Our thanks to Rick for this.
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Month: January 2024
J4MB Film Review: What Happens in Vegas (2008)
For some time I’ve been under pressure to add social commentatory to my long list of activities, for example by reviewing films. I watch at least one film a year – sometimes two, or even three. A few months ago I greatly enoyed watching Saltburn with a lady friend in Dublin. It’s currently available to watch for free on Amazon Prime.
So, which film might I review first for J4MB Film Review? I’ve long been an admirer of Cameron Diaz, one of the (few) great comic actresses of the modern era. I’ve just watched What Happens in Vegas (2008) for free on Netflix, this is my review:
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Hilarious. So many truths about men and women and marriage. CD on top form. Utterly cheesy ending.Let me know if you’d like more film reviews. I’ll keep them brief – after all, no film review should be longer than 20 words, am I right?
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Regarding Men: So You Think You Want Equality? UN Women’s vision for the future called ‘Equiterra,’ an imaginary country that has ‘achieved gender equality.’
A tip of the hat to Tom Golden for re-publishing on his Substack channel a Regarding Men (Paul Elam, Janice Fiamengo and Tom) episode from 2021. Enjoy (video, 57:01).
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Charges dropped against ‘grieving’ woman accused of ‘child destruction by taking drug to cause abortion’
Our thanks to John for this. Once again the CPS is making a mockery of the law, corrupting it in line with feminist ideology. For a prosecution to be brought, the CPS would have had to be satisfied that the evidence avaiable could (or would) lead to a conviction. And yet… the final line:
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The Recorder of Middlesbrough Judge Paul Watson KC concluded that the CPS offers no evidence in the case and not guilty verdicts entered on both charges.
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Kathleen Stock: “Plagiarism is not a sin. Claudine Gay’s failure was intellectual not moral.”
A new piece in Unherd, for which Kathleen Stock is a columnist. Remarkably, Unherd has no anti-feminist columnists. I’ve posted these comments.
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Wolverhampton grandmother’s abusers (three female carers, one male carer) caught by hidden camera
Our thanks to Paula for this.
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If you’d like email notifications of our new blog pieces, please enter your email address in the box near the top of the right-hand column and click ‘Subscribe’. Our YouTube channel is here, our Facebook channel here, our Twitter channel here. If everyone who reads this gives us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. You can support our work by making a donation here.
Free Speech Union – weekly newsletter
Dear Mike Buchanan,
Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join and help turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.
FSU wins £800,000 damages for member sacked in workplace free speech row
The FSU has just won its biggest ever legal victory at the Employment Tribunal (ET), securing damages likely to exceed £800,000 for Carl Borg-Neal, a dyslexic Lloyds bank manager who was sacked following a workplace free speech row (Bloomberg, Critic, LBC, GB News, HR Grapevine, Mail, Mail, Telegraph, Times).
This is a fantastic result for Carl and it’s worth pointing out that his final compensation package – which includes damages for past loss of earnings, future loss of earnings, a pensions award, aggravated damages, compensation for discrimination and compensation for personal injury – is well in excess of the amount typically awarded to Claimants at the ET.
Carl Borg-Neal worked for Lloyds for 27 years and became a senior manager. But when, during a diversity training session, he quoted an imaginary person using the n-word in a question about a hypothetical situation — should he reprimand a black employee for using the n-word in conversation with another black employee? — he was fired for gross misconduct, with nary a thought given to his unblemished record over nearly three decades.
Luckily, Carl is a member of the FSU. With our help, he took Lloyds to court and won a landmark victory. Lloyds has now been ordered to pay £800,000.
In addition to this groundbreaking financial compensation, the remedy judgment (which was handed down late last year, and only recently made public) makes a series of important recommendations that Lloyds will now have to follow.
Senior members of the bank, including members of the Board, have been ordered to read and digest the judgment, learning, if they did not appreciate it already, that context is everything when deciding whether to dismiss someone for breaking a workplace speech code.
The bank will also have to inform the Financial Conduct Authority that it got this one wrong, telling the UK’s financial services watchdog that its dismissal of Carl was substantially and procedurally unfair and an act of disability discrimination.
Finally, Lloyds must correct its internal records and provide a neutral reference for Carl to any future employer.
The ramifications of these recommendations will now be felt in the HR departments of every major company up and down the country, meaning this case will have a lasting footprint that should stamp out this kind of behaviour when employers are faced with similar complaints.
It goes without saying that everyone at the FSU is delighted for Carl.
Our in-house casework and legal teams worked tirelessly on Carl’s behalf throughout the case. We secured top legal representation from Emma Hamnett at Doyle Clayton – a firm that specialises in employment law – and Cloisters Law Chambers, who helped Carl bring the claim against Lloyds in the Tribunal.
As FSU General Secretary Toby Young pointed out during his recent appearance on Andrew Doyle’s GB News show, Free Speech Nation, we also underwrote Carl’s £150,000 legal expenses on the understanding that if he lost, we’d write it off, but if he won, which he has, he would pay us back.
The state of free speech in Northern Ireland – book your tickets here
We will be kicking off 2024 with a visit to Belfast on Friday 26th January. We have an incredible panel of speakers lined up – Toby Young, Stella O’Malley, David Quinn, Ella Whelan and Jeffrey Dudgeon. They’ll be discussing ‘The State of Free Speech in Northern Ireland’ at the Titanic Hotel.
Tickets are open to all, so do spread the word and book your ticket here.
Sign a petition to support Australian academic fired in free speech row
The co-founder of the FSU of Australia, Prof Andrew Timming, has been sacked by RMIT University in Melbourne over an innocuous post on X, made as part of public engagement work that the institution and other universities increasingly like to encourage (College Fix).
RMIT’s managers initially threatened disciplinary action last summer after the Professor of Human Resource Management commented on an online spat between Greta Thunberg and Andrew Tate. Timming had made the perfectly reasonable point that it’s acceptable to make demeaning sexual jokes at the expense of men in today’s society, but not women (Mail).
Following his initial reprimand by RMIT, Prof Timming claims he suffered “vicious bullying”, which in May 2023 prompted him to lodge a formal complaint, alleging a violation of the institution’s academic freedom policy (Sky News Australia). RMIT’s response was to suspend him.
In a move that might even have caused Ebenezer Scrooge a momentary qualm, the university then terminated Prof Timming’s contract just days before Christmas, ostensibly for neglecting to teach courses that it alleges were in his work plan. Prof Timming disputes that claim, arguing that the real reason for his sacking was that his comments about ‘Saint Greta’ had upset senior managers at the left-wing institution.
Prof Timming is currently appealing his termination to RMIT’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Alec Cameron. Please show your support and sign the FSU of Australia’s petition (here). Free speech in universities must be defended and Andrew should be returned to work with immediate effect.
How to stand up for freedom of speech and thought – tickets now available
On Saturday 3rd February we’ll be at the Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester for a night of discussion followed by some live music. FSU General Secretary Toby Young will be joined by Sean Corby and Freedom in the Arts co-founder Denise Fahmy, two courageous FSU members who’ve fought important legal battles to defend free speech in the workplace.
There will also be some live music. Sean is a professional musician and he’ll be playing from his extensive jazz repertoire with fellow musician Jonathan Enright. Tickets are available here.
Latest episode of ‘That’s Debatable!’, the FSU’s weekly podcast, is out now
This week’s major talking point on ‘That’s Debatable’ is the case of FSU member Carl Borg-Neal and why his recent victory should give woke HR managers and diversity officers pause for thought.
Hosts Tom and Ben also touch on the rather more sobering news that Camden Council is now putting potential suppliers through a McCarthy-esque interrogation of their stance on LGBT issues. (We think this policy may be challengeable, so if you know of a company that tendered for a contract at Camden Council, but lost out to an inferior competitor because it didn’t have a gold star from Stonewall, please do let us know here).
In news that will surely rock Gary Lineker’s podcasting empire to its very core, ‘That’s Debatable!’ is now being published directly onto the Apple podcast app, in addition to all the other popular podcasting platforms. We’ll defend to the death your right to free speech, Gary, but we’re coming for your market share, studs up.
The link to download the episode in full is here.
Conversion therapy bill – write to your MP!
Although a proposed ban on ‘conversion therapy’ was left out of the King’s Speech last November, the spirit motivating this stillborn legislation appears to live on, skulking in the shadows of Westminster’s less salubrious postcodes and whispering sweet nothings into the ears of any Parliamentarians that happen to pass by on their way towards ‘the right side of history’.
Only last month, for instance, a Westminster Hall debate brought by Labour MP Christian Wakeford took place in which a succession of Labour MPs urged the government to bring forward such a bill. In addition, a private members bill in the Lords banning conversion therapy is due to have its second reading this month, and another private members bill, this one proposed by the hard-Left Brighton MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, is due to be debated in the Commons in March.
As an organisation, we’ve been lobbying hard against any such bill, urging MPs to consider the unintended consequences for freedom of speech if conversion therapy is criminalised.
Needless to say, what most people understand by the phrase ‘conversion therapy’ is already illegal in the UK, such as trying to stop someone from being gay or transgender via exorcism, physical violence or food deprivation.
Where things start to get more complicated is at the softer end of the spectrum if conversion therapy is defined too broadly.
We got a foretaste of what such a ban might look like this week when the Scottish government launched a public consultation on its plans to jail parents for up to seven years if they stand in the way of their children who want to change sex (BBC, Mail, Telegraph). This, according to the proposed Scottish law, would be a form of conversion therapy.
Writ large across the accompanying, 86-page consultation document is a worrying lack of clarity about who else would be sent to prison under the new law. Will gender critical feminists who believe in the reality of biological sex face custodial sentences? And what about church leaders who uphold traditional beliefs about sex and sexuality in their conversations and prayers?
Please use our campaigning tool to contact your MP, telling them to scrutinise what’s already happened on-the-ground in the State of Victoria and what’s now likely to happen in Scotland and urge the Prime Minister not to give in to the powerful LGBT lobby by publishing a draft bill. It only takes a minute or two – you can find the link here.
Trying one’s patients – please show your support for the Signature Four
The FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, Dr Bryn Harris, was a guest on Woman’s Hour this week, discussing the case of four of our members – Kate, Mohammed, Karen and Jade – who are being sued for defamation and malicious falsehood after posting honest but critical reviews following a bad experience with Signature Clinic, a cosmetic surgery company. (Our involvement in this case has also previously been reported in the Mail, Times and on Times Radio).
Kate, Mohammed, Karen and Jade all acted without malice, wishing merely to record their personal experiences on a site designed to allow them to do so. They feel they have done nothing wrong, but face potential financial ruin. (For members and supporters with X accounts, we’ve clipped a section of Kate’s appearance on Woman’s Hour in which she discusses her experience, and why she’s determined to stand up for the principle of free speech, that you can listen to here.)
Now the Signature Four need your help.
Our members have secured excellent representation from leading media firm RPC, who are doing everything they can to keep costs down while ensuring the four get the representation they deserve. The FSU is also assisting the group, further driving down costs.
But this kind of litigation is expensive.
If you can, please pledge your support for this case by clicking here.
As Bryn points out, this is not an isolated problem. The use of litigation to threaten people who speak out – known as SLAPPs (strategic litigation against public participation) – is well established. We believe the claims brought against the Signature Four warrant the term ‘SLAPP’, and are also concerned at the use of these tactics against consumers who, unlike journalists and authors, do not have the legal and financial backing of a publisher.
That’s why this case isn’t just about Kate, Mohammed, Karen and Jade, but about defending the cornerstone of our freedom: the right to speak up honestly.
Kind regards,
Freddie Attenborough
Communications Officer
Planned Parenthood Marketing Team Rebrands Baby Murder As ‘Women’s Healthcare’
Our thanks to Gerry for this (video, 5:29).
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Video / audio #347 from our archives: Messages 4 Men – Mangesh Bhalerao (SIFF) (2019)
We’re linking daily to selected video / audio video files from our YouTube channel. Today’s file is here (video, 11:39).
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Grant Shapps is a blithering idiot – “British Armed Forces need more women to join”
Our thanks to Nigel for this. Appalling. A Tory Defence Secretary prioritising identity politics above the security of the country. On its own, this would be a perfectly valid reason not to vote for the Tories at the next general election. An extract:
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“Something which I am extremely passionate about is having a military which should represent our country as it is today,” Shapps told The Telegraph. “It can’t be right that our military still only has 11 or 12 per cent women, for example, when you make up half the population.”Margaret Thatcher must be rolling in her grave. All 255 British military casualties in the 1982 Falklands War were MEN.
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Justice for Men & Boys 