Clare Page : No Secret Lessons

A parent-led legal campaign for transparency in UK schools. PLEASE LIKE, SHARE and DONATE! With thanks for all support.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

In Sept the Information Commissioner's Office delivered a Decision Notice that supported a London secondary school in keeping a Relationships and Sex Education lesson hidden from parents. I am Appealing against that decision in a First Tier Tribunal. Please support my case.🙏

[Alessandra Asteriti 𒊩 @AlessandraAster]

Oh FFS the entirety of gender laws do, as I have been saying for years.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

So… do you think we should have an absolute, fundamental and inalienable ‘right’ to slander, libel, expose secret intellectual property, broadcast where a protected witness lives, groom a child to have sex, encourage someone to murder, release national defence secrets, plan a terrorist attack with others, give fraudulent data to HMRC, publish someone else’s bank details or lie about our sex in order to access a space reserved for women and children?

And if not (and hoping you don’t), what does the ideal of ‘free speech’ mean to you?

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

Some time ago, on an education discussion group, I suggested to @jtworr and @toadmeister - architects of the Higher Education, Freedom of Speech, Act - that their law would not be enough to halt a growing lawlessness on campuses that is essentially amounting to sedition, and which is grooming generations to ruin our peaceful, tolerant society.

Maoist-style ideology, backed by mega donors and foreign powers, spread by subversive tutors and infantile, contagious, student demos, cannot be contained by drawn out complaint procedures, regulatory quangos and free speech tzars. Besides, any such quangos are ripe for radical capture anyway.

Trans, eco and race activism are all now increasingly extremist, and are going to push the boundaries until people get harmed - indeed, in the case of Anne Widdecombe, that is possibly what has already happened. Female academics facing trans activists in particular already know things are way past the point of balancing ‘academic free speech’ with ‘rights to protest’, we are in fact managing proto-terrorist behaviour.

I saw this lawlessness already play out many years ago (pre BLM) at Goldsmith’s Uni, where an Islamo-Marxist anti racist group illegally occupied a university building that was the old town hall, defiled its statues and demanded improved employment conditions for low paid university workers, plus sponsored MA positions for Palestinians. The SLT caved and gave them their demands. The students were, after all, their ‘customers’.

Goldsmiths Uni and others have pumped out extreme radicalism for decades - producing ‘expert’ academics who have trained multiple government departments on neo Marxist race politics and created seminal LGBTQ+ school programmes, to devastating effect across the country. The consequences of that extremism on children and families are so significant, it should be treated as criminal. Some of the academia is arguably fraud and certainly a threat to safeguarding.

This activism should have been a warning that the same mixture of hard leftist extremism and student temper tantrums would spread to other universities too. It was a blueprint for the Coulston demo in Bristol.

I suggested we do not need more free speech, we need less! Libertarian, free speech idealism is useless when faced with those who are too intolerant, too antisocial and, frankly, deranged by queer Marxism or driven by foreign interests, to extend toleration to others.

We need hard boundaries and limits to speech and behaviour in that instance. Intolerable direct action against other students and tutors should result in immediate expulsion, and we need to revive laws concerning sedition, in order to be ready to deal with any radicals or foreign interference - including in the leadership teams - that is strategically causing trouble in universities for the purpose of ending our democracy.

If chucking a lot of students and tutors out of campuses seems too authoritarian to the libertarians, it is as nothing to the hard force that will be needed when yet more generations of radicalised bullies have graduated and brought even more sedition into our leading institutions and Government.

If students and tutors want to protest, they should go to Parliament Square and stop bullying others in their workplace.

Despite not supporting the HEFSA as a solution, I nevertheless support @jtworr to be able to go to work and teach without harassment. No one should be targeted like this for doing their job.

[Lavinia @mother_of_rome]

Students circling the building @jtworr is lecturing in, chanting "Fire James Orr!" while loudly banging drums.

Let's hope the University of Cambridge will not allow a repeat of what happened to Prof Kathleen Stock at Sussex.

What is the university going to do about these students who are hounding an academic whose speech they dislike?

No one should have to endure the sort of sustained harassment and intimidation Dr Orr has been subjected to in recent weeks.

It must be extremely stressful and feel like the entire student body is against him. But there are many students watching carefully and hoping this behaviour will not succeed in forcing him out, and further, whether this behaviour will continue to be tolerated.

Whether someone is sacked from their job should never be determined by an angry mob.

[Molly Kingsley @lensiseethrough]

For me the nadir of the pandemic response, the moment when the full extremity of the British state revealed itself and the point at which I accepted we had departed from all previously accepted boundaries of medical ethics and child safeguarding, was when Nadhim Zahawi suggested that Ministers might go over the heads of parents to convince kids as young as twelve - not yet even teenagers - to get jabbed.

It should have been unthinkable.

https://t.co/AOUL5mu8Tl

"Ministers are considering writing to every 12 to 15-year-old in the country to urge them to get their Covid vaccine.

The letter would be signed by Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi in a bid to improve the slow jab rollout in schools."

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@AndromedaAlyxx @FuriousBanshee @SexMattersOrg Agree.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

Gosh, I truly had no idea that @SexMattersOrg is THIS bad at safeguarding and have got into such a terrible muddle…

No school should ever accept that children have a PC of GR in the first place - because it is absurd to think children already are or are becoming transsexuals. It should be a massive red flag if any parents says they are, and an indicator of indoctrination and/or mental ill health.

Schools should discriminate in those circumstances, indeed, making discriminating decisions between truth and reality or lies and delusions is essential.

Schools should also be free to act in the best interests of all their pupils as a whole, which is why they should only be run on the basis of the reality of sex.

There is no category of human being other than male or female, and schools should assist confused children by holding to that reality.

[Maya Forstater @MForstater]

@SVPhillimore So what if a child is discriminated against (not admitted to a school say) on the basis of the protected characteristic they are too young to have? Why should they not be able to seek remedy for that discrimination?

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

But she did not survive the lack of boundaries she advocated, because (it is alleged) that her political enemy would not extend to her the toleration she extended to him. Will this be an allegory for Britain?

I retain my position - speech should be as free as possible up to the point of harm, where the boundaries of harm should be decided by us in self government. That is how to retain liberty.

And I’ll give you a perfect example of a wise restriction on speech - in the 80’s Roger Scruton made the case not to indoctrinate children in schools (ie to restrict teachers’ speech) and the Tories then put s.406/407 Education Act into law - a prohibition on Political Indoctrination.

It has since not been enforced, leading to radicalisation of whole national cohorts of children - just as Mao and Hitler indulged in. Perhaps if it had been enforced, Anne Widdecombe would not have encountered a radicalised killer?

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

But she did not survive the lack of boundaries she advocated, because (it is alleged) that her political enemy would not extend to her the toleration she extended to him. Will this be an allegory for Britain?

I retain my position - speech should be as free as possible up to the point of harm, where the boundaries of harm should be decided by us in self government. That is how to retain liberty.

And I’ll give you a perfect example of a wise restriction on speech - in the 80’s Roger Scruton made the case not to indoctrinate children in schools (ie to restrict teachers’ speech) and the Tories then put s.406/407 Education Act into law - a prohibition on Political Indoctrination.

It has since not been enforced, leading to radicalisation of whole national cohorts of children - just as Mao and Hitler indulged in. Perhaps if it had been enforced, Anne Widdecombe would not have encountered a radicalised killer?

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@AlessandraAster @1RabbitInMyFlBd @SVPhillimore @anyabike Join the club!

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

I’m blocked by @SVPhillimore (no idea why) so I can’t repost, but she’s raising exactly the right questions here.

I wonder if @anyabike is ready to rethink the issue, after Cass specifically gave the example of a child who has been misled about his sex since a toddler? Isn’t she aware primary aged kids have been ‘socially transitioned’? There was a kid in my children’s primary school…

And the examples in the US of very young drag kids should be more than enough to create concern. Is she taking this line just on grounds of political distaste, for Anna Loutfi’s association with Reclaim?

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

This is also a mess.

They expect a PC of GR to function as anti discrimnation law to ensure treatment the same as everyone else? When very obviously, having a PC of GR means you somehow have differences that need accommodation (otherwise there wouldn’t be a PC) - which every trans charity will explain requires affirmation etc.

If you don’t want kids discriminated against or treated as trans then don’t give them a PC for it!

[Maya Forstater @MForstater]

@elniedunne @SVPhillimore Yes but the point is they don't need to be treated differently because of it. They just need to be treated the same as other children - not treated detrimentally.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@1RabbitInMyFlBd @SVPhillimore @anyabike 🤷‍♀️

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

In summary, principles are better than rights. Rights promise an unrealistic utopia, principles acknowledge the necessary limitation - even if the boundary is up for political debate.

So forget a ‘rights to free speech’ (behind which the malevolent can hide their objectives), it is far better to say ‘speech should be as free as possible up until the point of harm’ - whereupon ethical decision making of what is or isn’t harm remains all to play for in self government.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

Very interesting, thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I entirely agree that we do well to make decisions based upon behaviour, first and foremost. Behaviour is material, and it is in the material realm that harm is provable and obvious, and can also be prevented. It is also material actions that can create fear, which impinges on the freedom of movement of others. As you say, a great deal of ‘direct action’ is dressed up as ‘free speech’.

To address your point of disagreement, to be clear, I didn’t say there should be ‘less speech’ per se - I’m a big fan of debate - but I did say there should be less ‘free’ speech, by which I mean less ‘freedom’ to say anything as a ‘right’ without boundaries. It is the idealisation of an absolute or automatic ‘right’ or ‘protection’ for speech or written words that I am concerned about.

I believe there are things at the fringes of what might be spoken or written that warrant proscription, criminalising or at least should be freely rejected under local rules (eg codes of conduct for unis, businesses, clubs, schools and associations etc).

I’m particularly keen on setting local rules, which supports freedom of association - something greatly underrated. Local rules are how society can correct itself at a grass roots level, without grand authoritarian intervention. It is an extension of the manners you discuss and it allows for the engagement of common sense, instincts, moral decision making and wisdom. It also creates a diversity of styles in different places, so long as we don’t allow monopolies.

But there are some things law and enforcement must stop. Meaningful incitement to violence and threats of violence are of course already criminally proscribed. (If the anti Orr society you envisioned seriously encouraged injury - even expressed with impeccable manners over a fine wine, or printed in an elegant pamphlet! - they would likely be thought criminal, and rightly so.)

Obscenity about, or especially spoken to children, is another area I think worthy of criminalising. The Sexual Offences Act already makes it a crime to cause children to watch porn for the gratification of others, for example. And there are currently some extremely dangerous people preparing academia to justify or promote paedophilia, whilst others write obscene material for kids to read. I see absolutely no ethical justification to tolerate that.

Meaningful geopolitical enmity, as a form of war would be another category that surely ought to be banned. Which country could possibly sustain free communications on its shores amongst an insurgent army arranging to attack?!

In short, I don’t believe a country can sustain speech absolutely freely and retain its peace, civility and safety.

But there is another way of looking at this. I prefer to discard the word ‘free’ from association with the word ‘speech’ altogether… and just consider the better concept of ‘liberty’ in the round. What circumstances best achieve liberty? If I am free to threaten a person, then they might lose their freedom to travel or associate. My speech then becomes a limitation to liberty. And if I shared a company’s trade secrets I would prevent its freedom to hold private property, which in turn invites theft.

I think a true libertarian should be preoccupied by liberty in all its forms at once, not just words.

But even after considering liberty in the round, we cannot stop our thought process there. Libertarianism itself cannot produce a Good society. Absolute liberty is more likely to produce a survival of the fittest that creates anarchy, which serves the powerful over the weak. We should do better than that and consider how we might make a ‘Good’ society in our liberty.

In that case we need to accept some moral judgement in our laws and rules for speech. And it is no good shrugging our shoulders as if all ideas are valid and we must hear them all, when some of them include advice and encouragement on how to create a bioweapon and use it!

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@mk270 @mother_of_rome @jtworr @toadmeister @cufreespeechsoc Good point.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@untoxiccon83503 @vigee_elisabeth Yes… funny that, I picture him as an apologist for Maoist cultural Marxism. 😂

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

Intriguing she is so irate about this… given she was an EHRC commissioner for years, presiding over a law that does not give a lower age limit to the Protected Characteristics of Sexual Orientation or Gender Reassignment.

So, does she think children have a PC of Sexual Orientation and Gender Reassignment under the Equality Act or not? Because the EHRC clearly suggests they do and draws guidance up for it…

Did she campaign to the EHRC to ‘please stop describing CHILDREN as having the Protected Characteristic of Gender Reassignment. Children do not have gender identities or the capacity to consent to a process of reassigning their sex or gender?’

Is there a record of this position being submitted to the EHRC when Reinfdorf had the power to influence it, I wonder?

Or is this view only being arrived at now that Labour’s appalling Conversion Practices Bill has made it undeniable just how catastrophically dangerous the equality laws really are, which these civil rights socialist lawyers have been unwisely toying with?

Bottom line: LGB activists played with fire on behalf of all our children, women and families by sanctioning the creation of PC of GR, to try and preserve their own gay and feminist rights, and they’ve lost control to the predators.

(Can’t repost @akuareindorf directly btw, because I’m blocked by her for asking questions. Maybe others would like to raise this query?)

[Tamara Sears @TamaraSearsUK]

Quick update on the @UKCP_Updates's meeting regarding the PCPB Consultation on Saturday morning.

It was so heartening to see so many therapists there who were actively speaking out against the PCPB documents and the Conversion Practices Bill.

We were initially informed at the outset of the meeting that they were only there to listen to the different points of view regarding the contents of the documents as they relate to therapeutic practice.

Most alarmingly, the safeguarding concerns that we were raising were framed by some as 'sabotaging' the intended agenda of the meeting, which was only to go through the documents, and not to challenge the underlying principles.

To their credit, when @UKCP_Updates were reminded that shutting down discussions around safeguarding represents a failure of safeguarding, we were permitted to speak briefly.

Tentative discussions are currently ongoing. That's all I can say at the moment.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@vigee_elisabeth Which itself is a staggering power grab over free speech for the judiciary.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@AndromedaAlyxx @jtworr @toadmeister Azerbaijan???!

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

Yes, he was instrumental in starting the Free Schools programme, supported by Gove, a right wing libertarian project, based on letting schools govern themselves and choose knowledge based learning and higher standards.

Of course, the deep irony here is that his father, Michael Young (leftist libertarian), helped develop the concept as a trustee of the White Lion Free School - which was an idealistic free for all, where kids smoked in the corridors and chose which lessons to do. It was run by Peter Newell, later convicted of child rape.

Idealism is a dangerous game.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

@AndromedaAlyxx @jtworr @toadmeister Tackling the unions is job 1.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

It is quite a conundrum. No one wants to limit academic freedom. But I think we have to asset some boundaries to save academia now. And they needn’t necessarily be political proscriptions (although there are some of those I’d argue for), if we just enforced fraud, plagiarism, impartiality, safeguarding and other basic academic standards, plus aggressively cut funding to charlatans, you’d go a long way to reducing the rot.

[Clare Page : No Secret Lessons @NoSecretLessons]

Well, if you got rid of the protections for gender and other identities in the equality act, I think we would, ironically, have a much freer speech landscape and can perfectly well tolerate those who want to advance trans views.

If a school is at liberty to say ‘thanks for voicing your view that we should trans children, but we think you’re completely crazy, so go away and don’t work here as you fail our safer recruitment policy!’ then society is basically self correcting at liberty without authoritarian limitations. The EA2010 is actually extremely authoritarian and destructive of free speech.