Toby Young: Why the Right Must Take the High Ground When it Comes to Free Speech

This is the text of the annual oration I gave at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, September 24th.

I’d like to thank the Robert Menzies Institute for inviting me to speak to you tonight and for giving my wife and me an opportunity to spend a few days in this wonderful city – and thanks to Angie Scanlon for letting us stay in her house.

Several British people we’ve bumped into have said Australia is like a version of England in which everything works, and that’s particularly true of Melbourne. Many of our cities look a bit like Melbourne might after a nuclear apocalypse. In fact, if anyone knows George Miller, tell him he could save a lot of money by setting the next Mad Max movie in Middlesbrough. He won’t have to spend a penny on set design.

Toby Young: Dramatic Slowdown in Melting of Arctic Sea Ice Surprises Scientists (But Not Climate Sceptics)

The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005. The Guardian (of all newspapers) has more.

Toby Young: “There is a Pakistani Problem and we Must Root it Out,” Says Head of Equality and Human Rights Commission

Baroness Falkner, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has written a hard-hitting comment piece for the Sunday Times urging the Government to set up a proper national inquiry into the rape gangs. Here’s how it begins.

Damien Grant: Free speech is about protecting ideas and values

Why did Caroline marry you? It’s the one question left unanswered after I’d finished Toby Young’s delightful 2001 book; How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. So I asked him.

He seemed unsure, recalling how he’d pursued Miss Brody with relentless and often obsessive determination, which I already knew because, well, it’s in the book. Given the publication was about what a drunken fool he’d been, what prompted the young lady to relent?

“Maybe” he finally concluded “Stalking works?” More on that in a moment, but…Toby who?