Defence funding is back in the news after the Defence Secretary's resignation, with the row over how much to spend and how fast.
Rather than argue it, we built a neutral tool: set defence spending, see what it does to the debt over ten years.
https://t.co/w2V0Ntr5pC
Subvert opens today: a co-op music marketplace owned by 20,000 members, 0% platform fee, optional tip at checkout. The first serious Bandcamp alternative in years.
https://t.co/EimQ92MUZ5
Wrote a short tour of where to buy independent music now.
https://t.co/89K8pEG6BX
If Labour MPs really want the focus to be on victims and survivors of Epstein, they should start by implementing the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse recommendations.
Survivors already told us what’s needed. Government ignored it
@BBCr4today@bbcnickrobinson@EvanHD
As societies age and money tightens, the real danger isn’t collapse — it’s language. When care becomes “unsustainable” and dependency a “burden,” people don’t need to be told what to do. They start pressuring themselves. Moral drift happens quietly.
https://t.co/XfRgW9sSeQ
ITV pulling zero punches in this incredible footage - "This landscape of destruction looks otherworldy, but it's not, it's this world - What is happening may come to define one of its darkest eras, one that casts a stain on humanity, which will endure for generations" #Gaza
At Glastonbury last weekend, punk rap duo Bob Vylan led the crowd in chanting “Death, death to the IDF”, a provocative, politically charged slogan directed at Israel’s army. The performance was broadcast live by the BBC and has since prompted calls for the rappers’ arrest, with many drawing comparisons to the case of FSU member Lucy Connolly, who is currently serving 31 months in prison for an offensive social media post made in the aftermath of the Southport stabbings.
If the principle is that like cases should be treated alike, then yes — on a disinterested view of justice, the rappers should be prosecuted just as Lucy was.
But we don’t believe any of them should be prosecuted.
Lucy’s post was racially charged and called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be burned down. Even so, it was a spontaneous, emotional outburst that included the crucial caveat “for all I care”. Vylan’s chant was similarly public, but deliberate and directed at a military organisation — albeit one that comprises virtually the entire adult population of Israel.
The real issue here is not who said what, but the alarming scope of UK speech laws. In a country that properly respected freedom of expression, neither case would meet the threshold for criminal prosecution, because neither involved a direct incitement to specific violence. In the United States, the limits of free speech are defined by the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Brandenburg v. Ohio. Under that test, even deeply offensive political speech is protected unless it is both intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action. That’s the standard we should aspire to.
Criminalising speech because it is felt to be deeply offensive by certain groups is an inherently subjective standard that is easily weaponised — or seen to have been weaponised — for political ends. If the Bob Vylan rappers are not prosecuted — which, to be clear, we don’t think they should — it will invite precisely the kind of accusations of ‘two-tier justice’ we’re now seeing, and further erode public confidence in the neutrality of the law.