Agreed, we aren’t very good at accepting “offence” as a consequence of “free speech”.
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But they had a crowd of cheering onlookers and posted the entire thing on tinterwebs…
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Yaxley-Lennon supporters no doubt.
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To me, this is the issue. If they had done it in private, with no cameras then that is a different matter (though still vile & offensive). But the feckers thought it would be a good idea to record it AND publish it thereby causing offense to others.
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It’s all very subjective. How do you quantify ‘distress’? Or is it a bit like art in that you know it when you see it?
Threatening behaviour and/or speech is obviously much easier to determine. This I’m not so sure about.
I wish they hadn’t done by them deciding not to do it.
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The offence thing bothers me. It’s clearly annoying but does it do any real harm? I don’t have the answer. I’m very thick skinned and nothing offends me - however stupid or cuntish it might be.
I think a better reaction here would’ve been for the press to plaster their names all over the papers for a few days heaping on ridicule. Some good old stylee social justice.
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Yea, not disagreeing with you, the bit I wrote was just a copy from the Beeb.
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I think it depends on how much support the Police think they can get from the public when they arrest and subsequently bring the charges.
People have a right to be offeneded, i don’t think it is a right used often enough. There is a modern disease where people look to Authority to protect them from being offended by others.
I saw nothing wrong with people protesting the war when the bodies of dead soldiers were paraded therough the streets of that Wiltshire town. Others were so offended they demanded blood. Oh the irony.
Quite.
Would you be ok with Fred Phelps protesting at abortion clinics, soldiers or gay peoples funerals etc in the UK?
Free speech is bollocks, it shouldn’t give anyone the right to maliciously insult or offend.
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The protests happen in the US, by and large most people don’t get offended. I remember watching one documentary where they interviewed the family of one of the soldiers being buried. They found the protest distasteful but would defend their right to protest.
A more mature approach perhaps?
Free speach is the right, if someone decides to maliciously give offence, that is a choice.
The law in this respect is a bag of shite, open to interpretation and is essentially framed case by case. Quite surpised just how wide the remit of the Public Order Act is when I looked it up.
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Very much so. From the layman’s perspective, it seems if you cause enough moral outrage then you can be locked up. The cunt with the offensive t-shirt got 4 months in prison, I wonder what these people will get?
How about 4 months living in the Notting Hill area where everyone will be told who you are and why you’re there
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There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with something being open to interpretation. It has been interpreted as (I’d imagine) likely to incite violence (against them). I think they were arrested for their own good.
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I shall quote somebody whom we all know. This was posted on the Book of Faeces…
"So let me get this straight - the politicians, councillors, architects, builders and manufacturers responsible for the actual lethal Grenfell Tower blaze that killed 72 people won’t be prosecuted any time soon, probably never, but some utter twats who burned a crappy model of it in their own back garden will be?
How the fuck did I end-up in this batshit-insane parallel universe? Anyone know the way back to Reality…?"
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Therein lies the rub.
We either have free speech or we don’t.
If I can call brexit voters and/or DM readers cunts then they can call me one.
I agree people shouldn’t say certain things. Best is to get to a situation where people self censor because I don’t trust any govt to do it on my behalf.
Further on from my point about public ridicule.
You what mate? No need to trouble the Government or the censors… That looks like a job for Inspector LePedant of the Grammar and Syntax Patrol.
EDIT: Ninja edit FTW! 
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I think we don’t - that’s America isn’t it?