Tag: united kingdom

UK Expands Online Safety Act to Enforce Preemptive Censorship For “Priority” Offenses

The UK government is preparing to expand the reach of its already controversial censorship law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), with a new set of rules that push platforms toward preemptive censorship.

The changes would compel tech companies to block material before users can even see it, under the claim of stopping “cyberflashing” and content “encouraging or assisting serious self-harm.”

On October 21, the government laid before Parliament a Statutory Instrument titled The Online Safety Act 2023 (Priority Offences) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

This legal mechanism, used to amend existing legislation without requiring a full new Act, adds two additional “priority offences” to Schedule 7 of the OSA:

By classifying these as “priority illegal content” under Section 59 of the OSA, the government triggers the law’s strictest obligations for online platforms.

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How the Free Speech Union Turned the Tide on Non-Crime Hate Incidents

As the Metropolitan Police announce the demise of non-crime hate incidents, the Telegraph has run a feature on the Free Speech Union, crediting its years of campaigning against NCHIs and support for cancel culture victims. Here’s an excerpt.

Sir Mark’s decision may well signal a wider turning of the tide on police investigations into “hate crime”. But the force’s decision to backtrack on Linehan’s case, and others like it, got only a lukewarm welcome from Linehan himself, who said he planned to continue his legal action against the Met.

That, however, is not because he has limitless pockets – cancel culture, he says, has cost him much of his lucrative writing gigs. Instead, his lawyers come courtesy of the Free Speech Union (FSU), the British campaign group set up to defend freedom of expression – be it from armed police, an overzealous student campus or HR managers intent on enforcing diversity policies.

Set up five years ago by the former journalist, Toby Young – now Lord Young, having been nominated for a life peerage by Kemi Badenoch last December – the organisation has handled more than 4,500 cases, from members of the public arrested over tweets deemed to be politically incorrect, to office workers disciplined for querying seminars on critical race theory.

For some clients, the FSU has simply won a written apology. But for others, it has secured a £500,000 payout at industrial tribunal.

If there’s one thing most cases have in common, according to Young, it is that they shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Linehan’s arrest, in which the Met acted “like the Stasi”, being a case in point.

“I think this statement from the Met shows that they have got fed up with this stuff – they recognise that the public want them to prioritise serious crimes like burglary, car theft and mugging,” says Young, who has called for all police forces in the country to follow Scotland Yard’s lead.

“I also think that in Linehan’s case, the police realised they’d been manipulated by a trans-rights activist who understood exactly how to weaponise the police guidance on investigating hate crime incidents, and to turn the police into an enforcement wing for their own agendas.”

Young is referring to Lynsey Watson, a transgender ex-police officer who is understood to have reported Linehan to the police over his social media posts, one of which read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

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Graham Linehan Cleared After Heathrow Arrest as CPS Drops Case After Free Speech Controversy

Graham Linehan, the Irish writer best known for Father Ted and The IT Crowd, says police have now confirmed he will face no further action following his controversial arrest at Heathrow Airport last month.

The 57-year-old comedy creator had been arrested by armed officers after landing in London from Arizona, accused of using social media to incite violence, a claim now dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Linehan’s arrest became a flashpoint in a growing concern over the decline of free speech in modern Britain.

What might have been a brief police encounter instead exposed a deeper problem: the creeping normality of criminal investigations into words rather than actions.

The image of an airport surrounded by armed officers confronting a comedy writer for tweets struck many as absurd, even dystopian.

In a post on X, Linehan announced that “the police have informed my lawyers that I face no further action in respect of the arrest at Heathrow in September,” adding that “after a successful hearing to get my bail conditions lifted (one which the police officer in charge of the case didn’t even bother to attend) the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the case.”

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Labour Gov’t Accused of ‘Sabotaging’ Child Rape Grooming Gang Inquiry as Victims Resign

The fledgling official inquiry into the child rape grooming gang scandal is facing accusations of being compromised as members of the victims’ panel resigned on Monday, citing “disturbing conflicts of interests” among those set to lead the investigation.

Following months of domestic and international pressure, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer backtracked from his initial opposition to conducting a national inquiry with statutory authority on the grooming gang scandal, after previously tarring the idea as “far-right”.

In addition to examining the scourge of mostly Pakistani Muslims sexually exploiting and raping mostly young working-class white girls, the inquiry is set to examine the failures of local officials, police, and care workers, many of whom have been found to have ignored or covered up the scandal out of politically correct concerns. Victims, who were often exploited for years, were frequently dismissed by authorities at the time as “prostitutes” despite being under the age of consent.

On Monday, Fiona Goddard, a grooming gang survivor, resigned from the inquiry’s Victims/Survivor Liaison Panel, after discovering that the planned chairs of the inquiry are reportedly set to include a police officer and a social worker, which she asserted were the “very two services that contributed most to the cover up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children.”

“This is a disturbing conflict of interest, and I fear the lack of trust in services from years of failings and corruption will have a negative impact in survivor engagement with this inquiry,” Goddard wrote in her resignation letter.

She noted that in the 2019 trial against her abusers, members of the jury were dismissed if they had any connection to the police or social services to prevent bias from impacting the decision.

“This inquiry should be held to the same stands as a criminal case, if not higher,” Goddard said. “Having a police officer or social worker leading the inquiry would once again be letting services mark their own homework, the shortlisting of these potential chairs shows the government’s complete lack of understanding of the level of corruption and failings involved in this scandal.”

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Who Counts as English?

Back in February, Konstantin Kisin and Fraser Nelson sparked a national debate over the meaning of Englishness. During a podcast discussion, Kisin — who has Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish ancestry — proclaimed: “I am not English, and I will never be English, and I don’t think Rishi Sunak is English”. Nelson disagreed, opining that “Rishi Sunak is as English as Tizer and Y-fronts”. Kisin responded, “He’s a brown Hindu. How’s he English?” To which Nelson replied, “Because he was born and bred here.”

Kisin and Nelson’s positions reflect two distinct views of what it means to be English. On one view, someone can only be English if they have English ancestry. On the other, they needn’t have English ancestry so long as they were born in England, have a British passport and are well-versed in English culture.

Naturally, Kisin’s remarks caused a certain amount of controversy, provoking the usual charges of ‘racism’. This is despite him having clearly stated that he does not consider himself English. Kisin addressed his critics in a follow-up video, pointing out that Sunak had explicitly stated that he ticks ‘British Indian’ on the census. And in the original debate with Nelson, he’d already admitted that “we’re all British, that’s fine with me”.

Indeed, the distinction between British and English is one that both Kisin and his defenders have relied upon. For example, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote in the Telegraph that “I am British Asian” but “I cannot be English”.

To my mind, however, the debate can’t be so easily resolved because this distinction depends on the historically contingent fact that England is a nation within Britain. How would Braverman identify if the UK broke up and England became a separate country? How should French citizens who are not ethnically French identify? Should they say, “I cannot be French”? What about German citizens who are not ethnically German? And so on.

Furthermore, it turned out that Kisin had spoken too soon when he quoted Sunak in his follow-up video. The former Prime Minister subsequently came out and said, “Of course I’m English”, dismissing the notion that he wasn’t as “slightly ridiculous” since it would imply that even players in the England cricket team do not count.

It’s true that the native English are a distinct people, who can be demarcated not only from Indians but also from other European peoples, like Poles, Swedes, Italians and Russians. In a genetic study that sampled participants according to the rule that all four grandparents were born in the same country, Britons formed their own cluster. This cluster overlapped to a large extent with the cluster formed by Irish participants, and to a lesser extent with the clusters formed by participants from other nearby countries.

Hence if ‘indigenous’ means anything — and I do think it means something — then people with significant ancestry from the British cluster are indigenous to Britain.

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British troops given powers to shoot down drones on sight: Telegraph

British troops will be given new powers to shoot down drones threatening Britain’s military bases, The Telegraph reported on Oct 19, citing an upcoming announcement on Oct 20 from British Defence Minister John Healey.

Mr Healey is expected to unveil his vision on how to protect Britain’s most critical military bases in response to a growing threat posed by Russia, the newspaper said.

Although the new powers will initially apply only for military sites, the British government was “not ruling out working to extend those powers” to other important sites like airports, the Telegraph said, citing a source.

Currently, troops can use specialist counter-drone equipment which can track incoming drones, hijack signals, and divert them, according to The Telegraph.

The new proposal will give soldiers or Ministry of Defence Police a “kinetic option” to shoot them on site, which they can only do now in extreme circumstances, The Telegraph further added.

Mr Healey’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Britain’s Defence Ministry could not immediately be reached.

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‘Catastrophic’ attack as Russians hack files on EIGHT MoD bases and post them on the dark web

Russian hackers have stolen hundreds of sensitive military documents containing details of eight RAF and Royal Navy bases as well as Ministry of Defence staff names and emails – and posted them on the dark web, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

In what has been described as a ‘catastrophic’ security breach, cybercriminals accessed the cache of files by hacking a maintenance and construction contractor used by the MoD.

The ‘gateway’ attack – which targeted third party the Dodd Group – allowed cyber gangsters to circumvent the almost impenetrable cyber defences used by the Armed Forces.  

The MoD said it was investigating the enormous data and security breach, believed to have been carried out by Russian group Lynx.

Leaked documents seen by the MoS disclose information about a number of sensitive RAF and Navy bases, including RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, where the US Air Force’s F-35 stealth jets are based and their nuclear bombs are believed to be housed.

Other bases include RAF Portreath – a top-secret radar station that forms part of Nato‘s air defence network – and RAF Predannack, now home to the UK’s National Drone Hub.

Details of contractors’ names, car registrations and mobile numbers, as well as MoD personnel’s names and email addresses, have also been uploaded. Some documents are marked ‘Controlled’ or ‘Official Sensitive’.

The disclosure follows a warning from the National Cyber Security Centre last week that the number of significant hacking attacks in the UK have reached a record high, with 204 taking place in the year to September.

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You Are the Carbon They Want to Reduce: Sandwiches in the UK Now Come With a Daily Carbon Allowance Score

It took only about 80 years for the UK to go from “Keep Calm and Carry On” to full-blown Orwellian Big Brother. The nation plans to institute a digital ID to “help tackle illegal migration, make accessing government services easier, and enable wider efficiencies.”

What it is, really, is a backdoor way to have control over every aspect of the lives of everyday Britons, including what they eat.

Case in point, food in the UK is now labeled with how much of someone’s “daily dietary carbon allowance” is used up by eating that item.

A sandwich is 8.1% of our “daily allowance.”

The score will be attached to digital IDs. The Left has made it very clear they want to limit what, and how much, we eat in order to “save the planet.”

This is a great way to do that.

Those same Leftists will, of course, be exempt from such rules.

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UK Speech Regulator Ofcom Claims First Amendment Doesn’t Protect Americans From Its Censorship Law

If you’re going to cross an ocean to tell Americans what speech they can and can’t allow, the least you can do is not trip over your own jurisdictional nonsense on the way in.

Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, which has lately decided to try and become an international speech cop, managed to do exactly that.

But when the regulator began sending enforcement letters to small US platforms under its sweeping online censorship law, the Online Safety Act, it probably didn’t expect to trigger a constitutional ambush.

But that’s exactly what it got.

Preston Byrne, one of attorneys representing 4chan, Kiwi Farms, and two other American companies, said Ofcom had been sending “frankly asinine letters under English law.”

His clients, he explained, “are entirely American. All of their operations are American. All of their infrastructure is American, and they have no connection to the UK whatsoever.”

Despite this, Ofcom threatened the companies with “a £20,000 fine plus £100 daily penalties for 60 days thereafter.”

Byrne responded to Ofcom’s pressure by filing a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit was designed not only to challenge Ofcom’s jurisdiction but to force a contradiction into the open.

Byrne said the purpose of the lawsuit was threefold. One, to show the global censors that the resistance in the United States is now prepared to fight back, and they don’t have freedom of action.

Two, to assert hims client’s claims and defenses in a US court, and make the argument in front of a US federal judge.

And the third one was to provoke Ofcom into “doing something stupid, which is exactly what they did.”

After the case was filed, Ofcom sent what Byrne called “a 40-page letter of tremendous length, which is deeply unserious.”

Ofcom’s written response delivered exactly what Byrne says was needed: an explicit admission that Ofcom doesn’t “think US law applies on US soil and that they’re going to use [the argument of] sovereign immunity.”

This was more than a legal contradiction; it was a political one that directly undercuts the British government’s public assurances.

“This rather undermines the British government’s assertions that it’s made time and again, including to the President, to his face, that the British government is not using its sovereign power to censor American citizens,” Byrne said.

In its official notice to 4chan, Ofcom made an extraordinary admission which, in trying to assert its authority, effectively undercut its entire legal position.

The regulator wrote: “We also note 4chan’s claim that it is protected from enforcement action taken by Ofcom because of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. However, the First Amendment binds only the US government and not overseas bodies, such as Ofcom, and therefore, it does not affect Ofcom’s powers to enforce the Act in this case.”

This reveals the fundamental flaw in Ofcom’s claim to authority over American companies.

By asserting that the First Amendment “binds only the US government,” Ofcom admits it stands entirely outside the US constitutional order, yet it simultaneously claims the right to enforce UK speech law against US entities operating solely on US soil.

Ofcom cannot have it both ways: it cannot disclaim the reach of US law while insisting that British law somehow extends across the Atlantic.

If the First Amendment has no force on Ofcom’s actions in the United States, then neither does the UK’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act, which has no legal effect beyond the UK.

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Israel Is the Excuse To Snatch Away Freedoms We Once Took for Granted

In interviews and a comment article over the weekend, the UK education secretary Bridget Phillipson made clear she plans to exploit the pause in the Gaza genocide to snuff out criticism of Israel’s criminal actions – and, of course, her own government’s collusion in that criminality.

Naturally, the British establishment media have been keen to amplify her message that there will be painful consequences both for individuals who continue protesting against Israeli atrocities and for institutions, such as universities, that mistakenly assume they have a duty to uphold centuries-old freedoms by tolerating such protests.

These protests, let us remember, are fully in line with a ruling last year from the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, which declared:

a) Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory and enforcing a system of apartheid rule over the Palestinian populations there – and has been doing so for decades.

b) Western governments are obligated to do what they can to bring that illegal occupation and Israel’s apartheid system to an end as quickly as possible.

Instead, those same governments are violating the ruling, and international law, both by continuing to support Israel’s criminality and by preventing their own citizens from putting pressure on them to end their support.

The government of Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has even categorized protest against genocide as “support for terrorism”. For the first time in British history, a direct-action group, Palestine Action, has been banned as a terrorist organization – in its case, for targeting weapons factories in Britain arming Israel’s genocide. It is now illegal to express any support for the group.

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