill itself, but will be set out in a separate statutory instrument, with future Governments able to add to this inventory – an ominous hostage to fortune. However, in July the Government did publish an “indicative list” of content it would like social media companies to “address”, including “some health and vaccine misinformation”.
The problem with trying to incorporate nebulous concepts like ‘misinformation’ into law is that they will inevitably be abused by political activists and defenders of official orthodoxy to silence their opponents. For instance, last week YouTube removed a video made by the comedian Russell Brand on the grounds that it contained “harmful misinformation” about the virus. His sin was to say that the National Institutes of Health had approved the drug ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, when, in fact, it hasn’t. It was an innocent mistake – the NIH had approved the drug’s use in clinical trials, but not more widely – and Brand quickly corrected it. Nevertheless, the video was censored.
Was that fair? As Brand pointed out, YouTube hasn’t removed any videos of people claiming the COVID-19 vaccines are 100% effective against infection – that’s not ‘harmful misinformation’, apparently, more of a noble lie. So what guarantee do we have that it won’t just be content that challenges the prevailing consensus that’s classed as ‘misinformation’ after the Online Safety Bill is passed and YouTube becomes an even more zealous enforcer of health and vaccine orthodoxy? We should put laws in place to prevent social media companies censoring legitimate discussion and debate in the name of protecting people from ‘misinformation’, not laws encouraging them to ramp it up.
Toby says he is going to be spending the next few weeks trying to persuade the Government to turn this piece of legislation into the Children’s Online Safety Bill, as “adults should be able to judge for themselves just how dangerous it is to watch videos by Russell Brand”.
Worth reading in full.
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“The long overdue correction of Western democracies is now in train. The slow and painful process of restoring trust in public institutions might just have begun.”
Not true of the U.K.
The only slight cause for optimism is the impending destruction of the Tory party and their potential replacement with a actually conservative political force- but this is by no means certain.
Absolutely first class commentary on the state of the Western world today. In this country if Kneel does achieve the anticipated landslide our real battles will come over the next five years and if that is the case these five years will be shit or bust.
“The old Left-Right divide has become obsolete. Instead, the new divide is between the international technocratic elite in alliance with national elites against the interests, values and policy preferences of national populations.”
Or, in hux speak the Davos Deviants and their regional managers who make up the political executive along with the First Division Association. On top of this conglomerate of useless grifters are the largely corrupt judiciary, the management army of the NHS and our police forces.
It can only be a matter of time before the real battles begin. Sadly, I believe that blood will be spilled.
In 2017, Labour under their, supposedly, unelectable leader, Jeremy Corbyn won 40% of the vote. Under Starmer they’re about to win a landslide with 36%-38%.
Something’s wrong in the deepstate.
There’s something wrong with the notion that a ‘voter’ is someone whose only political right is to select his preferred party and that parties ought to be represented in partylament in proportion to their share of the popular vote. That’s not how the British system works and hence, such percentages are meaningless. In the UK, voters elect MPs for their contituencies. They don’t vote for parties.
So who elects the government?
As a British politician once famously put it: The purpose of the NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down. I, for one, would welcome an end to this charade. The ‘public institutions’ which claimed to protect democracy and human rights by abolishment of human society and vaccine and mask mandates are thoroughly bankrupt and this includes the political system which begat them.
At the height of the Corona madness, at least one democratic (ie, from the US party) politician went on record with stating that ‘human rights’ never meant to include the right to breathe freely and to talk to and otherwise socialise with other humans as one see fit as humans, who are notoriously nothing but carriers of highly dangerous pathogens, simply couldn’t be allowed to do that for their own safety and such is the nature of these people, may they meanwhile all again have eaten a lot of chalk to soften their hideously croaking voices.
The ‘western’ mock-democracy willingly killed itself when the WHO demanded that in 2020.
Great article. I would however challenge the claim of “Islamophobia” – what does this even mean? It is an often used slur against anyone raising reasonable criticism of the encroaching march of theocracy and/or the denial of terrible crimes committed in the majority by members of one particular religion due to “cultural sensitivity”. For example the still ongoing “grooming gangs” situation throughout the country, although that should be called what it is – paedophile rape and slavery gangs.
https://x.com/TheCriticMag/status/1747540137129423263?s=19
The link leads to an article in the Critic (from January this year) which basically seeks to exploit the situation as feminist propaganda for the “war on women” story. That’s exceedingly poor taste as the Rotherham authorities who remained intentionally blind to this certainly included both men and women and the elephant in the room is not that the abusers weren’t investigate by men because they were also men but weren’t investigated by all kinds of officials because they were muslims of Pakistani origin and it was desired to avoid possible accusations of racism.
Poor taste is actually way too mildly put. This is not a (All) men seek to rape female children!! story. It’s one about muslim gangs getting a free pass from communal authorities.
The people we should be worrying about are the traitorous izlamoPHILES: queer starmer, ed davey, greens, and red tories who indignantly huff & puff if anyone dares to point out that izlam has 50+ countries it captured and we needn’t think our country exempt from that fearful outcome.
liblabcon treachery against the rightful people of this country knows no bounds and manifests itself in its most dangerous form as a 75-year-long mass importation of an alien death cult that anyone with a smattering of history knows has world domination as its aim either by conquering countries with swords or conquering them by outbreeding the natives.
smarmer has recently been poncing in and out of various muzlim ghettoes reassuring them that he as PM will protect their rights. He doesn’t give a flying f*** about the rights of British people to their own homeland untainted by the 7thC AD savagery of izlam.
He also promised them that he will ensure that they feel ‘safe, secure, protected’. Bugger the Brits, then, they will just have to put up with jihadis, terrorism, proliferation of mosques and the loud wailing therefrom, tales of blatant misogyny in sharia courts, honour killings, muzlims telling off Brits for eating when it’s their ramadamadingdong, plus the numerous other delights that disgust us such as the cruel halal killing of animals in defiance of our animal welfare laws.
Never forgetting the mass gang-rapes of hundreds of thousands of young British girls by paedophile muzlims, which smarmer as DPP 2008-2013 certainly knew about, but did NOTHING about. Unforgivable and Unforgiven.
Anyone who hasn’t a phobia concerning izlam is an ignorant fool. The ignorant fools are about to form another government.
Nick Robinson has always been, is now, and will always be a first class tosser with a leaky brain.
‘Sunday roast with all the trimmings’ is a very stupid way to characterise a person and invites the obvious riposte of characterising Robinson as food.
Imagine a cheap ready meal well past its sell-by date left to fester in a faulty fridge until the plastic film begins to bloat and swell. One prick off a fork and there is a puff of noxious air that turns the stomach. Anyone unwise enough to unwrap it to have a peek instead of hoying it straight in the bin will turn green and perform some projectile-vomiting.
Yes, Farage as food is very wholesome compared to a sickening BBC leftard hack.