News Round-Up
26 July 2024
Government Has Just Declared War on Free Speech
26 July 2024
by Toby Young
We look over the border to Scotland with a sense of alarm and disgust at the extreme censorship now being imposed via the Hate Crime Act. But speech is already scarcely freer in England, says Ella Whelan.
Humza Yousaf has received more complaints under Scotland's new hate crime bill for his 2020 speech about "often being the only non-white person in the room" than J.K. Rowling, it was claimed today.
We tell ourselves that Scotland's new speech restrictions could never be imposed south of the border, but, in many respects, the Hate Crime Act just brings Scottish law into line with the existing law in England and Wales.
An MSP is threatening Police Scotland with legal action if it doesn’t delete a 'hate incident (non-crime)’ recorded against him and scrap the guidance it's following, whereby it records all allegations of hate as HINCs.
The leak of the Police Scotland training materials telling officers they should target actors and comedians for 'hate speech' has intensified concerns that the new draconian legislation will kill comedy.
Science found a "near non-existent" benefit of face masks, the Covid Inquiry Lead Counsel told Devi Sridhar last week. "Should this debate have been bypassed?" he asked her. "Exactly," she replied.
The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, 327 years after the incident that provoked it, when Thomas Aikenhead became the last Brit to be hanged for blasphemy, says C.J. Strachan.
In the latest Weekly Sceptic podcast the talking points are Rishi Sunak clinging on, Scotland's new hate crime law and whether Ofcom is gearing up to withdraw GB News's broadcasting licence.
J.K. Rowling has vowed to continue "calling a man a man" in defiance of controversial new SNP hate crime laws, which she branded "ludicrous".
Devi Sridhar's knowledge of the epidemiology of respiratory viruses could be written on the back of a postage stamp, say Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson. Why was she a top pandemic adviser to the Scottish Government?
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