J D Vance Munich address today.

Precisely.
It seems many are wilfully putting their heads in the sand over the subject of free speech still.

Vance lied - there has been nothing that has suggested poole are not free to pray or think what they will - the letter is about people using private premises to publicly (verbally or visibly) promote hate against women going enroute to a clinic.

What is really, hypocritical is that Vance government at home has just signed away another bit of peoples freedoms under new ICE regulations

*ICE plans to monitor social media for threats and negative comments
Immigration law enforcement agency has requested information from companies that can provide social media and online monitoring for threats against ICE*

In a 15-page statement of objectives, ICE said it seeks a company that can scour social media, open-source online databases, the dark web and the deep web to find potential threats and identify them to the agency using geolocation, psychological profiles, facial recognition technology and more

Its even planning to hand the contract out to a private company.

How can anyone listen to Vance talking about free speech when Trump is cosying up with Putin.
Free speech in Russia disagreeing with Putin ends in people disappearing or falling out of windows in tall buildings.
They should be aiming their free speech accusations at Russia and China.

How can we have utterly total free speech if womens' freedoms and rights are taken away from them by demonstrations outside clinics?

In the USA clinics have been attacked and burned down, and doctors attacked and demonstrations outside their homes.
Or their rights taken away altogether.

Is this what we are prepared to allow?

There is a difference between speech and burning clinics down.

(I mean abortion rights removed altogether, as Vance would have it). "Freedoms" are not absolutes. They are a balance, when it involves conflicting interests.

Remember, above all, Vance stood up and lied: deliberate, inflammatory statements to further his own abortion "hobby horse"

We know the issues about speech in the last few years, as I said we dont need Vance to tell us, what it means is we dont trust the other 'side' either. That ship sailed years ago.

The guidelines are there to protect women Galaxy, having to run some kind of gauntlet on their way to a clinic. And we did have this kind of threat to women in the UK

the Guardian yesterday:

"Rachael Clarke remembers life before buffer zones. Almost every day, the head of staff at the UK’s biggest abortion provider would get emails from staff worried about protesters outside clinics – and women crying in the waiting room.

"Some of the protesters had huge placards with graphic images of foetuses. Others held candlelit vigils and said prayers. One scattered baby clothes in the bushes. “We had every­thing from people telling women that having an abortion was putting their baby in a meat grinder to people following nurses down the road in the dark telling them they were killing babies,” says Clarke.

Since buffer zones were rolled out nationally late last year – building on public space protection orders that were already in place outside some clinics – she says things have drastically improved."

The article goes on to describe how the *US funded and sponsored group the SDF is trying to break the buffer zones in detail.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/16/prayer-and-prosecutions-the-us-hate-group-waging-war-over-britains-abortion-clinic-buffer-zones

They are pushing the idea that the UK is trying to operate some kind of "thought police" to win support,

but at the heart of their efforts is an attempt to stop our womens health rights.

(posted before I read your post, Galaxy).

Sigh.

I hate to argue on this point Galaxy. It just makes me sick the idea of women having to face what many have, and that Vance could casually lie about the issue and inflame matters especially when we know whats happening in the USA..

I dont mind arguing But you arent going to shift me on my concerns around speech in this country. As I say the left may as well have wrapped this issue up in a big red bow and handed it to the right.

Abortion has always been a "free vote" issue in parliament, not left or right.

And I don't see how one can separate an issue from the debates on speech around it.

I think people who oppose abortion have a right to hold that view. Free speech is supporting the right to the speech we hate.
The left have been generally been useless in the last few years on free speech, they have handed this present to the right, along with many other gifts.

To those who say we don’t have freedom of expression in the UK, please tell me, what is it that you’re ‘not allowed’ to say?

If you’re too ‘afraid’ to say it, just tell me the topic.

That men cant be women. But surely you know this. Numerous court cases, one going on at the moment, etc, etc.

LizzieDrip - against men being allowed to be called women, men ending up in a women's prison, concerned about people being allowed into our country unvetted, being put up in hotels at my expense. The list is endless!!!!

The previous government had to bring in a law to ensure the support of freedom of speech within universities, the labour government paused this but the last I heard now support the legislation.

But love0c we can say those things! You just said them on a public forum … and it’s fine!

People disagreeing with your views is not the same as preventing you from expressing them.

Say whatever you want! I would argue that there’s more censorship on GN than in the UK at large.

Women have been dragged through the courts for saying men arent women, MN was the one place it was possible to talk about it in the early days, they were light years ahead of many other places. As I said the labour government seem to have agreed that there was/is a problem.

And I support you on that Galaxy, but thats because I believe on womens rights and safe spaces.

And one space that should also be safe is womens reproductive rights.

My sister, aged 19, our father recently suddenly dead, just starting uni, our mother in hospital, fell in love with. dreadful man, and became pregnant. (all true, honestly).

She had to have an abortion in her circs. she didnt tell me - she went alone.

Thinking she should have had to run any gauntlet at all appalls me.

Her freedom to have the care she needed was a "Freedom to..." and is an example of where some freedom of speech/action has to be curtailed.

There are some absolutes on freedom of speech but many hit indues of competing 'freedoms too and against" and any society has to make its decisions sometimes with great difficulty.

Again, calling Vance out, for his misogyny and his governments suppression of rights in the USA for sheer hypocrisy and lies.

The difference in us is probably that you trust those who would curtail freedom of speech 'where necessary', I dont. Who gets to decide what is necessary? The articles from the BBC scare me and I to be honest am now wondering whether my agreement with the buffer zones was the right decision. The progressives have lost a lot of feminists and now they are losing the free speech people, maybe they can afford those losses who knows.

So, Galaxy, as you appear not to trust the ‘progressives’ in relation to freedom of expression, which UK political faction (if any) do you trust?

To be fair there are some interesting people in the labour party who try, some of the 'blue labour' lot are interesting, Paul Embrey, etc. But other than that I would be more likely to 'trust' the individual campaigners for free speech rather than a political party on this subject.

Anti abortionists can wave their banners and speak out against abortion but not to the detriment of vulnerable people. They can speak freely anywhere but they choose to intimidate women having an abortion.
If anyone thinks this is right because we uphold free speech how do you feel about men choosing free speech to stand outside women's refuges and speak out and terrifying those inside.

In a civilised society we have to protect the vulnerable from free speech that erodes their rights.

I agree AGAA4.