Tom Slater is the editor of Spiked.
Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his touch? Having just thrown tens of billions at his weird virtual-reality ‘metaverse’, only to see it flop with users, the Meta CEO and co-founder of Facebook appears to be spying another questionable new venture. It’s reportedly called Threads, a cloying techspeak name for what is essentially a rip-off of Twitter.
Should ‘misgendering’ someone be a disciplinary offence? One Oxford college seems to think so. Yesterday, Regent’s Park College posted a ‘Trans Inclusion Statement’, burnishing its existing bullying and harassment policy. On a long list of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ that might warrant punishment is ‘consistently using incorrect titles, pronouns or names to refer to a trans person’
Just Stop Oil has finally hit the fossil-fuel barons where it hurts: the World Snooker Championship. Last night, play was disrupted when one JSO activist climbed on to a snooker table and covered it in orange powder paint, leading the match between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry to be suspended. Another activist tried – and failed
Hollywood actor Guy Pearce has apologised for posting a pro-trans tweet. That’s where we’re at now with the culture war. The Twitterstorms don’t even need to make sense anymore, as the bizarre case of the LA Confidential star’s recent comments about trans actors has made abundantly clear. Pearce took to Twitter earlier this week and
Has comedian Frankie Boyle become the latest victim of the BBC’s ‘right-wing purge’? Frankie Boyle seems to think so. Following news this week that his BBC Two show, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, has not been renewed for a seventh series, he took to Twitter, where he implied the cancellation was down to the rightward
The story of Harry and Meghan has often been portrayed as a clash of values between Britain and America. Between British stiff-upper-lip and Californian emotional incontinence. Between stoicism and the new woke victim politics. But I’m pleased to see that our American cousins – having been lumbered with the transatlantic royal couple since 2020 –
You might have thought that of all the things that could get you in trouble on a university campus today, blasphemy would not be one of them. That the days of unbelievers being banished and having their works burned by college dons were long behind us. That the old blasphemies had at least been replaced by new,
Nicola Sturgeon has for many years been hailed, particularly by commentators south of the border, as the consummate political leader – someone who effortlessly dominates the Scottish political scene. In doing so, it’s said, she repeatedly shows up the public-school boys in the Westminster government for the bluffers that they are. That unearned reputation is
Meghan Markle appears to be on a mission to prove that cancel culture really does exist. It seems that no one is too big to be sacked for criticising her. She boasts a body count that could soon rival her husband’s 25 Talibs. Markle – or rather the hysteria surrounding her – has ripped through the
If you haven’t seen Simon Pegg’s viral video about Rishi Sunak yet, you’re in for a real treat. It’s a genius bit of satire, a brutal send-up of left-leaning, self-righteous. middle-class midwits. In it, the cult Brit comic actor turned bona fide Hollywood star does a pitch-perfect impression of the sort of unkempt craft-beer botherer
Some people accuse millennials of being ungrateful and entitled. Sadly, many of our celebrities do little to disabuse the public of this notion. Take the young cast of the Harry Potter films. Despite being, let’s face it, an assemblage of rather ropey talents who would be nowhere without the series, they have taken in recent
Why block roads? Why make people’s lives miserable? Who do you think this is going to convince? So go the interminable TV-news debates after each disruptive piece of direct action by eco-troupe Extinction Rebellion and the various single-issue offshoots, such as Just Stop Oil, that it has inspired. These past two weeks, Just Stop Oil
Hollywood and identity politics really is a toxic mix. Awards shows are dominated by hectoring actors. Popcorn fluff must now ‘send a message’. Concerns about representation apparently obsess casting directors. And a film being on-message is often prized over it being any good. Lazy recycled stories and reboots are given a ‘diverse’ gloss. We’re obliged
Without freedom of speech, you do not have a university. More than any other value, it is freedom of speech that most defines the university, that makes it a special place in society set aside for debate and inquiry in which speech and thought should be freer than in practically any other workplace or institution. And
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse – Extinction Rebellion are back! Well, if you thought an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, fuelled by a global scramble for gas, would have led the eco-irritants to sit things out for a bit, you don’t know XR. For them, the ‘climate emergency’ trumps all. Plus, reading a
Thank god for Emily Maitlis. Finally someone has had the balls to call out the pro-Brexit, pro-Boris bias of the BBC. It’s been staring us in the face for years, as the Today programme, Newsnight, Question Time and the rest have become ever-more subsumed into the Ukipper deep state, forever deferential to its poundshop fascism.
I suppose it was inevitable that cancel culture would eventually catch up with Jerry Sadowitz. We often talk about offensive or controversial comedy these days. Often regarding jokes and acts that aren’t remotely offensive or controversial to anyone other than a handful of bilious idiots. But Sadowitz is the real deal. This US-born Glaswegian comic-cum-magician
What’s the point of a university? Regrettably, that’s a genuine question. The censorship and trigger warnings that are rife on British campuses make it hard to work out what our formerly esteemed institutions of higher education are for anymore, now that free speech, intellectual challenge and the pursuit of truth have become deeply unfashionable. Hundreds of freedom-of-information requests were
People complaining about supposedly offensive pop lyrics is hardly anything new. It’s as old as the form itself; never-ending proof that everyone is offended by something and that every era has its own set of taboos. But the speed with which music stars appear to be acquiescing to other people’s hurt feelings today is surely
There’s a word for countries in which you might get collared by the police because someone took offence to your jokes. And it isn’t a nice one. It’s the sort of thing you read about going on in Erdogan’s Turkey or Putin’s Russia. But it is also the sort of thing that now happens in
