The Education Secretary shelved the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act in part because British universities wanted to protect their commercial operations in authoritarian states such as China. The Telegraph has more.
Earlier this month, Bridget Phillipson halted the introduction of a law aimed at forcing universities to actively promote free speech on campus, just days before they were due to come into force.
She announced that she was shelving the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 – a flagship Tory policy – and she said she will now consider repealing it.
The Department for Education (DfE) said the Bill would have a “negative” impact on vulnerable groups and that it opened universities up to costly legal challenges from academics if they fell foul of the new law.
But legal documents, seen by the Telegraph, reveal that vice-chancellors’ fears that the law would cause difficulties for their relationships with authoritarian states were also considered.
Responding to a legal challenge from the Free Speech Union (FSU), government lawyers noted that “concerns” had been raised with them about the “consequences for delivering English [higher education] in foreign countries which have restrictions on free speech”.
Several British universities operate overseas campuses as a way to attract more international students, as well as boost opportunities for lucrative research partnerships.
According to the latest figures, 18 universities have 38 campuses in 18 countries, with China and Malaysia the most popular destinations, followed by Dubai and Singapore.
The Russell Group, which represents the country’s top universities, has previously warned of the difficulties institutions would face if they had to implement the new free speech law in their campuses overseas.
The legal document also refers to concerns about the “costs of overseas transparency requirements”, which would have required universities to declare donations from foreign countries, over a certain amount.
While experts believe this points to their fear that the transparency requirement may put off prospective donors, Universities UK, the vice-chancellor membership group, said this refers to the cost of filling in forms.
A spokesman for Universities U.K. said that its members are “strongly committed to free speech and to academic freedom and they are bound by law to uphold both”, but said that the free speech law would have made working with other countries more difficult.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: More than 500 academics, including Sir Niall Fergusson, have written to Bridget Phillipson asking her to implement the Freedom of Speech Act in full. The Mail has more.
Stop Press 2: The Free Speech Union has mounted a legal challenge against the Government, convinced that Bridget Phillipson’s decision to suspend the Act was unlawful. You can contribute to the legal costs of that judicial review here.
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What the last 18 months have demonstrated, sadly, is the extent to which our institutions have become corrupted. That is one of the most depressing aspects of the whole nonsense.
But also it has shone a light on these corrupt institutions and they have now been exposed, whereas before they lived in the shadows, going about their subversive dirty work. Now it is out in the open and they need to be picked off, one by one.
Klaus, Bill and his merry WEF bunch of rag-tag globalist billionaires have understood well the changing human/tech dynamics in play since 2001. Why not take a look at the following if you have the time?
https://archive.org/details/FutureStrategicIssuesFutureWarfareCirca2025/mode/2up
I particularly like the summing up last slide – Usual Reactions to this Presentation
• Is in the “Too Hard Box”
• Not being done yet by anyone, therefore will not be done
• They would not do that
• We have to hope they would not do that
• Why go there, cannot defend against it
• Some disbelief, but agreement there is too much
And to understand the greater geopolitical overview of what’s been rolling along for a while now…then here is a very useful documentary from 2016 that’s still bang-on-the-money that illuminates the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPmUGq25KBk
So what to do with millions of obsolete people – politely ask them to walk into the chambers – or perhaps do it in a more sly, subversive but humane way… that takes say 3-5 years?
That doesn’t involve massive planetary collateral damage that an OLD NORMAL overt 20th century warfare outburst would unleash.
And if this sounds all too tin-foil hat for you… why does so little of what you’re being Govt mandated to do logically add up? Why isn’t the narrative being stopped for the most populace G7 nations? Why does the UK very soon drop in the mandatory vaxx passports?
“We’re from the Government and we’re here to help”
I was waiting for the Aussie blackshirts to go full Sgt Pike
Only exceeded by what it has revealed about the critical thinking and controllability of the masses!
I have been saying for years. ALL out institutions are infested by parasites.
Any volunteers to join me, biohazard suit up and get out the Paraquat? For we need a purge on a Stalinist scale to sort this out. The government is now so suborned that even if it wanted to clean out the Augean stables, it never will.
RIP Western Civilisation.
If not corruption at least gross incompetence and crass group think. You can be sure though that they all enjoyed drawing their full salaries and ‘working’ from home.
Doctors and judges conducting consultations and court hearings from home in their PJ’s or worse through 20/21, think how that worked
Professional bodies are primarily about protecting professionals. Upholding professional standards is incidental to that – when it suits.
Yes certain judges got away with abusive behaviour in their zoom and telephone hearings in 2020 often resulting in injustice for litigants. Of course pre 2020 there always had been complaints about judges to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office but these increased exponentially during the period when the majority of hearings took place remotely.
The German saying is “Eine Kraehe hackt der anderen kein Auge aus.”
It’s the standard one among the public whenever doctors and malpractice issues are concerned since well over a century.
And the German saying means what exactly?
Hawks will not pick out hawks’ eyes
Crow surely a better translation there…
Ought to be vulture.
Crows are omnivores who are also scavengers and tend to congregate in large packs close to food sources, eg (in former times) battle fields full of dead bodies or (nowadays more common) rubbish dumps. They’re pretty much the northern/ north-eastern European equivalent of vultures.
Vultures clean up carcasses, an essential job since all living things die (as we all know and have been repeating for 18 months now). They don’t kill as far as I am aware.
Thank you.
Except of course in the case of the Great Barrington Declaration
“I wonder what’s going on with the HCPC?”
Same as with every other institution globally. They are all in it up to their necks. They will never admit they are wrong. I think we as sceptics need to stop imagining there will be some kind of dawning of truth, at least for the next few decades.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/10/12/best-of-offg-free-speech-censorship-the-right-to-be-wrong/
“I wonder what’s going on with the HCPC“
Depends where they are on the range of standard institutional responses to being caught doing wrong that serves the purposes of the powerful.
It ranges from smug confidence that they can get away with ignoring the little people, to furious panic and hysterical arse-covering if it starts to become clear that things might actually all come out into public view….
Indeed, though I would say at present they have little reason to panic. When there is wrongdoing, scandal, coverup, the exposure usually happens because those in the wrong are some kind of minority or there are other powerful forces who want to see them exposed. In the case of covid, there is no such powerful force, anywhere. Not governments, not mainstream opposition parties, not business, media, judiciary, academia, the professions, not the people. Just a few sceptics.
Bitter experience (vid. Iraq War) inclines me to share your scepticism.
But you never know. This kind of determined digging by a (rightly) outraged professional could have surprising results, He has truth on his side.
What he needs is exactly what Toby has provided here: coverage and publicity.
Now we need higher profile media figures in the mainstream and in the dissident semi-mainstream (TalkRadio, GB News etc) media to push it, to force them to respond.
We have truth on our side. One hopes that with the kind of push you mention, the court of public opinion will gradually start to apply pressure. But I think the backlash from the elites in charge will be vicious, potentially very dangerous to anyone in the mainstream who deviates from the narrative. The more it looks like we are starting to turn the tide, the more violently sceptics will be treated.
We are all living a dystopian nightmare with millions blissfully unaware. What will happen to the small voice of the sceptics
The Behavioural Psycopaths have behaved true to their name. Everyone who has gone along with the covid narrative appears to have been given immunity, like the pharma groups. Thing is, now that the implications are coming closer to home, people are speaking up and refusing to comply.
For much the same reason that the Catholic Church buried and continues to bury accusations against its priests, bar throwing an unpopular low level one to the mob every so often.
What do you mean you wonder what is going on with the HCPC? Is it not obvious?
They don’t want to touch it because they agree with it.
See Richard North today (EU Referendum blog) on how former government ministers can chair select committees whose job is to hold the executive to account.
Technically, Richard’s now migrated it all to his preferred “Turbulent Times2 blog at https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/
When we look back in a decade I think most problems will be shown to have arisen from the panic and stress induced in populations. It’s not normal. Stress is a big killer. On top of all the other things we know about lockdowns being bad, I think the panic induced in order to get people to comply will be bigger than the effects of lockdown itself.
The thing I hate the most is that we have gone from a country with a long history of freedom, respect for human dignity and belief in fundamental rights stretching back to Magna Carta and before to a country where the clock gets reset. Maybe in 10 years we will say ‘we have an unbroken history of freedom stretching back 8 years’ but we aren’t even there yet.
“When we look back in a decade I think most problems will be shown to have arisen from the panic and stress induced in populations. It’s not normal. Stress is a big killer. On top of all the other things we know about lockdowns being bad, I think the panic induced in order to get people to comply will be bigger than the effects of lockdown itself.”
As we’ve agreed here before, I think, Donald Henderson had it right when he observed:
“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.
How a Free Society Deals with Pandemics, According to Legendary Epidemiologist and Smallpox Eradicator Donald Henderson
“The thing I hate the most is that we have gone from a country with a long history of freedom, respect for human dignity and belief in fundamental rights stretching back to Magna Carta and before to a country where the clock gets reset. Maybe in 10 years we will say ‘we have an unbroken history of freedom stretching back 8 years’ but we aren’t even there yet.”
Indeed.
I thought all that at the beginning of the global warming idiocy – and now here we are, about 4 decades later. Sanity and the truth of course finally prevailed – IN MY DREAMS!
“we have gone from a country with a long history of freedom, respect for human dignity and belief in fundamental rights stretching back to Magna Carta.”
I fear that’s historical whitewash. The narrative is much more complex and patchy. The elites had to be fought for every freedom, and the commons were often complicit. Magna Carta , remember, was about a conflict within the robber elite, not universal rights.
… Even tho’ the current reversal has been exceptional.
I’m with you; don’t think medieval convicted criminal/prisoner welfare mores were up to much. 1533 pre and post was not the best period for homogeneity in these islands; mind you Oliver Cromwell did his best to wrest control from a revolting monarch.
Lawyers were bent, judges bought, nepotism and simony rife. However, the slow changeover hundreds of years is now very evident even if the current crop in Westminster, Whitehall and the upper echelons of the public sector are throwbacks…perhaps they should suffer the same fate as the dissenting Bishops and Master Cromwell, amongst many others, had meted out to them…make a mess of the M25 bridges..
Because you (and we) don’t have any political power. The reason these regulators exist is to impose restrictions on people with no power so that the people with power can enjoy the dominance of such a privilege and the freedom of being able to do as they please while laughing at you (and us).
If we don’t understand this simple fact and continue to pretend that these institutions have any moral authority then we can’t really complain when they’re used for their real purpose.
Sadly, understanding is not enough since ‘you (and we) don’t have any political power’!
True. But it’s a challenge to journalists, who often know full well how the game is played, to stop feigning incredulity every time an institution doesn’t play as fairly as they pretend it should.
I personally have had an appalling experience of HCPC incompetence in the last 18 months. I’d quite happily share my experience with the author if he was serious about challenging the HCPC’s fitness for purpose.
Good luck!
The US/CIA used two US psychologists to fine tune their torture program, in which one alleged Al Qaeda member was waterboarded some 200 times. He still languishes untried in Gitmo to this day.
Needless to say, the US psychologists association whitewashed this action by their members.
They will take you more seriously if you ask a solicitor to send the next letter.
This is a really admirable way of fighting back against the criminal madness we’ve been subjected to these last 18 months. Make people accountable for their role in this. If the machine can’t be overpowered then perhaps its moving parts can. All professionals with scruples and institutional structures should be doing this!
What about the General medical council? Aren’t they supposed to investigate complaints against Doctors and have the ability to revoke their right to practise?
Surely there is sufficient evidence to suggest that many of the pyschologists and other forms of Doctors used in SAGE and as advisors have breached the Hippocratic oath and as such should have their right to continue to practise questioned.
Read my earlier post – a medic being obviously in the wrong is not enough for the GMC. I believe the British Psychological Society has also whitewashed the role played by their members in the uncontrolled psyops Fear campaign – not against their professional ethics or code of conduct…what “sanction” is left?
I can think of several but publishing them here might lead to a list from Plod..
We know the the faceless ones behind the scamdemic. The real villains?, the so called journalists who wont even do their job.
It’s the editors, news editors and comment editors who are to blame.
Well done, Dr Dunne.
Presumably the HCPC have been “got at” like all the other institutions.
I believe that big business and public institutions in this country are some of the most corrupt in the world now, no better than many they publicly criticise – that are at least open about their contempt for their citizens – and has been going that way for a long time.
If this sage psychiatrist had mentioned anything that opposed the gov’t narrative he/she would have been removed from Sage swiftly.
I must admit I hadn’t realised that the BIT (Behavioural Insights Team) that is associated with SAGE is now a bloody “social purpose company” !
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insights-team
Company details:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08567792
If you explore that company details you will discover a shareholder and one of the “persons with significant control” is “Behavioural Insights Trustee Company Limited” a “Trustee Of The Behavioural Insights Employee Benefits Trust”.
Company details:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08866967
What a tangled web of sloping shoulders, with benefits…
From personal experience with bureaucrats a Recorded Delivery/Sign For letter always kick starts a formal process as it cannot be avoided, ignored or mislaid, or a Solicitor’s Letter, but the latter will probably cost a few hundred quid. Good Luck.
I agree – the merry go round of failed people in public life moving from from one public senior post to another , appointed by a board of their “peers’ , goes on and on.
Several years ago I referred two GMC medics who lied for personal and commercial gain – won’t go any further as extremely distressing – I supplied incontrovertible proof (a document from a 3rd party they had requested to bolster their “case” which they relied upon to say a diagnosis of “X” had never been made , justifying their commercially advantageous decision at my expense, but which stated categorically- very deep in the document – that “Y” had occurred proving “X” – gross over simplification I know); that proof mad NO difference.
GMC confirmed “they did not condone their actions” but took no action – code for ‘yes they are guilty but we don’t care”. After this very long drawn out process, I determined that a HCPC , non GMC “clinician” they employed to attempt to destroy my character, who made libellous accusations he could not back up, would be backed up in a similar vein by the same cosy clique. ( He failed BTW )
Dr Dunne, I hope you’ve seen the Hcpc Stakeholders Perception Survey 2021 and will provide them with your “current perceptions of the HCPC”. I have, and they won’t like it!