jamesondrinker

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

Earlier today a @Guardian journalist sent me this query:

Dear Toby Young,

I'm Aisha Down, a journalist at the Guardian. I'm getting in touch because we're planning to report that the US state department is considering a grant of $5m to Free Speech Union, your organisation, as part of a new grant-making scheme, and wanted to give you the chance to comment. We would appreciate receiving your comment by 14:30.

We are considering reporting the following:

- The grant to the FSU is part of a package to Maga aligned groups that former US officials have condemned as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics and interfere with democracy.

- It is rare for the US government to fund partisan political organisations in western countries.

- These grants are likely to pose a challenge to Andy Burnham, who has said he will be "very upfront" with Trump about any disagreements.

- These grants - including to your organisation - are "sole source" grants, meaning they are to be awarded without any competitive process. This is unusual for a highly regulated process which usually requires grantees to show they have a track record for handling funds and clear plans for the money.

- This lack of process has been criticised as "outrageous and absurd" by former US officials, and as "gross incompetence" and "horrible stewardship" of US taxpayer money.

- Your organisation does not appear to have a track record of handling grants of this amount.

- We describe your organisation as "a rallying point for “anti-woke” grievance" which "frequently allies itself with rightwing causes" and say that you, Toby Young, appeared on Rees-Mogg's GB news show earlier this month to warn about 'Soviet-style' censorship in the UK.

- The state department says that its grant to FSU will “support campaigns promoting free speech and countering digital overregulation across the UK, Europe and Australia”. The sole-source award is justified “due to FSU’s global network of free speech activists”.

We would like to fully and fairly reflect your point of view and look forward to your statement. Thank you,

--
Aisha Kehoe Down
Senior Tarbell Fellow,
Guardian News and Media

I replied as follows:

It sounds like a pretty garbled story.

Free Speech Union International, which is the umbrella group that FSU UK, FSU Australia, FSU New Zealand, FSU Canada, FSU South Africa and FSU Brazil sit within, has expressed interest in applying for grant funding from the US State Department. This would be to promote the right to freedom of expression in those countries, which, far from being a partisan cause, is a universal human right. But it hasn't submitted a formal application and, consequently, has been awarded no grant from the State Department or any other branch of the US Government.

You've mischaracterised the FSUs, all of which are non-partisan organisations that defend people who get into trouble for exercising their right to feee speech regardless of their political views. The FSU UK, for instance, is currently paying for the legal defence of a protestor who's being prosecuted for holding up a sign saying "I support Palestine Action", as well as a protestor for wearing a t-shirt at a Unite the Kingdom rally for saying "Fuck Islam Christ is King". Yes, we helped Lucy Connolly appeal her sentence -- we thought a prison sentence of over two-and-a-half years for a single tweet was excessive -- but we also tweeted yesterday, condemning the arrest of Heather Herbert and offering our support. Yes, we came to the defence of Nigel Farage when he was debanked, but we've also offered to help the Canary in its recent debanking case. So to describe the FSU UK as a "rallying point for anti-woke grievance" is misleading. We are a rallying point for those who want to defend the right to freedom of expression.

Best,

Toby

The @Guardian then ran this story:

https://t.co/1l4K0PABvM

You be the judge of whether you think this is good journalism.

[James Price @jamespriceglos]

It’s incredible what happens when you put an actual economist next to this fraud.

Well done to @K_Niemietz for demolishing Gary Stevenson’s entire schtick in seconds.

Share this video with all your famous and friends. A total masterclass.

[Forbidden HQ 🐇 @WearForbidden]

Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk. This video shows exactly what happened. Conspiracy theorists, your pathetic little alternate reality fan fiction is getting embarrassing — touch grass.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@cenkuygur Show me someone who doesn't understand football without showing me.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@mehdirhasan This should be your tagline

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@mehdirhasan Show us your cards then Mehdi...

[BanksyCat @Banksycat]

UNBELIEVABLE. Your entire life sold to a billionaire and you never got a vote. DIGITAL ID. Blair brokered it, the King read it out like a shopping list, and 2.96 million of you signed a petition begging them not to. They read it, smiled, and did it anyway.

Here’s this COCKY IDIOT, smirking down the camera, telling you it's only what he was elected to do. The sheer NERVE.

They tried to force this in 2006 and the country threw it back. So they got clever. You don't force a leash on a country, you call it child safety and let them clip it on themselves. Optional, they say. Until the bank needs it. Until the job needs it. Until you can't buy milk without it. Optional the way a cliff edge is optional.

Embedded so deep that pulling it out takes the whole system down. Surviving every election. Every Prime Minister. Every one of you who never agreed to a word of it.

That's not a service. It's a LEASH. Heavy surveillance with a friendly logo, built to watch you, price you, and switch you off the second you say the wrong thing. Once it turns, it never turns back.

Now watch him smirk through it. FIVE times he stood there and said it's not possible. FIVE. Like a parrot that learned one phrase and mistook it for genius, reciting his greatest hits to a country that stopped clapping months ago, taking a bow in an empty theatre.

Wrong every time, he sneers. No, sunshine. Wrong about the boats. The bills. The borders. The only thing he's right about is how much he adores the sound of his own voice telling you he's right.

Watch what he's smirking THROUGH. The most despised Prime Minister this country has ever recorded. Ministers bolting for the door. MPs begging him to leave. A man waist deep in his own wreckage, straightening his tie for the cameras.

He was elected to serve this country. Not gift-wrap your private life and post it to the highest bidder who filled Blair's pockets fastest.

A landslide, he calls it. Won on barely a third of the vote, the emptiest mandate in living memory, worn like a crown God lowered onto his head.

Biggest NHS drop in 17 years, he beams. For ONE month. While 7.3 million still rot on the list.

Highest growth in the G7, he says. For ONE quarter. The next month it shrank. Funny how he forgot that bit.

Then everything he left off the brochure. TEN things not one of you voted for. Not one in his manifesto.

Winter fuel torn off ten million pensioners. Biggest tax raid since 1993. The thresholds Reeves swore she'd never freeze, frozen. Energy bills up after he promised cuts. The family farm tax. WASPI women promised the earth, handed a shrug. Grooming inquiry sat on six months. Post offices for the chop. Chagos given away.

And the tenth, buried deepest. Digital ID, held up behind the children like a human shield, because who argues with protecting kids. Then they vote to come for your VPN, the one tool that let you slip the net, and bolt the last door behind you.

Here's the punchline that should make your blood boil. Australia tried this exact ban. Months later the children strolled straight through it. It didn't protect ONE child. It was never built to. The children were never the point. The contract was.

Blair gets richer. Ellison gets richer. Then they plug it into Europe so the same machine prints money across a continent. Every regime that ever pulled this used the same excuse. China. Russia. North Korea. Protect the people. Then own them.

The children were never the target. They were the costume. You were never protected. You were harvested, and told to say thank you.

So watch him smirk and call it a mandate. It was never a mandate. It's the biggest robbery in plain sight this country has ever seen, dressed up as the will of the people and sold back to you as kindness.

Once it turns, it never turns back.

[Neil Oliver @thecoastguy]

I know I'm droning on about the social media ban - but I cannot believe the numbers on here believing it's to do with children's welfare. There are actual heartfelt debates about how the ban - only a lever for digital IDs - comes from a place of caring even a jot about children.

[Together @Togetherdec]

Crass comment.

What people are rightly concerned about is an attempt to make anonymous political dissent impossible.

Once criticism of the government can be traced back to individuals and speech itself becomes grounds for prosecution, identifying and punishing opponents becomes straightforward.

[Connor Tomlinson @Con_Tomlinson]

John Oliver did a bit on Restore Britain, and the only funny part is that it's an unintended advert for Rupert Lowe.

And no, British identity was not built by cousin marriage. But by looking at Oliver, you'd be forgiven for thinking so.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@KirstieMAllsopp No. Its about a digital ID and a slippery slop to tyranny. Now that you are asking. Vax passports, immigration, protect the kids. They keep trying it in different guises. Pull your head out of your arse.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@KirstieMAllsopp This is stupid framing. Kids are best looked after by parents. I dont want either involved and I certainly dont hold either responsible for my childrens safety. This is a principle clash: more nanny state or more personal freedom. I choose freedom.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@KirstieMAllsopp Lets ban Parks and Youth clubs. They can all cause dire physical harm. And roads. Kids shouldn't be allowed to cross roads. Or school. Lots of bullying in schools (we did it to protect nan during covid, best do it now to safeguard the kids). See how vapid your comments are?

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@leicesterliz Why is everything you do about identifying adults and Digital ID? You tried it with NHS in Covid and vaccine passports. You tried it with immigration and that got panned. Now its to protect kids. You are all reprehensible and desperate.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@connor_naismith Show me the survey questions. I dont believe 9/10 parents agree with this in the slightest.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@Miss_Snuffy You are severely wrong on this one.

Lets ban parks for that matter, because people might say mean things at them and pedophiles can hide in the bushes.

[My Name Is Earl @cannock666]

Look at this fat authoritarian cunt all dressed casually, pretending to be the concerned parent. He can go fuck himself.

[jamesondrinker @JJKerry86]

@Keir_Starmer Your dad made the biggest tool of them all...

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Banning teenagers from social media with ludicrous conditions is unworkable, unrealistic and unwanted.

Here’s a mad idea - let parents parent.

Not the state, but mums, dads, grandparents or whoever else.

Restore Britain will always trust the family over big government.

[Silkie Carlo @silkiecarlo]

Tearing my hair out watching news today 🫠

Any journalist covering the “social media ban” but not HOW it works is miserably failing + missing the story.

It won’t be remembered as a policy that kept kids off SM (it won’t) - but as the policy that introduced IDs for the internet.