Anyone who has been paying attention for the last several years knows the Tories don’t care about free speech. They just use the term as a political weapon.

What a weaksauce headline! They didn’t just compile “secret files on critics”, they banned critics from speaking at government events.

I used to wonder why conservatives always seem to be hypocrites. I finally came to the conclusion that it isn’t anything inherent about legitimate conservative philosophy. The problem is with any extremist movement that decides their cause justifies ignoring the opinions of others, the rules of society, and of the law. When winning by any means is acceptable you have moved out of the realm of politics and and into insurrection and revolution.

Its not even criticising the government for their area of expertise. ANY criticism including commenting favourably on another person’s post is enough to get blacklisted. Disgusting. And utterly hypocritical from these supposed anti woke warriors

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Fifteen government departments have been monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling “secret files” in order to block them from speaking at public events, the Observer can reveal.

The revelations will be hugely embarrassing for a Conservative party that regularly claims to champion free speech and has slammed universities for allowing students to “no platform” experts with whom they disagree.

Tessa Gregory, partner at Leigh Day, who is pursuing legal action against the government on behalf of at least two experts, said: “This is likely to have impacted large numbers of individuals, many of whom won’t know civil servants hold secret files on them.

Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, was disinvited in April from giving a keynote speech at a UK defence conference after officials found social media posts criticising Tory ministers and government immigration policy.

But in response to an FoI request from the campaign group Privacy International last year, the DfE said three times that it “does not conduct monitoring, investigations or intelligence gathering on members of the public”.

Smita Jamdar, partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau who has been advising universities on how not to fall foul of the government’s new higher education “free speech tsar”, said: “The double standards here are astonishing.”

The original article contains 986 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

Fuck this shit, I am leaving.