Westministers: Happy New Year?

[RedToothBrush]

And so we enter a New Year full of hope that things might just be about to recover from our national nervous breakdown... or perhaps not.

As we have Damien Green ejected from his role as Deputy PM over allegations of inappropriate conduct towards woman and use of porn at the end of last year, 2018 sees a bright new progressive dawn with the appointment to the role of universities regulator of Toby Young. A man who has deleted 20,000 tweets including many which are inappropriate and offensive to women, is a fan of eugenics and hates the working class and disabled.

Meanwhile the NHS is facing a crisis which is totally unexpected to the government and couldn't possibly have been planned for by a man who has over seen it for over five years. Which naturally bodes really well for Brexit planning.

We are apparently planning to join the TPP. Never mind geopolitics we can move the UK to the Pacific region.

We still are not ready for trade talks because the Cabinet can not agree on anything. Not that it sounds like they have actually discussed anything along these lines yet.

Rumours are that the Cabinet - including arch leavers such as Gove - are leaning towards supporting May and a softer option, despite the disgust of Johnson, who once again is the subject of malicious chatter about his sacking in a forthcoming Cabinet Reshuffle.

There is talk of further Tory Party war with the revelation that membership of the party has dropped to a core of just 70,000 hardline authoritarian men, most of whom are over 60. Tory HQ now wants to (perhaps with some good reason to prevent the loons) rewrite the constitution and limit the power of local associations to select candidates. The Tory party is now lining up to be a power struggle between internal authoritarians, who don't like democracy voices or structure.

Meanwhile the Labour Party membership now apparently overwhelmingly looks upon staying in the customs union and single market favourably and is in favour of a second referendum. In opposition to the leadership who are utterly committed to Hard Brexit. Much to the annoyance of Lord Adonis who is pitching a fit about government corruption and incompetence and being accused of being elite because he going skiing. Unlike of prominent Leavers who are in touch with the working class.

And finally Nigel Farage has got a meeting with Barnier. Farage, unlike Clegg, Clarke and Adonis, will not be accused by the Right Wing Press of undermining the government's negotiating position because...

It appears that we are in for another year of Brexit nonsense then.

We've not even heard mention of Gibraltar yet.

Not like this. It's an organised take down.

Feminism is a reaction against the organised and institutional take down of women! Feminists have been 'no platformed for the entire existence of the movement. Germaine Greer has been dealing with this crap all her life. I sure she can deal with a bunch of students being stupid for a while.

This isn't about no platforming talk about eugenics and race at a university. This was an invite only conference. It wasn't for student or public consumption. There is no transparency or accountability here.

I agree with you that it is different, but my point is that any law put in place to promote a duty of universities to allow free speech on campus will absolutely be used to argue that these sorts of events should be allowed. I don't believe that the right wingers will make the distinction you have made. If the university refuses to host conferences promoting racist and misogynistic views any new law will be pulled out to beat them with it. If need be the conference will just invite a few students along. This is the problem of unintended consequences.

I was taught by my lecturers to be cautious of censorship because its all about gatekeeping and who are the gatekeepers.

I understood what they were saying at the time, but only begrudgingly and have only recently understood properly what their point was.

The principle is that the truth holds up to scrutiny and that it wins through in the end.

The referendum kind of questioned that.

But that's part of the point.

People were legitimised when they should not have been because of poor scrutiny and because they didn't get asked the questions they should and because certain views were given a disproportionate platform and the counter was unable to get an equal platform.

The media was pushing an agenda rather than carrying out its role to ask critical questions. In some cases, the media felt unable or incapable of pushing back and asking critical questions they should have for political reasons. There was you clue that they were compromised in their role.

Censorship, has consequences and can legitimise in other ways if you are not careful. People ask what are people trying to hide.

This is why transparency over decisions and a robust ethics framework which isn't dominated by ideology is important.

But the public need to also know and understand this. This is part of the issue about people not fully appreciating the dynamic of the courts, the government and the media.

The US constitution has the 1st Amendment for this reason. I find it frustrating at times, but I do get the principle.

I think because we are happier as a society with the concept of censorship, we were some what more vulnerable to a weakness in the media than the US. Having said that I do think our media is on the whole proving to be more robust than the media in the US. This is why the US is having even more problems despite free speech. Because the level of trust in it is lower and because its quality of reporting and investigating is lower.

Social media also bypassed this scrutiny. As a society we need to learn how to think critically a lot more as a result.

I'm not seeing much sign of political parties valuing this though. Stupidly this leaves the country vulnerable to ideologies they dislike because they are prioritising pushing their crap over safeguarding against the shit they hate at the other end of the spectrum.

I went to seen Germaine Greer speak last year. She and other feminists like Helen Steel and Linda Bellos have publicly said, they've been speaking about the same things all their professional lives, and have never encountered the animosity and deliberate silencing they have in the last years, before.

Never before have I been in a country where feminist conferences have to be organised at secret locations in order to take place.

It's honestly not been as bad as this for women in my lifetime in england, Bigly, sadly and the poor girls suffering an epidemic of mental health issues and suicide are testimony to it.

Privatising universities, getting rid of public accountability, the GRA, silencing Students Unions and a myriad of targeted misogynistic digital campaigns have led to this.

But happy to agree to disagree.

The student journalist(s) who investigated this deserve enormous respect and congratulations.

Shouldn't the mainstream media have uncovered this, though? The university board was a high-profile, newsworthy appointment. The way this has been uncovered and disseminated somewhat highlights what has happened to investigative reporting - and the results of that. And it highlights what is at stake with that decline in investigative reporting/the role of mainstream media. There is less accountability, less scrutiny; it does make the (well-funded) penetration of the extreme right wing far easier.

TRANSPARENCY TRANSPARENCY TRANSPARENCY.

That's what any decision has to have in an institution or in government.

That's whats missing.

The Great Accountability Deficient.

I am worried I am being misunderstood. I am not in anyway for censorship. I am very strongly free speech. My issues is not that we should be no platforming or encouraging it. Or that we should be censoring views.

My issue is with a specific talk of implementing a legal obligations on universities (and just universities) to allow free speech. A obligation that is being strongly pushed by rightwing interests.

The right is developing a knack of co-opting leftwing language and wishes to promote its own interests. My belief is that this obligation on universities is not about allowing genuine free speech. It is about allowing extreme rightwing views to be aired at universities without challenge.

There are better ways of dealing with the no platforming issue than giving the extreme right wing a legal stick to beat us with. As a student I expect to be allowed to challenge any eugenics speaker who is allowed on campus without being told I am violating their freedom of speech.

Nigel Farage just said he wants a second in/out ref on the Wright stuff.

There's your issue thecatfromjapan.

Mainstream media is dominated by finance. Student politics is freer from that and there is an incentive to try to get an exceptional story which will get you noticed.

I see that, and get your point of view bigly

Nigel Farage just said he wants a second in/out ref on the Wright stuff.

Seriously

The Tory press, including Sarah Vine, have been playing down the Toby Young tweets as a mistake he made years ago, deserves a second chance etc. etc..

All politics seems to work on "us:good, them:bad"; "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" type of binary thinking. In fact is it too airy-fairy to suggest that the entire apparatus of Labour, Tory, Republican, Democrat etc etc is really just a machine to tell the party faithful who the "bad guys are". To the extent that it's actually how Donald Trump speaks ?

Nigel is losing his platform and power as time passes. He realises he isn't getting heard as much, so suddenly decides that we need another ref despite being opposed to it for so long.

I see that, and get your point of view bigly

Thanks woman. I suddenly got worried everyone thought I wanted to censor people when I want exactly the opposite!

The US constitution has the 1st Amendment for this reason

With the old adage that the reason for the 2nd amendment is in case the government forgets the first.

What do we have ?

I think that things are much more complicated now with Sicial Media.
When there was only the press and your u could hope for a string ores and different opinions being defended as well as different POV been given some air, it worked well.

Nowdays, Social Media And google means that it’s very easy to go into full propaganda mode wo even being noticed because everyone lives in their own little bubble. Rarely do Remainers/Tories/whatever get to see posts from the opposite side. People delete such people and adverts don’t appear. Google only gives you the answer they think you want to hear.
Hence the rise of fake news and the feeling people have that most others also think that way.

In France, Macron is talking about introducing some rules to avoid fake news.
I think it’s deeply needed (at the very least so that we are not fully open to propaganda from outside groups - such as Russia?) but only alongside just as string (if not stronger) regulation to protect the freedom of expression.
I also think that people, incl politicians should be held into account about what they say. So when one is stating what is basically a lie, they have to be held accountable for that (See all the lies we’ve heard about the EU for example).
And that we should have some strict rules about air time on radio, tv etc... so that one side/one point of view isn’t under presented or over represented (again true some string rules aboutbthat in France during the election which means some groups are finally given air time during that period)

You lot are posting too quickly. I’m out of phase!!

The US constitution has the 1st Amendment for this reason

Yup, this applies to everyone and I would not be against a general assertion set in law that everyone has the right to free speech. It's the specific uni one I fret about.

However, just look at the trump and American right trolls on Twitter and you will see how many of them use this to claim that their legal right to free speech means people can't disagree with them, refuse to promote them, or simply choose not to listen.

We need to be very careful that any legal protection for free speech encompasses all the rights including the right to disagree and to choose not to promote that speech.

Yes Nigel thinks the result will be so overwhelmingly leave it would kill the debate once and for all. Yasmin just asked him to stop using the word remoaner as it's an insulting term.

I think we need to be careful to see this for what it is. It is not an academic conference in any conventional sense. It is a clandestine meeting of a bunch of mates by a retired member of staff that took place on University premises. As such it almost certainly contravenes any reasonable code of staff conduct (which emeritus profs would presumably be bound by in return for privileges like accessing library facilities or, pertinently, room booking). I have no idea how the so-called research presented at this so-called conference was funded. There doesn't always have to be a conspiracy, and to me the occam's razor explanation is this is just a bunch of people who use their spare time to seek out flimsy evidence to back up their prejudices. Of course, if there is any evidence that otherwise decent people have been bought by dark forces, I'd be willing to revise that opinion.

I'm not sure what steps a university can take to pre-emptively prevent this sort of thing from going on. Given the absolutely vast number of room bookings that take place daily, and the huge number of external people who give talks, it would be impossible to vet them all. And in any case, if you were doing something dodgy, you'd just hide it under something bland-sounding like a "forward planning committee".

Also it's not like every speaker addresses some huge audience on a public platform, which is what I imagine people think of when words like 'conference' or 'invited talk' are used. Research groups have external seminar speakers all the time. They're not closed events - I guess interested people could walk in off the street to listen to them - but they aren't generally pro-actively advertised to undergraduate students or the general public either (usually because they concern some tedious piece of technical work that interests only about a dozen people).

It wouldn't surprise me if UCL now introduces a policy that will make it effectively impossible to invite anyone, no matter how squeaky clean, to speak on their premises, as that's the way large bureaucracies tend to react to such an event. Is that what we really want?

The problem with censorship, is it's exactly like George Bernard Shaws lady admirer. Once you accept the principle, you are just "arguing over the price".

And the more pearl clutching over a topic, the easier it is to shut down debate.

It's as true now, as it was then ... the best way to evade censorship is to learn another language. (With a note that one tool of oppression used in Apartheid SA was the suppression - by criminal law - of teaching English to the non-Europeans).

I can see why Germany enforces its Holocaust Denial laws with such rigour.

One man's free speech leads to another woman's racially motivated murder, after all.

I probably need to stop going on about this as it's derailing the thread, but one last note.

Remember the old adage that any law you make you should imagine what the worst opposition could do with that. I am very wary of over legislation when it comes to free speech, media and fake news because I think about what Trump would do with those laws. What media would be shut down with a law banning 'fake news'?

Out government is heading further and further to the right. May has shown a disturbing tendency to want to govern without debate or opposition. Do we trust these people to create laws that would truly promote open dialogue and discussion? I certainly don't. I trust this Government to use any power it has to promote its own interests and twist any means they have to remove fake news or ensure views are aired to push their agenda and shut down opposition.

These issues, fake news, free speech, representation in the media need to be addressed, but we need to be very, very careful about how we do this and always consider how anything we create may be used against us.

anything we create may be used against us
I think it already has, Bigly Is why Leveson Part 2 is going to be interesting.

I can see why Germany enforces its Holocaust Denial laws with such rigour.

But then why not a "God denial law" ? Or an "Allah denial law" ? Or an "EU denial law" ? Once we've established the principle.

Returning to the US, the Presidential Oath includes the phrase "uphold the constitution". Which some might interpret as "prevent any criticism of it" ? I bet Donald T would.

One man's free speech leads to another woman's racially motivated murder, after all.

But murder is murder, surely ? Or are we saying that some people need to be shielded from free speech because (bless) they can't manage to distinguish right from wrong otherwise. Censorship has always carried that condescending, patronising (and patriarchal) view that "nanny [state] knows best".

Also, the other side of censorship, is that it's never total. You always end up with an elite - be it the gentlemen allowed to access the secret room at the British Library, or the censors themselves who are allowed to access what is forbidden to the rest up proles.

I'm not advocating any particular policies, by the way. I certainly don't have any answers.

Re Farage, he's tweeted that this would kill the matter off for a generation. A pro leave person has pointed out its just ridiculous as it overturns a democratic vote blah blah blah. But then said, what if remain win, is it best of 3?

He has a point there.