Latest news with #AllisonPearson
Evening Standard
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Evening Standard
It's time for a brutal truth: JD Vance was right about free speech in Britain
In fact anyone who thinks we don't have a free speech problem hasn't been paying attention. Police arrest about 30 people a day for potentially offensive online posts — the result of thousands of hours spent trawling social media rather than, you know, getting out to catch actual criminals. If the respectable Telegraph columnist, Allison Pearson, could be visited at home by two coppers for a tweet about Palestinian protests, none of us is safe. In his post, Rubio's aide Samson mentioned the cases of two anti-abortion activists, Livia Tossici-Bolt and Adam Smith-Connor, who were arrested in Britain for 'silently praying outside abortion clinics' as evidence of 'concerning trends'. That, I'd say, is an understatement. The arrests — and £20,000 fine in the case of Tossici-Bolt — were the consequence of a law banning anything that might resemble dissent, even silently, even in thought, within 150 metres of an abortion clinic. It's self-evidently at the expense of free speech on a profoundly serious matter of conscience.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Planet Normal: ‘The numbers don't add up' in Rachel Reeves' spending review
' What we saw today, in terms of the areas under her control, there are big question marks that need to be asked' On the latest Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player below, columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson discuss Labour's spending review with economist Gerard Lyons. Mr Lyons wasn't convinced by the numbers, ' Early in her speech the Chancellor said, is the plan credible, and the answer unfortunately is, no.' 'T he starting position is debt is very high, and I think we're in the early stages of Britain going into a debt crisis. If you're looking for good news, it might be that we're not the only country facing this problem; but today the Chancellor gave a speech that I think lacked a lot of the detail.' Allison is not convinced by the claims the economy is stabilising, ' We know it is not true, and we are already starting to see the impact on employment and on businesses. We know payrolls have fallen, that employment's fallen by over 250,000 since Rachel Reeves' budget. This is not an economy where you should be taking the gambles that she's taking. Where is the growth going to come from?' Planet Normal, a weekly Telegraph podcast featuring news and views from beyond the bubble. Listen on the audio player above or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says Prevent
Lord Young suggested the definition could even capture Mr Jenrick, the former immigration minister, who has previously warned that 'excessive, uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise the compassion of the British public.' Senior Labour politicians could also fall within the scope of the definition, he claimed. Lord Young cited Sir Keir's recent statement that without fair immigration rules, 'we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.' There are growing fears that police are wrongly seeking to limit free speech. The Telegraph disclosed last month that Julian Foulkes, a retired police officer, was arrested and detained over a social media post warning about the threat of anti-Semitism. Officers who conducted a search of his house described a collection of books by authors such as Mr Murray as 'very Brexity'. Mr Foulkes later received an apology and £20,000 compensation. Last year, Allison Pearson, the Telegraph columnist, was questioned at home by two officers over an X post following pro-Palestinian protests. The Telegraph has also covered the case of Hamit Koskun, who was fined this week for burning a Koran. It led Mr Jenrick to accuse the courts of reviving blasphemy law. Lord Young said the course material appeared to reflect a shift in the Prevent approach from focusing on conduct – such as acquiring weapons or inciting violence – to 'treating ideology itself as a risk indicator, encompassing belief, alignment or political attitude'. He said the FSU had already had to support members referred to Prevent, including a 24-year-old autistic man whose social worker reported that he had been viewing 'offensive and anti-trans' websites and 'focusing on lots of Right-wing dark comedy'. Prevent referral could stain person's name Even if a person was subsequently deemed to require 'no further action', their name would risk remaining on police and other databases that could be accessed by MI5, MI6, the Home Office, Border Force, HMRC, the Charity Commission and local safeguarding teams. Lord Young said: 'There are multiple documented cases in which individuals referred to Prevent – despite not meeting the threshold for further action – suffered serious and lasting consequences simply because their names were logged in the system.' The row comes despite a report by Sir William Shawcross, a former independent reviewer of Prevent, which criticised the way that mainstream literature and even a former Cabinet minister had been described as 'cultural nationalists' by a Home Office research unit on extremism. The minister was later revealed as Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. Sir William recommended that Prevent must be 'consistent in the threshold that it applies across ideologies to ensure a proportionate and effective response.' He added that there were major failings with Prevent more broadly, including that it wrongly funnelled money to extremist organisations and had repeatedly failed to identify people who went on to carry out terrorist attacks. Lord Carlile, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said: 'It is a very difficult job that the Home Office has to do, but maybe they should do a careful bit of editing so that people who are close to the political mainstream are not caught up in it.' A former government adviser said the 'cultural nationalism' definition was 'pretty shoddy'. 'Agencies like counter-terrorism police and MI5 are much more rigorous in their classifications,' they said. 'We are talking about Right-wing extremists, who are often neo-Nazis. It undermines the seriousness of what counter-extremism is all about.' Professor Ian Acheson, a former government adviser on extremism, said: 'We are now beginning to see the consequences of a referral mechanism built on training like this which skews away from suspicion by conduct to the mere possession of beliefs that are perfectly legitimate but regarded by Prevent policy wonks as 'problematic.''
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Are we hearing the death rattle of woke?
On the latest Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player below, columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson discuss the economic tensions across the Labour Party and speak to stand up comedian, and free speech champion, Andrew Doyle about his latest book, The End of Woke. 'So many seismic moments have occurred over the last couple of years, which have really accelerated what I think is the death of woke. You've got Donald Trump signing this slew of executive orders, many of which are about preserving women's rights. And at the same time, you've had the stripping back of DEI policies throughout the corporate sector.' 'The Economist did a study about this, which I quote in the book, about how wokeness really kicked off in 2015, peaked around 2020 and has been declining ever since. And that decline as far as I can see is now pretty much terminal.' 'Arch-Leftists... have been taking their pronouns out of their social-media bios. Just doing it on the quiet, not making too much of a fuss about it. I would say this all suggests that woke is dying in its current form.''The title of the book, the End of Woke, there's a kind of implied question mark there, but also it's an aspiration rather than a prophecy. I'm not positioning myself as a Nostradamus figure but I think all the signs are there. We can hear all the death rattles' Elsewhere in the podcast, as the spending review looms on the horizon, Labour is trying to hold off pressure from Reform by being seen to roll back on winter fuel payments and the two child benefit cap, brought in by the Conservatives. Liam is concerned Reform would be falling into an easy trap to promise more spending; 'There's something happening in British politics where spending pledges are now being thrown about like confetti. Reform are now going to start trading spending pledges with Starmer, who is very much to the Left of his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and could scapegoat her.' Allison sees a future under Reform where the party supports families again; 'In Farage's speech he talked about making the family a more important element in British life, and tax breaks for married couples. Because as we know, if mum or indeed dad, but often it's mum, elects to stay home and spend more time with the children, a couple is really penalised compared to a couple where both work.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Andrew Griffith: We need a UK DOGE to cut government spending
'We do need a scythe like exercise to push back on some of this level of regulation' On the latest Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson speak to Andrew Griffith, Shadow Business and Trade Secretary, about the economic outlook for the UK following Labour's recent economic policy announcements, and whether the country would benefit from a DOGE, Elon Musk's cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. The Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs says 'my old fashioned view is the job of every minister in their department is to deliver value for money and spend money wisely as if it's your own,' but did go on to say 'whether you institutionalise it as DOGE or have a separate unit in the cabinet office, I would certainly, on day one, have a very ambitious program of restoring lines of demographic accountability.' Griffith, who has previously worked as CFO and COO for Sky, believes we have too many regulators, which stymies new business, 'The clock speed of the UK economy is just painful. We all know it takes so long to build infrastructure projects. It takes a long time to get clearance for a business merger. I want a new generation of entrepreneurs.' 'They have got smart ideas and they are ambitious. Many of them are leaving and going to other countries overseas. A little bit of movement is not a bad thing, but when people feel they are pushed out because of crime, the cost of living, housing or just facing a higher-margin tax rate, if they succeed, that is something I think should upset everybody.' 'When these people leave [the county] everybody is poorer. The people who stay behind have to pay either more tax or there is just less money to go round for our public services. Planet Normal, a weekly Telegraph podcast featuring news and views from beyond the bubble. Listen on the audio player above or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
