Ofcom’s determination to dictate to the world’s media what they are allowed to say continues apace. Its latest proposals are contained in an obscure-sounding draft rule just introduced by the Government called the The On-demand Programme Services (Tier 1 Services) Regulations 2026. This would essentially bring suppliers such as Disney+ and Netflix, and anyone else […]
Our countryside, we have just been solemnly told by administrators, is too white. It is ‘seen by both black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and white people as very much a ‘white’ environment’. National Park and National Landscapes administrators (as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty planners have now become) have jumped enthusiastically on board, announcing […]
We know that the Online Safety Act (OSA) is a disaster. The group it is billed as protecting, children and young people, is not only rebellious: it is precisely the class most adept at using VPNs and other devices to circumvent it. And this is even before you get to the unintended consequences. The more […]
Much to the surprise of foreigners, Britain has never had a national police force, relying instead on 40-odd local forces since the 1960s, mostly covering one or two counties, but some bigger. Mark Rowley, who runs the Met, is unhappy. Earlier this month, he called for all existing forces to be merged into about 12-15 […]
If you look through this morning’s For Women Scotland judgment for statements that wokery is dead, or that the Supreme Court trenchantly confirms that there are only two sexes, you’ll be disappointed. The judgment is actually a long, convoluted and often turgid exercise in statutory construction. Assuming that you can remain awake, what it decides […]
Free speech and peaceful assembly aren’t – or at least shouldn’t be – too difficult to understand. You need to be allowed to write or say what you like, and meet who you like, without worrying who you offend. However, this must stop short of assaulting people, deliberately and forcibly stopping them going about their […]
We always knew there would be fireworks over the Employment Rights Bill. The first problem blew up yesterday, over its plans vastly to extend employers’ liability for workplace harassment. The current definition of harassment is pretty vague (‘conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating the recipient’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, […]
It was obvious for some time that if and when Labour got into power, many future battles would involve not Left and Right, but the Blob vs the rest. The first skirmish has already broken out, over education; and one suspects that it tells us a good deal about the guerrilla warfare to come and […]
Our universities are up in arms again, this time about on-campus nurseries. Once a common feature of campus life, many of these services are now being closed or cut back in order to save cash. The latest organisation to withdraw the facility is the high-profile QMW in the University of London. This has been described […]
There’s a problem with EDI enthusiasts. Their well-meaning aim to avoid putting anyone at an unfair advantage can quickly turn into the kind of joyless puritanism we used to expect from temperance campaigners in 1890 or a delicate maiden aunt in one of the Just William books. If you don’t believe this, have a look at […]
The Tories have surprised us. This week, Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch said outright that the Conservatives would amend the Equality Act to ensure women’s safety, and enshrine beyond doubt organisations’ legal right to make bathrooms, changing rooms and hospital wards genuinely single-sex. This is a shrewd move. Ordinary voters unaffected by intellectual […]
A peremptory demand for Net Zero by 2050, we have been told for some time (especially by the Greens and Labour), is nothing to be frightened of. Our lives will seamlessly adapt, and we will see a new heaven of virtuous prosperity: not only an escape from the climate change which is all around us, […]
Yesterday, the government announced a public consultation about state schools and religion. For nearly twenty years, state-backed free schools with a religious affiliation have been subject to a legal restriction that they may only select 50% of their intake by reference to faith. The government’s view is that this cap should go, and that such […]
When I was a young university lecturer, I would periodically receive letters from people with axes to grind, asking me to write a scholarly article in an academic journal supporting their position. I got quite good at drafting replies gently explaining why I could not help them. Academics and the universities they served, I pointed […]
If you want a serious example of broken Britain that doesn’t neatly fit the Left’s culture of blaming everything on populism and underfunding, look no further than what happened at Wandsworth prison earlier this year, as described in a High Court judgment reported last week. On a Tuesday morning, Westminster magistrates sentenced a Korean gentleman, […]
The election campaign has well and truly started, and neither side is holding back. In answer to Keir Starmer’s attempts to win over middle England and the aspiring working class in the Midlands and North with tough-sounding rhetoric on law and order, Tories and sympathetic outlets have sought to show that he is, in fact, […]
Anyone who remembers Laurel and Hardy will be tempted to refer to the shenanigans over the emergency Rwanda legislation, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill as ‘another fine mess’. There certainly isn’t agreement among the Tories on it. Rishi thinks the Bill will do. Some wet One Nation Tory MPs such as Matt […]
The Equality and Human Rights Commission represents an unsung success of this government. Set up in 2006 by Tony Blair as an umbrella super-agency to promote and enforce human rights and non-discrimination, by 2020 it had become, in effect, a progressive pressure-group led by a self-perpetuating leftism drawn from the genteel quangocracy. In that year, […]
The 131-member Scottish Parliament had, at the last count, four Muslim members, including one of the major party leaders and of course the First Minister himself. A healthy representation, one would have thought, and certainly well above the proportion of Muslims in the Scottish population as a whole, which works out at about 1.5%. This […]
The idea that a government’s duties are owed predominantly to its citizens at home rather than to foreigners abroad has a long history. Unfortunately, it seems it is now under threat. The latest and rather worrying threat comes, perhaps predictably, from the inexorable advance of human rights, as exhibited in a decision from Strasbourg earlier this […]
