Overheard:
Hay: "It was Ash Wednesday yesterday."
Chairman: "Isn't that the start of the Christian version of Ramadan, but longer?"
Remember a while ago I said that the UK / EU vaccine spat hinged on whether the UK contract with AstraZeneca also used the wording 'best efforts', which the UK was unwilling to divulge in the interests of 'national security'? Well, it transpires than not only does the UK contract contain that wording, but the contract with the EU was made only 1 day later than the one with the UK.
I hear the government is setting up Nightingale Courts. I never realised Florence Nightingale was involved in jurisprudence. Should they not be called Judge Jeffreys Courts?
The government is also proposing to employ someone to police free speech at universities.
The problem with unrestricted free speech, besides seeing the effect in the USA, is that free speech is fine only when you agree with the speech it produces. When you disagree with it, it's not fine - regardless of your political persuasion. Appointing someone to make that decision on behalf of the government will, by default, favour the admittance of government values, which many find abhorrent. It's like putting Paul Dacre, the ex editor of the Daily Mail, in change of the Press Complaints Commission - oh, hang on, isn't that's just what Boris recently did!
Those most vocal in calling for unrestricted free speech tend to have an affinity with Trump, Brexit, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, a disliking of Meghan Markle, Holocaust denial, climate change denial, fawning admiration for Boris Johnson, a disregard for government corruption, a slavish devotion to markets and rich people, tax evasion, a dislike of Parliamentary scrutiny - all the traits most associated with the rabid right and the values that made Britain great.
What they really want is free speech without consequences and not to be challenged. There are plenty of places where they can indulge themselves online, but generally it's not within polite society.
There are laws already in place to determine what is and isn't allowed under the umbrella of free speech. Anyone has access to legal redress should such legislation be breached. It seems to me that having someone policing this is unnecessary and bound to backfire, as it will inevitably lead to arbitrary decisions. It can only result in speech, as determined by one person, being admitted, rather than denied, and then possibly to those who don't want to necessarily hear that free speech, which is their democratic right.
I have a deep suspicion that this policy has the intent of facilitating the promulgation of whacky, far right views within universities - another arm to the culture war the right is intent on waging to split us.
What does the Free Speech Tzar do, for example, if Andrew Wakefield wants to talk about MMR? Or David Irving wants to talk about the Holocaust being a hoax? Or the BNP want a platform? There again, I doubt they would be invited in the first place.
It's interesting that Gavin Williamson portrays this as an exercise in democracy - it looks more like dictatorship than democracy. Democracy is surely allowing universities themselves decide what they want to hear or not? Who should decide on the withdrawal of invitations to speak - those who wrote the invitations in the first place or a government wonk? If you believe it should be a government wonk, then you perhaps have problems. There again, if you don't want to hear someone's view, don't invite them in the first place.
The problem with free speech is the word free. Freedom is a trigger word that generates an emotive response, rather than a rational and intellectual one, as we have seen in the Brexit debate. Freedom was used to justify both the Russian and Chinese revolutions. That's not to say they were bad - you just have to compare them with what they were a reaction against to see that - they simply didn't move on with post-communism and became stultified with one form of oppression being replaced by another..
I doubt someone would be no platformed if they had a new theory of particle physics that went against the orthodoxy, provided they had proof. It's more a danger in the liberal arts and, specifically, with anything concerned with identity, which is very personal.
No platforming of someone may be unrelated to the content of a speech, but views held by that person that come to light after the invitation is issued, which may be unrelated to the subject they're talking about. Giving them a platform can give the impression that the organisers are aligned with the views of the speaker.
No - this is an attempt by government to prevent democracy and to foist its values on universities by a dog-whistle call to the right. They do say all the world's Covid virus particles can fit into a Coke can - I think the same goes for the combined brains of our government...
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