With today’s National Conservative Conference facing successive disruptions from protesters, not all lefties have had such an easy time of the vetting procedures. A number of left-leaning media outlets, including Novara Media, the Byline Times and openDemocracy, had their press pass applications rejected by the supporters of free speech. Solidarity, comrades!
After applying in April, Novara and Opendemocracy’s press passes were rejected due to “high demand and limited space”. A pro-tip for our comrades, Guido always sends a reporter to the Labour Party conference undercover and that’s how we get the scoops. Just sayin’…
Unlike Elon’s Twitter, Facebook has no such love of free speech. Today the Spectator attempted its usual practice of running their latest front cover as an advert. This week’s cover takes a light-hearted pop at Joe Biden; captioned “Six more years” it has an elderly President holding up five fingers. Pretty mild by The Speccie’s standards…
Facebook has, however, decided to block the advert. Even on an appeal, on the basis they’re a political magazine, the social media site rejected the advert.
As editor Fraser Nelson points out, it appears that splashes aimed at Trump, Boris and Truss – to name just a few – are fine. Biden appears to be a protected character. Unfortunately for the Spectator, the recent Steerpike article entitled ‘The tragic embarrassment of Sir Nick Clegg’ won’t help their cause…
A cabal of left-wing MPs have, predictably, smelt blood and are going after Jeremy Clarkson. For anyone waking up from a four-day coma, Clarkson is under siege for writing a Sun column railing against Meghan Markle. One paragraph parodied a Game of Thrones scene:
“At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.”
Given Markle is the least popular member of the royal family bar Prince Andrew, Guido guesses many Brits may have been inclined to broadly agree with the sentiment of the piece. Instead the London-centric Twitter-sphere is apoplectic; getting the column taken down and forcing Clarkson into a sorry-not-sorry climbdown.
Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) December 19, 2022
For some reason, lefty MPs feel that this important issue is today’s national priority. Rather than the strikes, the economy, war on our continent, or at the very least just logging off ahead of Christmas…
Tory-in-name-only MP Caroline Nokes has spearheaded a letter on behalf of those “hurt” by Jezza’s “#NotAnApology”, demanding he instead issue “an unreserved apology… to Ms Markle immediately”.
“We further demand definitive action is taken to ensure no article like this is ever published again.”
The letter is signed by 64 MPs, mainly Labour and SNP. Guido notes that whichever of Nokes’s staff formatted the letter isn’t particularly savvy, given the top name of the second column is Clive Lewis. An MP whose primary contribution to feminism thus far was telling a woman to “get on your knees bitch”.
Guido’s no stranger to defending Clarkson in times of career trouble. The BBC, despite dismissing him for a fracas in 2015, often stood by him during rows about things he’d said or written.
Guido’s not so confident that the likes of Amazon – American distributors of his brilliant farming show – will have the same backbone this time around…
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the official letter from MPs accusing the Sun of editorial sloppiness includes signatories spelt as follows:
- Mary Kelly Fox [sic]
- Claudia Webb [sic]
- Hanna [sic] Bardell
- Andy Macdonald [sic]
- Alan [sic] Doran [sic]
Chapeau…
The story so far.
After Toby Young got cancelled for cultural crimes four years ago, he set up the Free Speech Union to help others threatened by cancellation. The project prospered, it took on staff. Young expanded his activities into the Covid information wars via another start-up, the Daily Sceptic. Then, abruptly, Paypal cancelled him and them. A third of Young’s organisations’ revenues were processed by Paypal and the services was switched off with little notice and less explanation.
It was the first sign that Britain was going down the same path as the US where big tech companies are adopting political positions and regulating the speech of their customers, keeping them within official limits.
There was a row. MPs and peers rallied. They understand. They are classed by banks as Politically Exposed Persons and have their own difficulties with bank accounts and financial services. Enough pressure was brought to bear on Paypal – a notoriously difficult company to engage with through normal channels – and after a week, in late September, the accounts were restored.
Now read on…
If you’re wondering how free speech is coping up north in the United Socialist Scottish Republic, today a member of the public wearing a suffragette-coloured scarf (purple, green and white) was kicked out of a Holyrood select committee for breaching rules on “political” colours. All while MSPs wear LGBT rainbow lanyards…
Another woman wearing the purple, cream and white, pictured above left, was also asked to leave the room. When this issue was raised by an MSP, the chair suspended the sitting so they could talk about this momentous matter in private.
SNP’s Joanna Cheery slammed the decision to kick the women out, tweeting “It seems no rule has been broken so this woman should be readmitted or the @scotparl could face a claim of discrimination on the grounds of belief, particularly where MSPs are permitted to wear rainbow colours. This is not my Scotland.”
Making this particularly awkward is the fact Nicola Sturgeon herself has posed in Holyrood for a purple, white and green theme photo before…
The gift shop themselves sell suffragette-branded items…
