What distinguishes Reform from other parties, however, is its refusal to believe that words have consequences. Inextricably wedded to unfettered free speech online, its answer isn’t to regulate platforms that algorithmically amplify and normalise hate but simply to build ever higher walls around the targets of that hate
Free speech is important, yes. So, the claim is that only Reform are for free speech….
A cartoon for preschoolers depicting the adventures of a small girl and a retired circus bear may seem an unlikely source of parliamentary concern.
Yet a cross-party group of MPs has written to ministers urging them to examine whether they can stop Masha and the Bear from being broadcast in the UK, alleging it amounts to a cuddly form of Russian propaganda.
The cartoon, loosely based on a traditional Russian oral folk story, is one of the most popular shows of all time on YouTube. One of its seven-minute episodes, Recipe for Disaster, has been viewed more than 4.6bn times on the site.
However, the show has been criticised by a Ukrainian state-backed body and Estonia’s minister for foreign affairs as a form of Russian “soft power”.
If they’ve the power to ban then that power will be used…..
David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, is to implement legal changes that will see criminals accused of serious offences released early for the first time as part of Government efforts to prevent jails from running out of space.
They include prisoners convicted of manslaughter, rape, GBH and sex offences who will be eligible for release halfway through their sentences rather than serving the current tariff of two-thirds of their sentence.
Spend less on cars for people whose kiddies are a tad peaky and build more jails.
There is a point to this too. The aim of a justice system is to protect malefactors from the revenge of the mob. Stop doing that and King Mob Rulz.
More than 80% of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media three months after legislation banning them from it came into force, research shows.
Surprise, eh?
But experts and campaigners say the research, published in the BMJ, shows that banning social media is not enough to stop children accessing harmful content online and that a more “convincing strategy is required”.
Clearly, abolish more civil liberty. Mean, obviously.
A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide.
No bias nor partiality here at all. Right?
Teenagers under the age of 16 are to be banned from accessing “high-risk” social media apps while safer platforms will be subjected to restrictions, under a sweeping government crackdown.
What will happen – no, will – is that those in power will decide that safe means not showing stuff that discomfits those in power. After all, who would argue that the kiddies should see something as high risk as Nigel? Quite, quite.
It’s the very discretion that leads to the censorship, isn’t it?
Last week, the British state took another extraordinary step in its campaign of repression against pro-Palestine figures, blocking US commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker from entering the UK. The Home Office did not explain its reasoning, simply saying their presence in the UK was not “conducive to the public good”. The Guardian reported that it was “understood that both men have been blocked because of concerns that they could exacerbate antisemitism”.
The actions are opaque, the message unmistakable: there are political causes the British establishment welcomes but also political causes it very much fears.
Precisely when speech is controversial that’s when it must be defended etc.
Quite so. So we all do recall Mehdi’s insistence that those 7 be allowed in to go to Tommy’s march, right?
We do?
This idea that a phone cannot be used to take a naked piccie. Of a child, according to Jess Philips. Something in the OS – iOS, Android – that can be turned on apparently.
Now, me, I think this is just an excuse to start censorship. But then I know very little to nothing about the tech here. Even, is this actually possible? If it is, how?
Anyone actually know?
Cuba’s constitution declares that the Communist party, which is the only legal political organisation, has regulatory jurisdiction over all radio, TV and print media. It also prohibits journalism outside this sphere. Starting an independent magazine meant declaring war on the government.
You’re not being exploited by either the Americans or the capitalists…..freedom, d’ye see?
BTW, well worth reading. About opening an independent online magazine in Cuba…..Oh, and fair play to The G for running it. It’ll right piss off the weirder of their readers.
Starmer ‘destroyed public confidence in ID cards’
Policy rushed and poorly thought through, says home affairs committee
Maybe ID cards are just a fuckwit idea?
Sir Keir Starmer’s botched announcement of compulsory digital ID cards “destroyed” the public’s confidence in the idea, a committee of MPs has said.
The Prime Minister’s initial announcement was “rushed, poorly thought through and failed to make a convincing case” for mandatory ID cards, said the home affairs committee.
Dame Karen Bradley, the committee chairman, said the Government’s approach was “nothing short of a fiasco”, undermining public faith in what had been a “generally well-received” policy direction.
Apparently not, it’s presentation that went wrong.
Tumbrils at dawn.
The former Sky News political editor Adam Boulton has said GB News should lose its broadcasting licence as he accused Britain’s media regulator of failing in its duty to protect impartial television news.
If we define impartial as what I like then anyone who says stuff I don’t like shouldn’t be allowed to, right?
A Labour party spokesperson criticised Farage for promoting Clayden’s cause, saying: “Time and time again, Nigel Farage finds himself in the company of extreme voices. Farage should have called out these grim homophobic remarks and condemned them. Instead, he is throwing his support behind the individual peddling them, so that he has a bigger platform to spew them some more.
“This is just the latest in a string of examples that show Farage and Reform stand for division and are not on the side of working people.”
So it’s a Christian preacher being a bit fundamentally Christian in public. His local MP is supporting his free speech rights.
Footage of Clayden preaching last month, available on social media, shows him saying: “All adulterers, all fornicators, all sodomites, all drunkards, all thieves, all blasphemers, all liars, all mockers. Their home shall be in the lake of fire … we are here telling you what the word of God says.”
In the same session, he told passersby: “They hear about words in the Bible like judgment and sin and repentance. They don’t like hearing the holy words of God … they are offended by what the Bible says when the Bible says homosexuality is an abomination.”
Free speech is free speech even if the speech is hurty.
Clayden told Farage the council was objecting to the volume and some of the content of his preaching, including his references to hell and judgment. However, he has since acknowledged that the council raised concerns not just about the volume of his preaching but also his church’s warnings against homosexuality.
150 years ago the argument was the act, well, but not in the streets, eh? Now, apparently, it’s the preaching against the act that’s OK in private but not in the streets, eh?
Finally, I think it’s quite brave of Nige to support a preacher who insists all drunkards are to be consigned to the flames.
The European Union could announce a ban on social media for children as soon as this summer, Ursula von der Leyen has said.
Any system that can exclude one group can be used to exclude another. Say, those fascist right wingers who might oppose membership of the European Union?
Largely self-funded and backed by Thiel and fellow contrarian entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, a crypto investor, Objection says it wants to act as a “private accountability system” for journalism. For a starting price of $2,000 (£1,470), anyone who feels they have been unfairly reported on can file a complaint. A team of investigators – including, reportedly, former National Security Agency operatives – then examine the story and submit their findings to an “AI tribunal” – a “jury” of large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and Mistral. Journalists are invited to defend their reporting. If they do not, the verdict is issued anyway, and published in a permanent public record.
Because AI repeats what everyone is saying. It doesn’t have investigatory powers. It’s a repeat engine. So, if you’re saying something that is not a commonplace then AI will disagree with you.
This seems to me to be a conceptual problem.
A future Prime Minister Farage could legally go to war without consulting parliament, fire civil servants who block him, and potentially wield sweeping emergency powers if he chose to invoke the civil contingencies act (for example, in response to mass protests).
Which is why the civil contingencies act is such a bad idea. From memory it allows the confiscation of any property, anywhere, without compensation, upon the declaration of such an emergency. Which could be for environmental reasons. So, declaring a “climate emergency” would mean the govt of the day could stimply steal any and every house.
The power shouldn’t exist, should it?
A Finnish member of parliament has been found guilty by the country’s supreme court of inciting hatred after claiming that homosexuality was a “developmental disorder”, in a conviction that prompted criticism from far-right government ministers.
But illegal to say or suggest? Fuck off.
And to think, there are people who suggest we should rejoin such people in political unions, eh?
The court ruled her claim that homosexuality was a disorder of psychosexual development was incorrect.
Seriously, the court ruing on whether a statement is true or not? Doesn’t matter if it’s incorrect – we’re all allowed to be wrong as well as right.
It was one of the most disproportional votes-to-seats results seen anywhere in the world. But then, nowhere in Europe but the UK still uses first past the post.
The first-past-the-post system was the fortress sustaining the old parties, but “small” party interlopers it was designed to keep out have stormed the walls, and could yet overrun the castle. YouGov finds that Nigel Farage could become prime minister on a 23% vote, against the strong wishes of three-quarters of the country. Voting has become a fruit machine with random results when tiny shifts bring cascading seats.
The consequences run deeper than fair voting or psephology. The primacy of a few voters in a few marginals has profoundly distorted the way we live. Our exceptional inequality, among the the worst in the developed world, is exacerbated by our two-party system. Still we suffer the after-effects of Thatcherism and austerity – extremist approaches that would be mitigated in a proportional system. Revealing research from Compass this week tracks how two-party politics began falling apart as more middle-class voters, also suffering from a cost-of-living squeeze, were ignored by a system that took them for granted but provided no better representation to low-income voters in urban seats.
As the results of democratic elections might bring about a winner Polly doesn’t like then and therefore the system of democracy must be changed.
Which is to wholly miss the point of elections, of democracy. They’re a way of changing the rulers without bloodshed. If you change the system so that the rulers casnnot be changed then that’s not democracy.
David Lammy is to face down Labour rebels next week by pressing full steam ahead with his controversial plans to curb jury trials.
The Justice Secretary is due to unveil the legislation without any alterations despite fierce opposition from within his own party.
Legal professionals are also almost unanimously opposed to the plans, which would see up to half of jury trials scrapped and replaced with judge-only courts or magistrates.
You know, actual fascism and where is The Sage?
Don’t forget, jury nullification is the whole point of the exercise.
For nearly two decades, the US quietly funded a global effort to keep the internet from splintering into fiefdoms run by authoritarian governments. Now that money is seriously threatened and a large part of it is already gone, putting into jeopardy internet freedoms around the world.
Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme – broadly called Internet Freedom – funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, who built grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (£370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024.
We’re gonna need that sort of aid when the Starmerites really get into their groove.
Allies of Sir Keir now stand accused of using false information contained in the firm’s report to smear the journalists and the newspaper, wrongly accusing them of being stooges for Russia, which it claimed had probably fed them information hacked from the Electoral Commission.
Worse still, Labour Together tried to use Britain’s intelligence agencies to amplify the smears, by encouraging them to launch an investigation based on the dodgy dossier, which they hoped would then be reported by the Left-wing press.
Just all of them, into jail.
No reason, just because.