Imagine being a politician who boasts about plans to remove free speech protections from university academics. Now imagine that you are the Secretary of State for Education. Labour’s Bridget Phillipson doesn’t have to. She is both. On Friday morning, with a stroke of her pen (and a one-line statutory instrument) she revoked the order bringing into force the most important sections of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, including the much fought-for statutory tort. She also said that she is seriously contemplating repealing the legislation in its entirety.
For those of us who lobbied the Conservatives during the last Parliament to increase the legal protection of free speech and academic freedom on campuses, this is undoubtedly a kick in the teeth. What is more, the Government’s message to genuine liberals within the academy could not be clearer. It is that our concerns are not shared in Whitehall and that, notwithstanding our many evidence-based complaints and campaigns, there is nothing wrong with professors and lecturers being scared into silence over socially salient issues or being dismissed from their posts for daring to possess honest but unfashionable views. The fact that the Education Secretary could not even be bothered to come to the dispatch box of the House of Commons to explain or be questioned about her actions – she produced only a brief written statement and then, sometime later, a sloppily-drafted letter to MPs – serves only to underline her personal contempt for the issues.
To make matters worse, the reasons given by the Education Secretary in support of her decisions are so obviously bad ones. For a start, she says she is “concerned that [the Act] will expose higher education providers to costly legal action”. But even a vague awareness of recent developments within the higher education law world would suggest that the opposite will in fact be true. We could well be heading into an age of quite epic “lawfare”.
The defenders of free speech and academic freedom both within and without academia have never been keener to defend the rights of individuals who they perceive to be unjustly attacked for expressing lawful opinions and questioning received wisdom, and Friday’s events will do nothing to diminish that. Furthermore, almost all the duties which the Higher Education Act wanted to impose on universities and colleges already exist as part of other statutes. What the 2023 law did was to try and introduce a free and speedy complaints process designed to resolve free speech and academic freedom complaints in an efficient and effective manner. Unfortunately, in the absence of such a system, not only will the courts – and in particular the Employment Tribunal – continue to be the battle ground for such disputes to be resolved, and then at torturous length, but, as the pro-freedom jurisprudence slowly but steadily grows, that process will also become a cripplingly and unsustainably expensive one for infringing institutions to endure. With no alternative resolution scheme in place, the upcoming battle between the Open University and its one-time Law Lecturer Almut Gadow, in which she argues that employment law protection is modulated in academics’ favour by existing free speech law, stands as a model for the resource-draining litigation all universities will routinely come to face.
The Secretary of State also claimed “that many in the higher education sector feel that the Act is [too] burdensome”. This is a curious position for her to adopt. Considering that the real innovation of the Higher Education Act was in introducing a new enforcement mechanism for what are already existing duties, one might think that the only reason why universities would find its contents onerous is if, as things stand, their level of compliance with the law is low. In other words, the fact the 2023 Act has been perceived by so many institutions as bringing with it unwanted hassle is expressive of the underlying need for its existence in the first place. In the end, then, all roads it seems will lead us, rather than to what was meant to be a newly beefed-up Office for Students, to court.
Julius Grower is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oxford.
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“health and social care workers who feel greater pressure from their employers to receive Covid vaccinates are more likely to decline it.”
or
“people likely to decline vaccine feel more pressured”?
Exactly!
https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/8430-dead-354177-injuries-european-database-of-adverse-drug-reactions-for-covid-19-vaccines/
8,430 DEAD 354,177 Injuries: European Database of Adverse Drug Reactions for COVID-19 “Vaccines”
If it was 84 dead, or even 843, I’d say the vaccines were relatively safe, but 8430 in a few months?? And I’d bet it’s the top of the proverbial iceberg. So thanks, but no thanks.
‘The harder you push, the more I’ll resist.’
These behavioural ‘scientists’ at BIT can stick their ‘Nudge Theory’ where the Sun doesn’t shine.
Yes indeed, I am the same!!! But seems their nudges work on most of the population and some of these try to coerce others too. I have decided I won’t raise the subject of vaccine with anyone. It is my medical business an not theirs.
I really think they will get their 80% of the population though. And when they do perhaps they will leave us alone.
I hope you’re right, but I fear you’re not. Covid is now the “gift that goes on giving”, with the big difference that this gift apparently has the ability to go on giving, whilst simultaneously changing, and forever mutating into “variants”. As they have seized the agenda and narrative, they can do and say exactly as they want to achieve whatever it is they require. One moment it’s gung-ho for vaccines, but the minute that doesn’t suit, it’ll be bully for lockdowns. We have already had a demonstration of this from the Great Leader himself.
It’s the new War on Terror.
The “vaccine” does not do anything to get to herd immunity though, it just supposedly makes COVID milder in the elderly…
It doesn’t prevent spread (if anything it makes it go under the radar)…
So just ‘cos you accented to being nudged, means you’ll get nudged more.
They will never leave us alone. The control system put in place for Event Covid will be used for future engineered crises around, for example, food shortages, environmental/climate ‘events’, ‘cyber attacks’, power cuts and so on for ever unless the normal mass of humanity takes power into its own hands.
Wishful thinking, I fear.
No, they won’t. They will be mandated for work, play, travel, the minute they get full licensed status.
Quite, with so many behavioural ‘scientists’ in SAGE they should know more about human nature.
As this makes perfect sense, but doesn’t come from Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson or the other creeps, the Government is bound to do exactly the opposite. It’s what happens when we have a fatal mixture of weakness, stupidity, greed and cowardice in a bunch of power-crazed psychopaths and sociopaths.
Warning to any (3rd party) employer / company owner / store manager / football club / sports venue / travel company /public house / restaurant / etc, which insists I must have received an experimental Covid 19 ‘vaccine’ (including but not limited to any of those currently undergoing phase 3 clinical trials until 2023, and only approved for usage under emergency government legislation) as a condition of work or enjoyment of previously inalienable civil liberties.
This group of experimental ‘vaccines’ includes but is not limited to those based on various mRNA technologies (which includes Pfizer-BionTech and Moderna), Adenovirus vector technology (which includes Astra Zeneca), Recombinant adenovirus technology (which includes Sputnik V) and non-replicating viral vector technology (which includes Johnson & Johnson).
This objection covers coercion and/or conditionality being used to force the taking of any medication or treatment, even if fully tested and approved by the relevant authorities. I therefore cite the Nuremberg Code, which forbids coercion and/or conditionality being involved in the decision to take any medication or treatment, whether experimental or not. The 1st principle of the Nuremberg Code follows the lead of the Hippocratic Oath taken by all medical practitioners and states:
Please note: The manufacturers of those above mentioned ‘experimental vaccines’ which have UK emergency approval currently enjoy exemption from damages (including but not limited to death) caused from experimental ‘vaccine’ side effects. Consequently uninformed recipients unknowingly consent to waive key legal rights to future compensation claims in the event of them or their future offspring suffering an adverse reaction to, or long term consequence of, having taken the experimental vaccine.
Therefore any attempt at 3rd party coercion and/or conditionality must also carry with it the absolute obligation for the 3rd party to compensate for ALL side effects suffered by the coerced individual forced to take the vaccine simply to enjoy previously inalienable civil liberties.
Accordingly, the imposition of any form of 3rd party coercion and/or conditionality would therefore be taken to indicate that the 3rd party insisting on the vaccine being administered simultaneously agrees to:
1) Cover all future costs and damages (including legal costs) arising from any health and associated impacts (including but not limited to death) caused by any experimental ‘vaccine’ side effects to the recipient or descendants thereof (arising from possible intergenerational impacts not covered by the limited scope of the emergency testing to date).
2) Compensate any financial disadvantage suffered by the recipient’s immediate family and dependants arising from damage headings including (but not limited to) death, illness, health costs, loss of income/opportunity and other consequential impacts of any experimental vaccine’s side effects.
This obsession with getting 100% of us vaccinated….makes no sense. It’s not necessary. But this isn’t, as we have always said, about the virus.
There seems to be no sign of the average sheep rebelling. The rest of us dissenters, well no-one is listening to our concerns, no-one is interested, we are just viewed as cranky idiots. “Come join the flock”, they say, “you can’t survive alone”.
Hubby once spoke of 80:20 splits, in regard to other unrelated events in history. This is where we are again. 80% on board, 20% not. It doesn’t mean the 80% are right, though.
80/20. Pareto’s Law.
I agree with the 80:20 split – the 20% being those who know it’s all wrong, the 80% being unquestioning or easily persuaded and duped. The big problem we 20%ers have is that half of those who know it’s wrong have a vested interest in keeping up the charade, mostly because their livelihood depends on it. This includes all those NHS doctors workers who dare not speak out. So the real resistance is only 10%. Are we enough to make a difference?
It only makes sense if the intention is to microchip you!
OK I know I’ve said it before but I am infuriated! I have family who work in care homes and don’t want the vaxx and feel really pressured. So how can someone work in a care home who has AIDS or Hepatitis or any other communicable disease, but be free to not have to disclose this, and have the backing of the law if they are sacked? (And no doubt the backing of the London elite who would be furious if their gay friends were in any way discriminated against!) But (ordinary working class) people who won’t have a vaxxx for a disease THEY DO NOT HAVE have to be made to conform or face the sack? Someone explain it rationally to me because I am livid!
This is from a friend today:
“Been in hospital for the past 2 weeks with 5 blood clots .
1 in each kidney
1 in each adrenal gland , although one has already leaked
1 larger one in my lungs .
Not really a lot to say other than I am alive.
On steroids now for who knows how long and on blood thinners for at least 6 months . ”
That’s what they have to think of when they’re being pressured to have a vaccine.
Plus: it’s unlicensed, experimental, and being coerced into having a jab they don’t want and is unlicensed and experimental is possibly illegal.
Easy. Pfizer etc want the cash.
It’s completely rational.
I absolutely agree. I think that TB is the closest analogy to covid rather than HIV or Hep since it is also spread via the respiratory system. TB has been in the rise in the UK as immigrant populations have brought it in and we don’t insist upon screening and treatment (or it may also be a drug resistant variety). You can’t vaccinate for it after the age of 16ish as it has no effect on the adult immune system. People are under no obligation to disclose they have it and continue to spread it around. And yet we apparently care whether they’ve had a covid vaccine or not?! Bonkers.
Friend of mine, in her late forties, has been in hospital for the last two weeks after being vaccinated, and suffering from blood clots in her kidneys and in one lung. She’s probably lucky to be alive. She will have to be on steroids and blood thinners for six months.
I think she had covid last year, so should never have been given the jab anyway.
Speaking to one of my cousins, she knows of at least four people who’ve had the jab, one has been ill for over two months, two others have died: one died alone at home some time after the jab in late March, but they only found his body this weekend when friends tried to contact him as it was his birthday on Friday. The police were called and broke into his house to find his body. The other person died two days after the jab from a heart attack. His family were told it was a “coincidence.”
Ask her to contact Alex Berenson.
Those who know more about it are more likely to reject it; what a surprise. I suppose that many people watch the free advertising on certain media channels (paid for by the general public).
All concerned please note that there are legal steps being taken against coercion, such as: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop-coerced-vaccination/
They will eventually pin them to the floor and inject them under “mental health”
or camps
Fascists and Communists love camps
Why would anyone accept these frankensteinian concoctions ..
Scroll down to No. 6 .. What the covid 19 vaccine Astrazenesa contains
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca/information-for-uk-recipients-on-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca
Phizer doen’t sound quite so bad .. but it is still synthetic frankensteinian stuff
..
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-for-covid-19/information-for-uk-recipients-on-pfizerbiontech-covid-19-vaccine
These experimental injections must not be given to children
The more you tell me to do something, the less likely I am of complying.