I had a lecturer once, a guy called Andy Lean. He was a Tory. Still is. One morning during a lecture, he caught me muttering at something he’d said about the welfare state. I was further to the left than Tony Benn multiplied by Hugo Chavez.
“What was that Richie?” he enquired.
“You’re talking bollox” I said.
“Make an argument then,” said Andy. “Don’t sit there stewing man. Make your case. Tell me why I am wrong.”
Proper order. Make an argument or fuck off and find an echo chamber where your world view won’t be challenged.
Ann Widdecombe is an old Tory. She’s hooked up with Reform UK these days. She used to be a frequent visitor to The Richie Allen Show until the press scared her off.
She was told that appearing with me indicated that she endorsed the views of some of my more controversial guests. Crazy, right?
But, Ann bottled it. She hasn’t been back.
Anyway, Ann has said that cost of living crisis aside, if folks can’t afford cheese they should eat something else. She made the comment on the BBC panel show Politics Live.
Cue the hysteria.
“How dare she?”
“She should not be invited back on that show!”
“She’s out of touch. Ban her!”
She has been accused of hate speech against the poor.
Oh do fuck off, please. Or, make an argument. Phone in. Take her on. Spare us the outrage, faux or otherwise.
These are worrying times.
People have been conditioned, brainwashed even, into believing that their views should be protected by the implementation of safe spaces.
Well, that’s how it started anyway. Remember way back when? We laughed at it, the idea that safe spaces should be reserved for those who might be triggered by something they heard or saw in a classroom or a lecture theatre.
We called them snowflakes. I imagined that it was a fad and that it wouldn’t last. I was wrong.
The safe space has been expanded to everywhere. In 2023, a generation of younger folks expect the world to be a safe space, where they are protected round the clock from seeing or hearing anything that offends them or challenges their world view.
As I write this, students at Oxford University are working day and night to force the Oxford Union to rescind its invitation to Kathleen Stock.
Stock, a gender-critical philosopher, believes that there are two biological sexes. She doesn’t believe that trans women are women. The Oxford Union invited her down to speak.
According to The Telegraph:
...the university’s LGBTQ+ society said it was “dismayed and appalled” that the debating society had “decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock”.
It accused the Union of “disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”.
The Junior Common Rooms of Christ Church, St Edmund Hall, St Anne’s and St Hilda’s have backed the LGBTQ+ society and passed motions calling for her invite “to be rescinded in support of the trans community”.
The row escalated last week when Oxford’s Student Union (SU) voted to sever ties with the 200-year-old debating society, accusing it of having a “toxic culture of bullying and harassment”.
Oxford’s LGBTQ society accused the union of “disregarding the welfare of its members under the guise of free speech.”
Welfare, really? What garbage. Dangerous garbage even. Put simply, the LGBTQ society is demanding that Stock be silenced because they don’t like what she has to say.
There is no welfare or safeguarding issue. It’s plain old censorship.
In the past, they’d have been laughed off campus.
“What? You want to ban a woman because she believes that biological sex is binary? Hurt your feelings has she? You muppet. Why don’t ya get over there and say your piece when it’s opened up to the floor?”
Yeah, that’s what would have happened. Those were the good old days. Make an argument or suck it up.
Nowadays people are being silenced left right and centre on the basis that what they have to say is harmful to some group or other.
This way, tyranny lies. In lockstep, countries are drafting draconian hate speech legislation which if left unchecked, will ultimately see people jailed for expressing their views.
It really is terrifying.
I cannot get Stonewall or other LGBTQ activists to come on the radio. The email comes back; “We don’t debate with hateful transphobes and homophobes.”
I used to say that they were cowards, and that the “we don’t debate with bigots” line was their get out of jail card.
I was wrong. They’re not cowards, not exactly. They truly believe that those with opposing views are dangerous and therefore should be silenced to protect the most vulnerable from hearing those views.
Today they want them silenced.
When hate speech legislation becomes law they’ll want to see them jailed.
The times we live in.
