When you dig past all the 'war on woke' gibberish of the government's proposals, you get two concrete things. First, it wants to become directly involved in the assessment of valid speech in universities.
This elevates discussions about when legal speech should be stopped from the institutional level, where it is difficult, to the state level, where it is intolerable.
Secondly, it wants to directly interfere in the work of heritage bodies and local councils to dictate one narrative of history, in which criticism is at best frowned upon or at worst not allowed.
And in the background of all that, it is confirming the suspicion in many left-wing circles that the principle of free speech is in fact a Trojan Horse for an aggressive reactionary assault.
It is an assault on free speech - legally, institutionally, culturally and politically. Dressed up in the language of the thing it claims to defend.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I'm so excited about this. Been waiting to announce it for ages. We're doing an evening with Harriet and John: the love story that made modern liberalism. eventbrite.co.uk/e/harriet-and-…
It's virtual, obvs, taking place on Thursday March 4th. Salon style event full of ROMANCE, DRAMA, BIG INTELLECTUAL BREAKTHROUGHS.
.@timatkin has generously given up his time to pair two bottles of wine with the event, selected to complement the life and work of Harriet and John. You can get them both through @davyswine at a special discount - link in the event blurb.
Rewatching the decent X-Men films because of, you know, *that* TV show.
Order: First Class, X-Men, X2, Last Stand, Days of Future Past (yes I know Last Stand isn't decent, but you need it to make sense of DoFP). I want to put Logan at the end, but it's such a downer after DofP.
Anyway, you know what? First Class really isn't that good. But watching it before X-Men really improves X-Men. Gives it all this weight and heritage you previously had to guess at. Makes the relationship between Xavier and Magneto much more emotional.
God what a lot of impenetrable gibberish. Hard to discern what, if anything, the new powers will entail, but I guess we'll find out next week when we get the ministerial statement rather than the govt-approved Telegraph spin.
I mean, how exactly would this work? The government going to each student union and forcing them to invite someone from their approved list of commentators? They're off their dimwit tits.
Not so long ago the government had a blacklist of media outlets it wouldn't talk to because they had the temerity to scrutinise the prime minister. Now they set themselves up as the supposed defenders of free speech.
This can fuck right off. And then when it's done fucking off, it should take itself into a dark alley and fuck off some more, before reaching its final resting place, where it can fuck off a little further for good measure. bbc.com/news/entertain…
I am so tired of being told to heal over Brexit by people who treated even the most miniscule of concessions as a kind of treachery.
Remainers were offered nothing, literally nothing, in policy terms. Even aligning with European chemicals or aviation regulators was considered too much. The absurdity of it.
People have spent the week getting very cross about flags, but really we should spend more time slagging off national anthems. They are all so dreadful.
And yes this was triggered by the singing before the rugby thing.
Every time I hear the national anthem I feel slightly less patriotic.