Dave Evans

Without free speech and free expression, academia cannot flourish, and no democracy can survive. We, in the UK, are living through perilous times. Say the wrong thing, criticize the wrong group, and you might face a Non-crime hate incident (NCHI), lose your job or even face jail. In academia, 'controversial' ideas are sometimes not debated for fear of causing offence, with some using the threat of reprisals as a tool to silence opposition. We need debate; we need our ideas challenged, not mollycoddled. Growth can be painful, but it's necessary. We should not stifle new ideas and discussions out of fear of causing offence. If someone is wrong, they should be debated, not silenced. If an ideology is repulsive, it should be debated, not censored. This draconian approach to speech will ultimately stifle innovation and allow bad ideas to flourish unchecked. For a people to be free, and for any democracy to flourish, there must be freedom of speech. With recent events, and the direction the UK is heading in, I have decided to join the @SpeechUnion , and I hope that you will join me. Although I live between the UK and abroad and can easily hold my tongue, I feel I can no longer sit back idly and not speak out against the growing censorship and intellectual stagnation, even at the risk of my own liberty and career. As JFK once said, "Without debate, without criticism, no administration, no country can succeed, and no republic can survive". We must have debates, and give criticism without fear of censorship for our nation to grow and our democracy to survive.

@InternetH0F I remember when it was new, at the turn of the millennium! Time for me to lie down and take an ibuprofen. 😆

Ask Jeeves has officially shut down on May 1, 2026, ending its 25-year run

@J_A_Fernie @UTCSCOTLAND Sickening! I used to walk past Queens Hotel most days when I went to Perth College. it's not just Perth but all over Scotland. In the past few years even Glasgow centre feels like a completely different place. This is not empathy, its madness at the expense of our safety

From @UTCSCOTLAND ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER KNIFE INCIDENT. 😡🔪 That’s 6 times in just a few months. The Queens Hotel is a danger to Perth, yet Keir Starmer and John Swinney continue to welcome these people with open arms while we pay the price. We are done with "concern." We are done with excuses. These men are walking our streets with weapons and it’s only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt. Also hearing reports that’s the 3rd arrest this week! Early in the week an Invader from the hotel seconds from The Queens, called the Radisson Blu Hotel! Was Arrested for talking to a Minor!!! But nothing from the Press or police??? Swinney and Starmer: You invited them, you deal with the consequences. Get them before the unthinkable happens! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💢 DEPORT THE FUCKING LOT!

'Ship's Cat' by Keith Spangle

@AdamPerkinsPhD @metaburbia Or we could just not let them in at all. There is no reason a country in our state should be offering asylum to anybody. It’s not like we are near any war zones

@EastRenAsks Still a better love story than Twilight! 😍😜

This elderly lady, who knows Kung Fu apparently, just asked me for a fight 😅

Even I think this is an abomination.

@ScotRail @TheOneCalledMe

@TheOneCalledMe Would you like us to wash your breakfast dishes for you too Ryan. ^Paul

'Its not our fault' Nae, but it is your station, just clean the fucking bin.

The U.S. Department of War has announced that it has entered into agreements with seven commercial artificial intelligence companies—SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services—to "deploy their advanced AI capabilities on the Department's classified networks for lawful operational use."

@RupertLowe10 Why are officials, lawyers, and judges rarely held responsible? If they enable such a beast to live among the innocent, then why aren't they held responsible for his actions. Those who let such monsters in should face fines, or being barred if such creatures harm our people!

This Nigerian man successfully fought a deportation on human rights grounds. He has just been jailed for 17 years for dragging a young woman into woods and assaulting her. He was already on bail for another rape allegation. The BBC reports he has a "fascination" for forced sexual abuse. "He grabbed her by the mouth and forced her into woods, where he carried out a violent rape." Why wasn't he deported before his latest crime? Read this... From the BBC - "The judge at the immigration tribunal in 2024 said the matter was "finely balanced", arguing the offence Oladele had committed was "very serious" and that there was "a strong public interest in deporting and excluding foreign criminals, especially one who has committed a frightening and public assault". But the fact that Oladele would be "a complete outsider should he relocate to Nigeria" and that he had a "developed private life having grown up in the United Kingdom" outweighed the public interest in deporting him.' The judge said he posed 'exceptionally high risk of harm to young women'. What the hell are we doing to ourselves? Honestly? Two words. Death penalty. Restore Britain would give the British people a say if they want savage animals like this put to death.

ドローンでデス・スター、トレンチ・ランするぜ。

Looks like it's time for me to buy a drone! 🚀🌕

@TheHauskarl @hasanthehun Well, I suppose, at least he's holding it the correct way up. 😝

@hasanthehun "one day I'm gonna learn to read too" he thinks to himself, gazing at the birds through the window.

🚂 🚊 🚆

I’m the Mum of Barnaby Webber, one of 3 innocent victims of the Nottingham attacks in 2023. Where Valdo Calocane was allowed to roam the streets with a lengthy history of violence, assaults, hatred and mental illness because the health services feared the stigma of detaining him for his race and age above safety to the public. Echoed by their colleagues in the Police and CPS. ……And still they all continue to defend their failures. @KirstieMAllsopp please use your trusted voice to follow and support the #nottinghaminquiry if you can. Only be forcing this into the public arena and shouting from the rooftops will things ever change. Even a like and or rt of my posts would help enormously. 🫶🙏

@therealbuni Still a better love story than Twilight!

Restore Britain's Energy Philosophy. Restore Britain’s forthcoming energy paper sets out the steps for ensuring cheap and abundant energy at home. This project is three months in the making and consistent with our track record of producing well-researched, in-depth papers for the good British public to scrutinise. As for our imminent energy policy document, we present a short teaser below... At Restore Britain, we believe that energy is the lifeblood of any developed first-world economy. First and foremost, then, it should be cheap, reliable, and scalable. If that means investment in fossil fuels, as right now it does, then so be it. Affordable energy makes nations rich and rich nations are better equipped than poor nations to tackle any environmental challenges. Overall, energy should be valued as strategic national infrastructure, not treated as an environmental compliance problem. We also believe that it must serve our security needs. In the modern world, national sovereignty means nothing if it is not backed by energy independence. The future we envision is one of self-confident nuclear expansion, full exploitation of our offshore oil and gas reserves, onshore shale development where feasible, and some limited role for renewables – albeit without subsidies, competing on their own merits – as part of a balanced grid mix. These should meet our energy demands at a rate affordable to British households and British businesses. On its own, though, this is not enough to make energy cheap, plentiful, and thus restore Britain to prosperity. We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. Even if we were to opt for a ‘full steam ahead’ strategy on oil, gas, and nuclear right away, energy prices would not come down unless we first took aim at the structural issues caused by the Net Zero cult. We would repeal the lot. The debate now raging about energy bills shows that the British people are struggling. Ultimately, though, what we need is more a long-term vision for national flourishing than eye-catching measures aimed at temporary relief. The ability to build is also vital. A nation may possess a capable population, plentiful resources, and cutting-edge technological know-how, but if it cannot turn these inputs into power plants, transmission lines, factories, housing, ports, railways, and data centres, then that nation’s economic potential remains unrealised. Our practical approach proceeds from two major principles. First, strategic infrastructure must be treated as a matter of national capability rather than ordinary planning disputes. We would work to ensure that approval timelines are measured in months, not years. Second, regulatory frameworks must be cut back and simplified. An alarming number of delays arise not from environmental or health and safety protection itself, but from overlapping layers of approval, consultation, and litigation that cause projects to stall for indefinite periods on end. OIL & GAS Unless we reverse course, Britain will soon be the only country in Europe with a windfall tax on oil and gas profits still in force, scaring off investment and undermining our energy needs. Instead, we would impose no more than the standard 25% corporation tax, not the effective 78% grabbed by the Treasury at present. Right now, the incentives around even the small amount of drilling that is permitted are extremely forbidding. In the year ending July 2024, the average rate of return for offshore operators stood at a pitiful net -1%. Our aim, by contrast, is to foster a predictable environment that rewards risk-taking investors, creates proper jobs, and deepens valuable skill-pools. We intend to preserve Aberdeen in particular as a crucial node in the oil and gas sector. On current trends, the local economy of North East Scotland and the national economy of Britain as a whole is threatened by Ed Miliband’s lunatic, ideologically driven pursuit of Net Zero at all costs. But we would also level with the British public. There are no overnight solutions to the way in which we have been so woefully misgoverned in recent decades, including on matters related to energy. We would not hesitate to build new coal-fired power plants as part of an interim strategy to transition to more reliable long-term sources. The major advantage of such plants is that, as well as being dispatchable, they can be up and running within a shorter timeframe (roughly three to four years) than new gas turbines. As both China and Germany have shown, modern techniques also make coal far less of a pollutant than it used to be. Last of all, there is plenty of it – particularly the cleanest and densest anthracite and bituminous varieties – across the British Isles. NUCLEAR We would turn our efforts, too, towards a nationwide nuclear renaissance, in particular building an extensive fleet of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Cutting-edge SMR designs boast a range of virtues. They are powerful enough to meet the needs of a small- to medium-sized town, but nimble enough to do so without much notice. The Rolls-Royce SMRs, for instance, require an overall site footprint of fewer than 10 acres. Contrary to larger projects like Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C, they are also easier to finance privately and with minimal, if any, state funds. The major problem for all nuclear power projects, however, remains burdensome overregulation. We shall therefore expand on the work of the regulatory taskforce already commissioned by the Labour government. The brief of our taskforce would be to eliminate all forms of duplication across every level of our existing regulatory framework, from environmental impact assessments to planning hurdles. As part of an interim strategy between where we find ourselves today and the ultimate goal of simplifying our regulatory system along the lines of foreign success stories like France and South Korea, we would not hesitate to overrule the regulator by automatic repeal of any laws or regulations that it cites to block standardised designs safely in operation elsewhere in the developed world. OFFSHORE WIND Offshore wind turbines are remote enough to be non-despoiling to natural beauty, to require no land competition, and though intermittent by nature, can work hand in glove with natural gas as a more reliable substitute whenever the wind fails to blow. Our ultimate aim is to be energy independent, but since that cannot occur instantly and we are already committed to buy whatever our windfarms generate, we may as well make the most of it. Between now and where we aspire to take Britain, we are bound to find ourselves in a position where, while longer term forms of dispatchable power are built, we shall need some wind. FRACKING In the same way that lifting the ban on North Sea oil and gas exploration would be a priority under a Restore Britain government, so too would re-examining the opportunities presented by shale gas. The obstacles in our case are state-imposed constraints on new well developments, a moratorium on fracking reimposed by Rishi Sunak in October 2022, and onerous taxes on oil and gas companies. The irony is that fracking, though demonised for causing tremors, is far less seismically disruptive than the geothermal wells in Cornwall so often lauded by the very activists who despise shale exploration. Once the ban is lifted, the regulations would be rewritten to establish a level playing field between the fracking sector and the geothermal sector, which for arbitrary, unjust, and counter-productive reasons is less burdened. CAUSE FOR HOPE We note with excitement the fact that Britain possesses substantial domestic energy resources and the technical capacity to develop them. What has been lacking is the political will to prioritise cheap, abundant, and reliable energy over costly, ideologically driven climate targets. Removing the self-destructive Net Zero system, reforming planning and regulation to enable timely construction, and restoring a pragmatic balance between oil and gas, nuclear, hydrocarbons, and unsubsidised renewables would allow markets and private investment to deliver the abundance required for affordable energy and national restoration. Victorian Britain relied on cheap power and clean water to drive the Industrial Revolution. Nothing fundamental has changed. We have an abundance of both. A self-confident drive for increased energy production at home would boost government revenue from corporation and employment taxes, while reducing our exposure to global shocks and our reliance on foreign imports. Restoring Britain’s energy security will not be without transitional challenges, but the alternative is continued adherence to policies that have produced some of Europe’s highest energy prices. A patriotic energy policy must place the interests of the British people first. Our full paper will be published very soon indeed.

“I would rather industrialize the world’s most fragile ecosystems than colonize a dead rock” How do people justify beliefs like this?

@SciTechgovuk @STEM_Babe If you want to help, encourage opportunities for all in STEM, and not positive discrimination. The rising tide lifts all boats. However, I fear this will be yet another failed initiative that produces jollies and funding for a few activists, without achieving anything of merit.

Only 29% of the UK tech workforce are women. We want to change that. That’s why we set up the Women in Tech Taskforce. @STEM_Babe headed to No.10 Downing Street to speak with women across the sector about how we deliver the progress that’s needed.

The North East of Scotland was one of the hardest hit by the rail cuts of the 1960s. What we’re proposing now isn’t radical. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the network we once had. The North East deserves a rail network that works for where people live and how they travel.

Everytime 😑

Sci-Hub is an evil website that pirated 85M+ research papers and made them freely available And now they've added AI to their database to make Sci-Bot. It answers your questions using latest, full-text articles. But DO NOT use it. We should all try to make billion-dollar academic publishers richer. I'm putting the link below so you know how to avoid it.