So, it seems the police have wrapped up all the real crimes north of the border. How else have they time to arrest people for saying things that offend the thin-skinned?
Police Scotland have said the arrest of a man responsible for a series of offensive Facebook posts about Syrian refugees resettled on the Isle of Bute should send a clear message that such social media abuse will not be tolerated.
It’s called freedom of speech. Well, it was when we still had that concept in these septic isles. When the police were charged with detecting crimes and not policing what people say on social media. But, then, our idiotic politicians saw fit to draft vile hate speech laws that criminalise opinions. Hate speech is anything that someone, somewhere finds offensive. So now we are ruled by the terminally thin-skinned who are unable to brush aside their little snowflake feelings because someone, somewhere, made a nasty remark on some moronic social media site.
Following the arrest, Insp Ewan Wilson from Dunoon police office said: “I hope that the arrest of this individual sends a clear message that Police Scotland will not tolerate any form of activity which could incite hatred and provoke offensive comments on social media.”
The message it sends is that we are rapidly descending into a police state where the police are more concerned about thought-crime than they are about real ones.
The day before the first arrivals touched down at Glasgow airport, Humza Yousaf, the chair of the refugee taskforce that has coordinated the resettlement programme, and the Scottish government’s only Muslim minister, confirmed he had informed police of the Islamophobic abuse he received on social media.
Which tells us all we need to know about Humza Yousaf. There is no such thing as Islamophobia. It is an artificial construct created with the express intention of putting Islam beyond criticism.
Free speech is dead; along with it our tradition of civil liberties and open discourse. In its place we have a grey, oppressive, totalitarian landscape where independent thought may not be expressed for fear of causing offence. A landscape that would have made Joseph Stalin proud.
They won. We lost.
Yep – I’ll go along with that. Police have better things to do – or at least they should have.
We’re fucked!
I’ve not been to the Isle of Bute but imagine it must be similar in its midge population to Tighnabruach, just across the water. On returning from that village I started counting my bites. I stopped bothering when I reached 150 on only my left forearm. I am sure that our visitors will be delighted with their safe haven come the end of May.
Interesting. According to Wikipedia (not the most reliable of sources I agree) but s127 Communication Act 2003 (presumably what is being used) was qualified as follows:-
“On 19 December 2012, to strike a balance between freedom of speech and criminality, the Director of Public Prosecutions issued interim guidelines, clarifying when social messaging is eligible for criminal prosecution under UK law. Only communications that are credible threats of violence, harassment, or stalking (such as aggressive Internet trolling) which specifically targets an individual or individuals, or breaches a court order designed to protect someone (such as those protecting the identity of a victim of a sexual offence) will be prosecuted. Communications that express an “unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, or banter or humor, even if distasteful to some and painful to those subjected to it” will not. [my bold] Communications that are merely “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false” will be prosecuted only when it can be shown to be necessary and proportionate. People who pass on malicious messages, such as by retweeting, can also be prosecuted when
the original message is subject to prosecution. Individuals who post messages as part of a separate crime, such as a plan to import drugs, would face prosecution for that offence, as is currently the case.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
So it seems that this is flying in the face of the DPP guidelines….
But they can do their evil work just by arresting someone with an opinion. Better yet, if they can fool them into accepting a ‘caution’ they have really screwed the ‘guilty’.
Going to trial will either see the case dismissed, (as you suggest), or taking a minor penalty which will eventually fall off one’s criminal record – unlike the ‘lenient’ caution, which won’t.
Yes. Never accept a caution. Let a jury decide.