There is little point in your reading any of my opinions on things, until you understand what I mean by "good" and "evil", so you should start by reading how I define these, and only then go on to read the rest of my bigoted maunderings.

Not everyone will love everything I have to say, and you will find above a link to a page telling the tale of one attempt to have my views banned, and another about how I was eventually banned.

THE PRESS RELEASE

This is the press release that Dr Bruce Charlton of the Psychology Department sent out. He told me about it afterwards!

Newcastle University has surrendered in the face of adverse publicity threats coming from a vegetarian dating agency!

Some veggie romantics on a dating forum objected to a humorous article by evolutionary psychologist Nikolas Lloyd ironically entitled 'Why vegetarians should be force fed with lard' have successfully campaigned to get the offending web page removed from the Newcastle University server - also having Nikolas Lloyd's e-mail and web access immediately and permanently cut-off.

The article by Nikolas Lloyd is still available on the Google cache, and is given in full at the end of this message. It is an accomplished piece of 'black humour' in a style reminiscent of PJ O'Rourke.

The veggieromance forum including discussion of the blackmail campaign can also be found on the web:
www.veggieromance.com/viewtopic.php?chain=165&topicnum=46111&page=1

Nikolas Lloyd (a Newcastle graduate in Archaeology) has for the past decade been allowed access to Newcastle University e-mail and web services in order to pursue his studies. He has made a film about evolutionary psychology (used in teaching), attended conferences and seminars, co-written a comedy presented at the Edinburgh Fringe, appeared as a wit on late night TV, and written several influential web papers including 'Why men won't dance' (he is also a swing-jive dance teacher). Web access was granted by an annual contract signed by the relevant head of department.

But following complaints and threats of adverse press publicity from veggieromance.com, the Registrar of Newcastle University became involved. A decision was made to suspend Nikolas Lloyd's web privileges instantly and without notice or discussion of any alternatives.

It is amusing, although potentially ominous, that Newcastle University has shown itself ready to cave-in to 'threats' emanating from so mild a source as a bunch of vegetarian lonely-hearts! It also demonstrates that 'having no sense of humour' is just as common among some university administrators as it is among some single-issue fanatics.

Nikolas Lloyd can be contacted at [snip].

[This was followed by a copy of the 'offending' essay.]

Links:

The Register's first article
The Register's second article
The veggie forum's thread (now off-line)
The Times Higher Educational Supplement's article
Fraser Charlton's list of web-links on this affair
The almost perfectly fact-free article in the Daily Mail
The first (failed) attempt to have me banned
The silly essay that started the whole thing
Reinstate the veggie forum thread! Fight for freedom!

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THE ARTICLE IN
THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT

Date-hungry veggies with a beef say nuts to website

Phil Baty - Published: 05 May 2006

A campaign by vegetarians organised through an obscure dating website has led Newcastle University to withdraw a series of essays published on its own website, prompting an unlikely row over free speech.

Newcastle has removed the personal webpages of evolutionary psychologist Nikolas Lloyd from its website after complaints about his tongue-in-cheek diatribe against vegetarianism called Why Vegetarians Should be Force-fed Lard, writes Phil Baty.

The university said that the pages, which the university was hosting on a discretionary basis, were withdrawn because they were deemed to be "deliberately provocative to a minority group".

But one academic at the university said this week that Newcastle had succumbed to pressure and "blackmail" from a small but organised lobby of vegetarians.

Bruce Charlton, reader in psychiatry at Newcastle and a friend of Mr Lloyd's, said: "It is amusing, although potentially ominous, that Newcastle has shown itself ready to cave in to threats emanating from so mild a source as a bunch of vegetarian lonely hearts."

Mr Lloyd has never been a paid member of staff at Newcastle, but has been a visiting fellow for many years. His essay on vegetarianism rubbished a list of common reasons people cite for being vegetarian and suggested that most men chose vegetarianism simply to impress vegetarian women.

It was posted on www.veggieromance.com - "the place for vegetarian dating, friendships... whether your diet is fruitarian, vegan, raw food or macrobiotic" - and caused an outcry.

Ian Martin, a member of the dating site, wrote to the university to complain. Others followed suit.

Their arguments were initially rejected by Quentin Campbell, acting for the university's Information Systems and Services. His phone number was then published on the vegetarians' website with a suggestion that he should be pestered. Mr Martin also suggested that visitors call The Sun newspaper to generate "unwanted publicity for the university".

Shortly afterwards, all of Mr Lloyd's pages were removed from the university's website.

Links:

The Register's first article
The Register's second article
The veggie forum's thread (now off-line)
Dr Bruce Charlton's press release
Fraser Charlton's list of web-links on this affair
The almost perfectly fact-free article in the Daily Mail
The first (failed) attempt to have me banned
The silly essay that started the whole thing
Reinstate the veggie forum thread! Fight for freedom!

Back to top

THE FIRST ARTICLE IN
The REGISTER

This is the article from The Register. You may still find it at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/12/newcastle_veggie_site/

Crusading veggies steamroll university into web censorship

'Why vegetarians should be force fed with lard'

By Chris Williams
Published Friday 12th May 2006 07:02 GMT

A provocative essay has been pulled from servers by Newcastle University authorities following complaints from vegetarians.

Nikolas Lloyd, who was granted IT services as a visiting fellow in evolutionary psychology, has had all his pages taken down and his email access rescinded.

Forum members on a vegetarian dating site took exception to the title of the piece "Why vegetarians should be force fed with lard". It was one of a series of deliberately incendiary treatises, which included "Why banning hunting is wrong", and "A woman's place".

In his vegetarianism article, Lloyd argues against pro-veggie reasoning in tongue-in-cheek style. A typical passage reads:

Most vegetarians are women. In Britain, a person is doubly likely to suffer from vegetarianism if he is female...when men split up from their veggie girlfriends, they near invariably start enjoying meat again. This goes to prove amongst other things that men really will do ANYTHING for sex.

The full tirade has been rescued from Google's cache and is available here [no longer true].

Not seeing the funny side, tofu fanciers on veggieromance.com fired off complaints to university postmaster Quentin Campbell. He temporarily suspended Lloyd's access while the gripes were investigated under the university's usage policies.

Campbell then replied in an email: "I am mindful of the obligation of the University, under section 43 of the Education (No 2) Act 1986, to protect the freedom of speech of its staff."

The section of the Act he refers to says:

Take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers.

He concluded: "You may not agree with the personal opinions that Nikolas Lloyd publishes on our staff website here, but as his views do not appear to break the law of the UK, the university cannot without proper cause prevent him from expressing them."

In a later, more detailed official statement, he told the vegetarians the pages would stand, since the Education Act trumps the institution's own rules regarding material "intended to annoy". The email dialogue is in the veggieromance.com thread here.

That was back in January, and seemed to put an end to the bean curd-induced humour vacuum.

Last week though, a letter dropped on Lloyd's doormat from university Registrar John Hogan telling him that all his IT privileges, conferred a decade ago, were to be removed with immediate effect.

According to university authorities, Lloyd's downfall was that, as a visiting fellow, he was not an official member of staff and so lacked the protection of the legislation. They contend their own regulations meant the university was obliged to crumble under the weight of complaints from the offended cabbage regarders. The decision was taken at the very highest level of the university administration.

Lloyd's access via the Department of Psychology was sponsored by evolutionary psychiatry academic Dr Bruce Charlton, who uses some of Lloyd's respected work on evolutionary debates in his teaching.

Charlton says the suspension of IT services is a big blow to Lloyd, who pursued his interest in the field on a low income, and a "malicious, frivolous" attack should have been resisted by authorities. He added that it is an "ominous" sign that people with "hurt feelings" can bring about a crisis meeting in the upper echelons of management.

He also pointed out that the action sets a worrying precedent for the institution; people can take offence at anything, so the regulations offer no protection to anything on the site.

Some of the meat-shy posters had the mettle to stand up for Lloyd's rights of free speech, however. In the spirit of the debate, one joked: "Personally, I believe that nobody should be allowed to publish or say anything that offends me, and I will always campaign to get it removed so that no one else is allowed to read it...I plan to go over to Nikolas Lloyd's house and set fire to it." ®

Links:

The Register's second article
The veggie forum's thread (now off-line)
Dr Bruce Charlton's press release
The Times Higher Educational Supplement's article
Fraser Charlton's list of web-links on this affair
The almost perfectly fact-free article in the Daily Mail
The first (failed) attempt to have me banned
The silly essay that started the whole thing
Reinstate the veggie forum thread! Fight for freedom!

Back to top

THE SECOND ARTICLE IN
The REGISTER

This is the follow-up article from The Register. You may still find it at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/15/meat_vs_veg/

Carnivores spit roast veggieromance.com

Mad cow eaters stampede censorious soy-based lonely hearts

By Chris Williams
Published Monday 15th May 2006 09:35 GMT

In a deliciously meaty twist to the story of gagged evolutionary psychology visiting fellow Nikolas Lloyd, the thread on a vegetarian dating site, where offended steak-dodgers plotted his silencing at the hands of Newcastle University, has itself been removed by site techs.

It was removed on Friday after the site was bombarded by enraged meat lovers. The Reg's letters bag on Friday attested that many veggies were ashamed of their po-faced brethren too.

Veggieromance.com administrators said too many people were registering on the site simply to post abuse. Lloyd's defenders aimed their wrath at originators of moves to mob Newcastle webmasters with complaints about a light-hearted anti-veggie diatribe posted on his university-served webpage.

The free IT service, sponsored by academics in the Department of Psychology, was a lifeline for Lloyd to pursue respected work in evolutionary psychology. As well as tearing down his web page, Newcastle deleted Lloyd's email account. ®

Links:

The Register's first article
The veggie forum's thread (now off-line)
Dr Bruce Charlton's press release
The Times Higher Educational Supplement's article
Fraser Charlton's list of web-links on this affair
The almost perfectly fact-free article in the Daily Mail
The first (failed) attempt to have me banned
The silly essay that started the whole thing
Reinstate the veggie forum thread! Fight for freedom!

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The Right to Whinge

The right to whinge is an important one, and I hope that you, Dear Reader, will agree that we should do what we can to protect it. Now some vegetarian lonely hearts out there have had this taken away from them. They came together on the forum of the dating site www.veggieromance.com, and complained about a page on my web-site. They started a campaign and got my entire site banned, but then something terrible happened: the public response to my being banned was that many people wrote to the veggie dating agency to complain about what had happened. The result was, I'm sorry to say, that the people running the site deprived the world of a place to whinge about my site.

I'm all right now. I have my new web host, but these poor vegetarian lonely hearts no longer have their forum to talk about me. This is not right. These people must be given back their voice.

You can help. Write to the people at www.veggieromance.com and let them know that stifling free speech is a bad thing. Demand, or if that isn't your style, deftly persuade the web-masters there to reinstate the thread on the forum complaining about my web pages. Perhaps you are a clever campaigner and can think up more effective ways of bringing about this justice. If so, please let me know.

Those vegetarians need forums to meet and share outrage, and get together. If this campaign leads to some lonely hearts finding each other, then that's great. Perhaps they'll invite me to the wedding, although I doubt that I'll be asked to make a speech.

Links:

The Register's first article
The Register's second article
The veggie forum's thread (now off-line)
Dr Bruce Charlton's press release
The Times Higher Educational Supplement's article
Fraser Charlton's list of web-links on this affair
The almost perfectly fact-free article in the Daily Mail
The first (failed) attempt to have me banned
The silly essay that started the whole thing
Reinstate the veggie forum thread! Fight for freedom!

Back to top