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.
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
“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.