Freedom of speech

The way not to win a debate at the Oxford Union, I’ve just discovered, is to start your speech with a casual quip about Aids. It wasn’t a scripted joke. Just one of those things you blurt out in those terrifying initial moments when you’re trying to win the audience over with your japeish, irreverent, mildly self-parodying human side before launching into your argument proper. It only happened because when my turn came to speak there wasn’t any still water for me to drink and I was parched. So various Union officers proffered me the dregs of the other speakers’ half-drunk bottles. ‘Oh my God, I might get Aids,’ I

In the grounds of Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University stands a one-tonne sculpture. Roughly hewn and about five feet high, it carries in its top corner an ill-carved sun. Beneath it are some words of Alex Salmond, half-sunk in the sandstone, as if they were the thoughts of a Scottish Ozymandias: ‘The rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scottish students.’ This clunky celebration of SNP -policy should raise a few doubts. Free higher education is not free for all in Scotland. Edinburgh can afford to pay the fees of only 124,000 students in Scottish universities. Their contemporaries might have the grades, but they

If you want to see our grievance-ridden, huckster-driven future, looks to Northern Ireland, which has always been a world leader in the fevered politics of religious victimhood and aggression. Just as the Tories and much of the politically-correct liberal centre think they can force us to be nice by allowing the cops to arrest those who ‘spread hate but do not break laws’ (in George Osborne’s sinister words) so Northern Ireland has all kinds of restrictions of ‘hate speech’ to police its rich and diverse tradition of religious bigotry. I suppose it was inevitable that they would catch 78-year-old Pastor James McConnell of the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in North Belfast.

A friend of mine, who attends a top UK University, recently attended a generic debate on feminism and sexual violence. He made a point from the floor that, contrary to his colleague who argued that unless consent is enthusiastic it constitutes rape, legally speaking consent needn’t be enthusiastic in order to be legitimate. What followed is simply astounding. The next day he was called in to a meeting with a student union official, who informed him that a group of female students had made a joint complaint about him, raising concerns about their safety on campus. They had been going around warning other students that he is, apparently, a potential

A month after the Magna-Carta-mangling Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill crept onto the statue book, leaked documents seen by the Daily Telegraph over the weekend reveal Home Office proposals which are likely to have significant, if apparently unintended, consequences for free speech in this country. I haven’t seen the full strategy papers myself, and nor will you. They have been deemed too ‘sensitive’ ever to face public scrutiny, and only a two-page executive summary is due to be published. At this stage, it is worth considering the few choice quotes the Telegraph have dutifully passed on. The leaked papers make some confident claims about ‘British values’, with citizenship and even temporary visa applicants required

A cretin writing in this morning’s Telegraph doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘cretin’. Just about every writer writing about Benedict Cumberbatch in every paper yesterday failed to understand that Cumberbatch was not a racist because he had said ‘coloured’ rather than ‘person of colour’. Poor fool that he was, Cumberbatch had wanted to use his appearance on US television to complain about the lack of opportunities for black actors in Britain: ‘I think as far as coloured actors go, it gets really different in the UK, and a lot of my friends have had more opportunities here than in the UK, and that’s something that needs to change.’ After the battering

Last Sunday, David Cameron marched through Paris in solidarity, so it seemed, with those who stand up for free speech. Anyone who thought he meant it must now be crying out, ‘Je suis un right Charlie!’ Hardly had the march finished than the Prime Minister had rediscovered his other side: the one which reacts to terror by threatening yet more surveillance, more state control. He has promised to revive, in the Conservative manifesto, the ‘-snooper’s charter’ which would allow the state to retain indefinitely information about every email we ever send, every telephone call we ever make. Not only that. He added a further measure: he wants to ban all

The latest issue of Charlie Hebdo goes on sale tomorrow, with around 1,000 copies expected to be available in the UK. Some people have decided that buying it shows ils sont Charlie, but both David Cameron and Nick Clegg don’t appear to be joining the rush for copies. The Deputy Prime Minister told the Today programme that ‘I’m not sure I’m going to buy it’, while the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said ‘I’m not sure he necessarily will, but I’m sure that he will see the image that I think people are understandably asking me about today. Whether he will buy a copy, I confess I’m not sure’. Whether or not they