I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom for years, including in my book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. One of the most critical components of the British censorship system is Ofcom, the Office of Communications, which regulates the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications, and postal industries. The most recent controversy is detailed in the Telegraph, with Ofcom investigating GB News over the simple replaying of a Trump interview in which he called climate change a “hoax.” Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.
It is a breathtaking demonstration of the censorship culture in the United Kingdom. World leaders make controversial statements in every interview. A free press allows the public to hear such viewpoints and reach their own conclusions on the merits of such arguments or policies.
The debate over the climate change data continues to rage. The dates for dire predictions for massive environmental disasters, including those of Al Gore, have passed. Professor Guy McPherson received widespread press attention for his 2016 prediction that the entire human race would be wiped out by 2026. It appears that he is wrong.
Al Gore received the 2007 Peace Prize for his film The Inconvenient Truth as media, academic, and government censors attacked anyone questioning his data. His apocalyptic predictions have not borne out, and recent scientific papers have rejected the predictions found in the underlying studies.
Gore predicted more frequent and stronger hurricanes, but some insist that global data reveal a slight decline in both frequency and intensity. Others argue that the number may be decreasing but the intensity is increasing. We have not seen the type of global hurricane disaster that Gore described in the movie.
Critics point to NASA data to argue that the areas burned by wildfires have fallen by more than 25 percent over the past quarter of a century.
While the global population quadrupled in the last century, deaths from climate-related disasters have plummeted from the 1920s, when an average of nearly half a million people died annually from such events.
Even the film’s famous use of polar bears has not panned out. Polar bear populations have more than doubled from around 12,000 in the 1960s to over 26,000 today. While some have contested those figures, it has certainly not resulted in the wipeout predicted by Gore.
I believe that climate change is real, and there are other signs of more severe climate events, including flooding, that present real dangers for various countries. The point is not to say that it is all a hoax, but that reasonable people can disagree on this question.
That brings us back to the British censors.
In the last two decades, free speech protections in the U.K. have been eviscerated and the government is doubling down on the criminalization of speech. The criminalization of speech has expanded exponentially as individuals and groups call the police to silence those who criticize them or advocate opposing views.
Even silent prayer or “toxic ideologies” can lead to arrest. Expressing concerns over Western cultural values is now treated as an admission of “right-wing ideology,” warranting investigation. A few years ago, a neo-Nazi living with his mother was found to have a room filled with hateful symbols and material.
Judge Peter Lodder dismissed free speech concerns over the defendant’s possessions with a truly Orwellian flourish: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” Calling the defendant “a right-wing extremist,” Mr. Lodder said the contents of his room were evidence of “enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology.”
The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints. The result is one of the most speech-phobic nations on Earth as offices like Ofcom fuel the fear of free speech.
Of course “Climate Change” is real – that is just more left wing nut word games – the climate is and has ALWAYS been constantly changing and humans still have no clue as to why.
What is a HOAX is catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Or Climate Malthusian-ism or frankly ALL left wing nut Malthusian-ism since …. Malthus.
There is not a single predication of human caused natural disaster that has EVER proven true.
I recently watched Ken Burns documentary on Thoreaux. While there is a great deal of good to be learned from Thoreaux. It was evident from the documentary that Thoreaux had the same idiotic left wing nut blinders on that left wing nuts today do – and All Thoreaux’s predictions of human demise FAILED – jkust like The cult of warmism and EVERY malthusian prediction singe Rachel Carlson and “Silent Spring”
As I sit here in my living room listening to birds singing outside 75 years after Carlson.
In FACT there is more wildlife than ever.
Regardless, the computer that left wing nuts use to post Malthusian garbage on this and other web sites,
requires a great deal of Extraction and energy to create – and more to operate.
It also requires myriads more to create the factories and tools that are used to build that computer (or iPhone or …).
The standard of living that you left wing nuts enjoy is a gift from productive people who are actively doing all the things you hate to bring you the life you love.
Atleast Thoreaux somewhat honestly lived an almost sustainable life in the woods – Sort of.
His mom still did his laundry and he still went to the store periodically and his cottage was barely a mile from Concord. And after 2 years he left Walden Pond and returned to society.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Stop and think about this: the irony.
We in America often complain about Left-Wing control of MSM/legacy media which results in selective “facts” in an ideologically-dominated agenda —–without presenting opposing or contrary opinions and “facts.” In other words, we want to hear both sides.
And yet,
“…Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.” In other words, Ofcom wants the public to hear both sides, i.e., opposing views to Trump’s.
^I don’t have a problem with Ofcom as long as it is equally demanding of ‘both sides now’ in ALL broadcasts’ contexts and reporting, I have more of a problem with selective excerpts of what Trump actually said, taken in isolated context and excerpts.
HERE is his actual speech, but you have to scroll way way down to @ para #50 or so, or “find” the operative opening paragraph starting with, “Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before…” this topic goes on for more than a dozen paragraphs, one of which includes the offending language, “It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.”
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_by_President_Trump_to_the_80th_Session_of_the_United_Nations_General_Assembly
While we may disagree with some of Trump’s statements, my visceral conclusion is that Ofcom fashioned/framed this as wanting to cast Trump in a bad light, but the incentive was really MORE responsive to some of the insulting realities he pointed out, like it or leave it:
“I want to stop seeing them ruining that beautiful Scottish, English countryside with windmills and massive solar panels that go seven miles by seven miles, taking away farmland [with limited benefit to a small number of people?]”
“Another U.N. official stated in 1989 that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming.”
“I remember hearing about the carbon footprint, and then [former U.S.] President [Barack] Obama would get into Air Force One, a massive Boeing-747. And not a new one, an old one with old engines that spew everything into the atmosphere. He talked about, ‘The carbon footprint, we must do something,’ and then he’d get in and he’d fly from Washington to Hawaii to play a round of golf.”
” we have still radicalized environmentalists, and they want the factories to stop. ‘Everything should stop. No more cows. We don’t want cows anymore.’ I guess they want to kill all the cows.”
“That’s why in America I withdrew from the fake Paris climate accord, where—by the way—America was paying so much more than every country. Others weren’t paying. China didn’t have to pay until 2030. Russia was given an old standard that was easy to meet, a 1990s standard. But for the United States, we’re supposed to pay like a trillion dollars, and I said, ‘This is another scam.’ The fact is the United States has been taken advantage of by the world for many, many years, but not any longer,’
Lin,
Nonsense like “equal time” is just another form of censorship.
Government may not control what is said.
It may not silence some views
it may not require others.
The “regulation” of speech is conducted outside of govenrment by free people making choices.
The left wing nut MSM spins what they provide all the time – and as a consequence people do not trust them and ratings are way way down – that is how it is supposed to work.
Every media outlet and every person speaking in public has and agenda – the left constantly – while having their own agenda, argues that having an agenda is immoral. That is nonsense.
It is hard to comment on the UK – free speech there is such a mess.
Regardless we should NEVER have state funded controlled or regulated media.
There have been claims that Trump has Weaponized the FCC to silence critics.
I have seen no evidence of this under Trump. Carr or Trump speaking out against someone is NOT censorship – it is the opposite. ACTING is where the problem occurs.
Regardless the problem can be solved trivially – get rid of the FCC.
I do not care if OfCom was trying to silence one view or require equal time for the opposite view – they should not exist.
Ofcom needs to heed a better part of British culture. Monty Python’s Holy Grail. “How do you know she’s a Witch?”
“. . . the censorship culture in the United Kingdom [and elsewhere].” (JT)
I don’t think people fully appreciate the gravity of this tragedy.
Human progress is the result of truth-seekers and dissenters — Galileo, Vesalius, the Founding Fathers, Pasteur.
When government controls, throttles, criminalizes ideas and speech, those dissenters disappear. And human progress is the casualty.
(For a dramatic, grand-scale example of that principle, see the development of “biology” under Stalin’s censorship.)
On the eve of her scheduled testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Pam Bondi was caught by the Mexican border patrol on Thursday as she attempted to sneak across the southern border.
The former attorney general, dressed in what was described as ninja-like attire, was nabbed as she tried to hoist herself over the border wall near Tijuana, Mexican officials said.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would tighten border security to prevent a “doomsday scenario” in which her nation is overrun by a swarm of criminal Republicans.
“Today was Pam Bondi,” she warned. “Tomorrow could be Ken Paxton.”
In light of these events, Mexico has decided to pay for the wall.
Canada says they want one, too.
A former senior Biden campaign advisor tells me Jill Biden’s comments are “revisionist history.”
“She and a handful of other close advisors around President Biden kept gaslighting us, telling those of us on the campaign we were the ones who were wrong, and that he just had a… https://t.co/UhXfBhYf8b
— Dasha Burns (@DashaBurns) May 28, 2026
Biden aides told @jaketapper and me that they had seen him act that way before and after. Those moments became more difficult to predict and conceal.
And Jill joined Biden for several campaign events after the debate including a rally the next day. https://t.co/5b2jQfT31i pic.twitter.com/RGYFnMYJpm
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) May 27, 2026
Upstate: excellent “revisionist” story. (I am also reminded of the recent news that former AG Pam Bondi is fighting thyroid cancer, although the MEDIA had already informed America that her abrupt departure was due to her not pleasing Trump in his quest for “revenge” prosecutions.) Very few people saw the limited news of her diagnosis-compared to the news covering her sudden departure.
“The debate over the climate change data continues to rage. … The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints.”
The only people I see who rage and have been conditioned, Professor, are the hypocrites who can’t defend their “practice what I preach, not what I do” behaviour.
The FBI, during the Biden Administration, visited twitter and facebook to suggest that certain content should be hidden from the public view. The German SS visited the newspapers to do exactly the same thing. Is it so difficult to look at history and consider the results when censorship is the law of the land? The German people after the war said we didn’t know about the millions who died in the gas chambers because they were not allowed to know. Being unaccountable to the populace has always been a goal of the world’s dictators.
There are those on this forum, who are interested in seeing that this history is repeated because they believe that the vast wisdom between their ears is the only thing that should be recognized as the way forward. Names need not be mentioned.
The only way to survive this is the be on the side that’s “NEVER WRONG” (regardless of reality)
We are All nothing but Lemmings being herded over the cliff
“Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.”
Sounds a lot like the “investigating” is thinly masked forced compliance to follow the official state narrative.