HOW FREE SPEECH IS FORCED UNDERGROUND AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
Perhaps a dangerous taste of what is to come...
By News Uncut writer
YET again the disproportionate power of cancel-culture warriors has threatened the credibility of Cambridge University.
Yet again a small but vociferous group of students has stymied an event, the screening of a documentary, just because they did not like the assumed message.
The film Birthgap argues that the world’s population is in dangerous decline, a view diametrically opposed to the popular narrative. Quoting world bank data, it says that 70 per cent of the world’s people live in countries already below the population tipping point and, with birth rates falling, there will not be enough younger people to sustain businesses and pay taxes to support health care and the elderly.
Early in the film Elon Musk has this stark warning: “The biggest problem the world will face in the next 20 years is population collapse.”
Birthgap – Childless World, was produced by Stephen J Shaw, a data analyst and president of birthgap.org.
He spent seven years on the project, travelling the world interviewing hundreds of people; this is a serious work that was screened at New York’s Chelsea Film Festival and worthy, one would assume, of intelligent debate in the halls of Cambridge.
That is what final year student Charlie Bentley-Astor thought too, so she planned a screening and invited Stephen Shaw to travel from Tokyo for a Q and A session.
Eleanor Dobson, a teacher and occasional writer for News Uncut, bought a ticket. She takes up the story:
I became aware of the story via GB News, in an interview highlighting that the screening was off because a few students were so appalled by a film they had never seen that they felt no one else should be allowed to see it.
Rather than being told they could protest but could not disrupt the showing, as Cambridge University’s rules state, they were allowed to dictate to everyone else what they were not allowed to do.
The University had paid lip service to the idea of free speech by saying they would not stop the documentary being shown; but by insisting Charlie pay for security to police the event.
Despite this, however, tickets remained on sale so I went anyway. Right on cue, Charlie Bentley-Astor turned up, very apologetic; the screening was indeed cancelled but a small number would be able to attend a Q and A with the director at a secret location.
We were to meet at the main gate of one of the colleges at 7:15pm and from there we would be smuggled to the new, hastily arranged venue, thanks to one supportive lecturer who could be seen anxiously scanning the territory as we made our way in. Very cloak and dagger, more like Stalinist Russia than the UK in 2023.
The lecturer will obviously remain anonymous, but it was encouraging to hear that other lecturers were becoming increasingly fed up with a vocal minority of students hijacking universities for their own ends, the tipping point being Kathleen Stock, who was hounded at the University of Sussex for her comments on transgender issues.
I later discovered that Toby Young of Free Speech Union had offered to pay the security costs of several thousand pounds imposed by the University, so that hurdle had been cleared. However, at very short notice, so short in fact that the director was already at Tokyo Airport and it was too late for him to cancel the trip, Cambridge University pulled the plug.
They said it was not a cancellation, it was just that the screening would have to be re-scheduled as it was the exam period and there was a risk of noise disturbance from protestors. Re-scheduling would, of course, be impossible as Charlie was due to complete her course and leave, while Stephen Shaw was due back home in Japan.
Cambridge University is supposed to be one of the top universities in the world, so how have the UK's brightest youth become so incapable of engaging with different ideas and debating them?
How is it that they are incapable of coping with the idea that other people have different views to them and that they have a right to hold those views? Or that the best way to challenge views you disagree with is to have a reasoned discussion about them?
How is it that things have deteriorated so much that such a small number of people are able to arrogate to themselves the right to choose what other adults can and cannot watch?
It is laughable that apparently part of their reasoning was they just knew the documentary they had not seen was patronising to women. I can't think of anything more patronising than a bunch of kids in their late teens and early twenties telling this 59-year-old woman what she can and cannot see.
On its website, the University says: “The University is fully committed to the principle and promotion of freedom of speech and expression, and has a long tradition of seeking to safeguard them.
“The right of staff and students to freedom of assembly and to protest against certain viewpoints, should not obstruct the ability of others to exercise their lawful freedom of expression.”
Record sickness, record excess deaths…Government still stumped as to cause
By Jasmine Birtles
MORE people are now out of work due to ill health than any time since records began.
The latest inactivity statistics in the UK from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) [Official link here] show that 2.55 million people are out of the labour market because of long-term sickness.
I spoke to a former cabinet minister a couple of months ago who said that the increase in the number of people too ill to work was a serious problem – but he refused to accept that it had anything to do with the roll-out of the Covid injection.
Rather he pointed to illnesses that had not been diagnosed in time and problems with the NHS.
A recent article in The Mirror wailed that thousands are dying in the UK ‘but we don’t know why’.
The comments on the online version of that article were certainly enlightening.
It seems that everyone but the Government, the media, the medical fraternity and academia have a pretty good idea why illnesses have multiplied and excess deaths are increasing.
Insurance analyst, Gary Nuttall, says: “So far this year, nearly 21,000 deaths more than average have been reported, spread over 18 weeks. That’s just over 1,000 per week. That’s the equivalent of two, fully loaded Airbus A380s taking off from Heathrow and crashing every single week.”
In the chart above, anywhere where the gold line is above the black is where weekly deaths were higher than the moving average.
According to UK ONS, for week 18 (May 5), the five-year ‘adjusted’ (excluding 2021) average is 9,674 vs 10,143 actual. That means actual deaths were 4.8 per cent higher than average. In the first three weeks of year it was more than 20 per cent.
Whatever the reasons for the excess illness and mortality in the UK and elsewhere, they need to be investigated properly and not simply ignored, or met with a perplexed shrug.
Editors’ shame
By Oliver May
NEWS UNCUT would like to bring its readers’ attention to a wonderfully enlightening article by Rav Arora.
Writing on the substack of former LBC journalist Maajid Nawaz, Arora writes candidly about how ‘major media outlets suppressed his Covid journalism’.
In it, Arora details the response from editors to his ideas for columns on subjects including the jab rollout.
As a taster, here is one response:
“Rav, sorry but we’re not going to run any anti-vaccine pieces.
“I think the risk is totally overblown and amplified by right-wing pundits who have no concern for public health. These are the safest vaccines we’ve ever had and virtually everyone seeks to benefit.”
This rings true in my own experience. Attempts at similar stories were met with silence. Yes, I was totally ignored.
Editors would do well to remember the basic tenets of their journalism training. Notably, balanced reporting, detailing the facts and letting the reader decide.
In my experience, it seems ‘that’ era of journalism is dead.
The article can be found by clicking here
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