Delingpole: I Am Done with Oxford University…

I am done with Oxford University. Possibly I have said this before but it can’t be said often enough.

Here is its latest outburst of progressive ridiculousness. It’s a letter, sent out by some pesky Social Justice Warriors at Queen’s College, protesting at a visit by Brendan O’Neill of Spiked.

Read it and weep.

Brendan O’Neill is speaking at Queen’s College, Oxford next week, and the college’s student organisation has sent out this bizarre warning. If you can’t have "contentious" discussion at a university, where can you have it? pic.twitter.com/7VEDDLWG0N

— spiked (@spikedonline) May 3, 2018

Now it may well be that these “Equalities and Welfare teams”, as they weirdly bill themselves (why the plural? Just how many Equalities and Welfare teams does an Oxford college need?), comprise a couple of loser undergraduates with blue hair, an almighty chip on their shoulder, and no friends.

But since when did such tiresome nonentities acquire the moral right to send out sinister letters like this casting aspersions on visiting guest speakers?

“Sparked accusations of transphobia, homophobia and misogyny”. What kind of weasel phrase is that?

What it effectively is is a way of smearing and libelling someone while hiding behind flimsy facade of pretend objectivity. “Sparked accusations…”

So, technically, all these grievance-mongering little toerags are required to demonstrate is that two people – no matter how shrill, warped, hysterical, away-with-the-fairies their snowflake sensitivities or hard-left activist agenda might be – had accused O’Neill of being against transsexuals, gays or women and, hey presto!, a transphobe, homophobe and misogynist is what O’Neill is.

This stinks. And if the college or university authorities had any mettle they’d stamp it out at once, in the way that grown-ups traditionally do when children behave badly.

Sure, undergraduates should be free to write whatever stupid letters they like to anyone they wish – but at the cost of accountability.

Even if it isn’t full-on libellous, that letter is most definitely an unpleasant smear and also extremely bad manners to a visitor. Oxford undergraduates ought to be better than that; and it ought to be the job of the administration to see that the old standards are maintained.

The other worrying question the letter raises is: how did these illiterate tossers get into Oxford in the first place.

“For those students who wish to be more informed his articles are available online for you to form your own opinions.”

In my day, a sentence as inelegant as that would barely have got you a place at Kingston Polytechnic, let alone Queen’s College, Oxford.

And it’s not “Brendan O’Neill’s invite”, for heaven’s sake. Not when you’re trying to be formal – as most of the rest of the open letter so agonizingly, pompously is. The word, you utter, utter morons is “invitation.”

James Delingpole is a writer, journalist, and columnist. He is the executive editor at Breitbart London Follow him on Twitter: @JamesDelingpole