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A friend of mine got a nasty shock last week after a Google Meet call, thanks to a new AI function that he was unaware of. On this occasion, the consequences were quite funny, but on another day his failure to get his head around this new technology could have ended his career.
Toby Young, The Spectator, 1st February 2025.
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It’s wonderful to hear that Professor James Tooley, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, has been reinstated after a gruelling, four-month investigation. James is a member of the Free Speech Union, the organisation I run, and we’ve been helping him navigate this Kafkaesque ordeal. The KC hired by Buckingham to carry out the investigation has concluded that all the allegations against him are without substance, which raises questions about why James was suspended from his post in the first place.
Toby Young, The Spectator, 29th January 2025.
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However the celebrity signing is newly-ennobled peer Toby Young, a long-time free speech advocate who set up the Free Speech Union in 2019 to not only campaign against cancel culture but also defend individuals whose jobs and positions have been threatened by anti-free speech campaigners. He was installed in the House of Lords yesterday after being nominated for a peerage by Kemi Badenoch.
Christian Calgie, The Express, 29th January 2025.
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As the authors take their place in the House of Lords today, they write of the importance of upholding free expression in Britain.
Nigel Biggar and Toby Young, The Telegraph, 28th January 2025.
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Another to have pleaded not guilty to a speech offence, 45-year-old former Royal Marine Jamie Michael, was successfully bailed and will stand trial next month, defended by the Free Speech Union.
Laurie Wastell, The Critic, 23rd January 2025.
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While some posts crossed the line into illegality and led to prosecutions, the Free Speech Union saw many cases where lawful commentary was unfairly targeted.
Dr Frederick Attenborough, TCW, 23rd January 2025.
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Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, has now managed to get Wikipedia to drop its description of the FSU, which over the 12 days of Christmas offered Anglican clergy in the UK a discount membership offer, as a ‘far-right’ organisation.
Julian Mann, Anglican Link, 21st January 2025.
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LAST FRIDAY, Facebook removed a Free Speech Union (FSU) post about YouTube’s deletion of a video about vaccine harms. So much for Mark Zuckerberg’s fancy talk about ‘free speech’. The post, which highlighted the stigma and, ironically, censorship faced by those injured by the covid vaccines, was of course entirely lawful. Indeed, it was made by a human rights lawyer who is giving evidence to the covid inquiry. Its removal raises questions about the extent to which the platform’s pivot to a ‘Community Notes’ system (as part of a broader, sector-wide turn towards user-based verification systems) is quite the historic moment for online free speech that some observers claim.
Dr Frederick Attenborough, TCW, 19th January 2025.
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Toby Young, Director of the Free Speech Union, commented: “The fact that the Civil Service has agreed to rip up its trans policy and start again shows just how poorly written it was in the first place. It’s another example of equality law being interpreted as woke activists would like it to be rather than as it is.”
The Christian Institute, 18th January 2025.
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The sorry saga of the UK’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act reached a desultory conclusion this week. While it had been passed in parliament under the previous Conservative government in response to growing concerns about cancel culture on campuses, it had not been implemented by the time of the General Election. Within days of the Labour government taking office in July, it was dumped by the new education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. Following a backlash from academics and threatened legal action from the Free Speech Union, the Freedom of Speech Act has now been revived, albeit in a watered-down form. Whether this new, de-fanged version will be enough to put an end to the No Platforming, cancelling and self-censorship that plagues our universities remains to be seen.
Joanna Williams, Spiked Online, 17th January 2025.
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