The Index on Censorshipʼs latest report shows a troubling drop in UKʼs free-speech standing placing it in third-tier ranking behind Chile Jamaica and most Western-European countries
Police departments nation-wide have gone beyond their legal scope‚ making up non-crime records for actions that dont break any laws (like tweeting feminist content or shop-access disputes): this creates an un-needed monitoring system. The law-enforcement focus seems mis-directed — while they track harmless social-media posts serious threats get less attention
Academic freedom faces real-world problems too. Prof Kathleen Stock had to leave her Sussex Uni position for basic biology views‚ while a West Yorkshire teacher went into hiding after religious-studies lesson issues. These cases show how free-speech protection is getting worse in education
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government‚ I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter
The recent police visit to Allison Pearsonʼs home on nov 11th shows how press freedom faces new tests. As a member of parliament; I brought this up during PMQs — the 1689 Bill of Rights protects MPs speech but regular people depend on changing common law rules. After public talk about this case police backed down
The governments slow work on the Higher Education free-speech act isnt helping things. Both right and left need to support basic freedoms; because sometimes its the only tool people have to fix wrong things