1541 days ago
The screenshot below, from an online faculty meeting at what you might have thought a decent university, says it all. Welcome to the Marxist Madrassas of 2020 where you must admit to, and confess to, thought crime in a mass ritual. Then you can leave Room 101. Once upon a time, academics celebrated freedom of thought. But that was in the days before history was rewritten, and before the clocks chimed thirteen.
2656 days ago
There is a change to the annual ritual. For about thirty years A level grades got steadily higher. Those of us who had to interview those with A*s at History who thought that Waterloo was a train station named after an Abba song knew that was because they were getting easier but when pointing this out were ritually abused as insulting hard working students and teachers who were so stressed out that they need 15 weeks holiday a year. This year the ritual is being tweaked.
2658 days ago
The headline from the Guardian, below, says it all. Former chancellor Nigel Lawson's Thought Crime is not believing in mad made global warming. The BBC had the timerity to allow him on one of its numerous features on climate change in the interests of balance. Its sister paper says it should erase Lawson from history and show no balance at all when covering climate change.
3924 days ago
Once again the fascist bully boys of the Kent Police are stamping out on new media thought crime. This force has “form” when it comes to Orwellian oppression of thought crime but in Margate this week they have surpassed themselves.
In the sleepy seaside town there is a plan to build a new Tesco. As ever in such matters, opinion is divided. The plebs want cheap turkey twizzlers and jobs and so are in favour. The middle classes fear that the small stores where they pay over the odds for their sundried Tuscan tomatoes may be shut down and so are against. Such was the debate in my parents’ home town of Shipston last year where my deluded lefty father and step-mother were naturally wanting to screw the poor along with their fellow Guardian readers who, for once, stood firm alongside Nimby Tory Toffs. Sadly this unholy alliance prevailed and so the shops where they buy their quail has been saved while the folks on the Council Estates are deprived of both consumer choice and jobs. Chianti’s all round.
Over in Margate battle lines are similar
4406 days ago
I am indebted to a the Pride’s Purge blog for a story from South Wales which should strike a chill in your heart if you give two hoots about free speech and civil liberties. It is the sort of thing that Orwell might have written about as a warning. But that the increasingly authoritarian British state would have taken as a blueprint.
I start with Pride’s short article.
