Our laws are muzzling speech, from private chats to social media, leaving the country’s tradition of free expression hanging by a thread, warns David Frost in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
We all agree that rioting and violence should be punished. We all agree that threats and – genuine, meaningful – incitement to violence are not covered by the right to free speech. Many of those punished in recent days have been convicted for exactly those things. But not all have. We shouldn’t be surprised by that. For our legislation goes much wider than that, to criminalise far wider categories of speech and messaging. It’s now being used, brutally, by a Government that has little real regard for free speech.
Take some examples. The 2003 Communications Act criminalises “grossly offensive” messages, even sent in private, and whether anyone reads them or not. Sentencing is tougher if messages are motivated by “hate”. People have been given prison sentences for (admittedly unpleasant) private Whatsapp messages.
Or the 1986 Public Order Act, which, broadly, makes it a crime to cause someone “alarm” or “distress” through writing or speech that is “abusive” or (in some circumstances) just “insulting”. It also criminalises messages likely, or intended, to “stir up” hatred on grounds of race, religion or sexual orientation. In these latter areas, the Attorney General’s consent to prosecute is required, as a safeguard, but many such charges have been brought in recent days, so it looks as if the new Attorney General has given a very broad sign off. Perhaps the Shadow Attorney General would like to investigate, if it is not too much trouble?
And finally, we have our unfortunate Online Safety Act. This creates a new concept of “false communication” and makes it illegal to send a message known to be false and intended to cause “psychological or physical harm”. Newspapers and broadcasters are exempt, but individuals are not. Yes, “fake news” is now a crime in Britain, and people are being prosecuted for it. …
In my view, these laws should mostly be abolished or focused much more clearly on genuine incitement. Until that happens, and I’m not exactly holding my breath, our only protection is a government, an establishment, or a wider climate of opinion, supportive of free speech.
Unfortunately, we have no such thing.
Worth reading in full.
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Like Frank Zappa said, they will keep the illusion of freedom alive for so long as it is profitable for them to do so. When it is no longer profitable they will pull back the scenery, get the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the cold brick wall at the back of the theatre. I would argue that is has always been thus with the implicit promise of unpleasant consequences. That is the logic of empire. We did very well for a long time, the Anglo-Saxons. Just look at the land mass of Canada and Australia and everywhere else. Do you really think there was some pax brittanica. Of course not. We should be happy that we lived a pretty chilled life from 1945 until present. Have some humility.
Ah Ship arriving too late to save drowning witch…. Sweet memories, about all we will have left.
And yet, they are scared of the masses. Why would they play all these mind games; bait & switch etc. They have to manufacture consent through deception. But we are exposing them on their own platforms so they call for regulation. This is as old as the hills.
The Tories Online Safety Act.
Fake News;
newspapers and broadcasters are exempt, but individuals are not.
That in a nutshell proves your point.
We now live in a totalitarian state and it will become much worse.
We all know where this will lead.
Well if ever there were a textbook example of why women shouldn’t be allowed to enter politics it’s this one! The brass neck on her…telling a blatantly superior and therefore perfectly competent XY chromosome-owner in no uncertain terms what she thinks of him and what an all round crummy job he’s doing, what with having been in post for a few measly weeks and everything. She should be ashamed of her female straight-talking impediment. Whisht, woman!!
”Keir Starmer
, I am calling you out on being a disgrace to any democracy!
There certainly have been a lot of posts by the UK Home Office
these past couple of days.
Interestingly enough almost all of them deal with how determined the UK Home Office
is to punish “right-wing thugs”. All of these posts focus on what these “right-wing thugs” have done wrong and what they are being punished for.
This begs the question: Are they pursuing the strategy of “punishing one, teaching hundreds?” It certainly looks like it!
Why isn’t the UK Home Office
as determined to go after those illegal invaders who slaughter little girls (or anyone else for that matter) just for the fun of it?
Keir Starmer
, go ahead and have me extradicted, so I can stand a (mockery-) trial in your totalitarian regime!
Great Britain is no longer a democracy, thanks to @Keir_Starmer!”
https://x.com/AndersonAfDMdEP/status/1824084616870772932
What is absolutely, utterly appalling is that we have people “employed” in the Home Office and paid to post tweets such as…
“Pick up the brick, pick up the sentence.”
So somebody perhaps caught up in this protest decides, because they are decent people, to move a brick in case somebody trips and has an accident and they are going to be sent to prison?
FFS!
How completely irresponsible and frankly pathetic can this sham Home Office organisation go?
And is that the response to the tweet from Christine Andersen, a serving MEP? If it is somebody should be losing their job. Has ALL decency left this government of fakes? Rhetorical I know.
Almost unbelievable.
Absolutely shocking some of the responses she received, what is wrong with these people?
When asked to pick a side, they clearly chose the wrong one.
Need more people like Christine Anderson, wherever they are from.
She has been very good on many things, much better than most of the scum we call MPs.
Agree, kev. Balls of titanium, that lady. She could teach many people a thing or two about integrity.
I know, I know. Weird, right?
But there’s people on here that think she shouldn’t be allowed in politics purely due to the fact she’s female. People like Starmer, Hancockwomble, Clive Lewis, Wes Streeting, Johnson etc ( spoilt for choice, aren’t we? ) are all good based solely on them being men.
Call me radical but I’ve personally always judged a person on what they’ve got between their ears and what they choose to do with it, not what’s between their legs.
And as for the responses to her post, you get Leftie arseholes all over who are clearly triggered by anyone defending democracy and the rights of white, working class people, so it’s sadly part and parcel of being outspoken and giving a stuff about the kind society that you want to leave your kids. Too many are all too happy to bend over for both the globalists and Islam. That’s about the size of it. God only knows what such a Western society would look like in 50 years from now if we didn’t have people like Anderson and all the others that are on the same page fighting for us and calling out the totalitarian bullshit of anti-freedom, authoritarian control freaks such as Starmer and his ilk. And only a right bigot would allow something as inconsequential as the gender of a person to come into it.
Quite possibly the best PM this country has ever had was a woman (she was not perfect (who is?) but not because she was a woman), and then 2 not so great ones (but not great because they were women).
Since Thatcher, every male PM we’ve had has been utterly appalling (at best), but again not just because they were men, but because they were appalling people who should never have been in “power”.
Margaret Thatcher had substance, and she had a strong sense of right and wrong. Her only real fault was to be too strong minded and inflexible.
All PMs since have been all style (not always great either) above substance.
We need people of real substance, integrity and honesty, the opposite of what we have, and have had for many years.
One key quality that Thatcher had (and Trump does too) is a genuine desire to improve the lives of the citizenry. They are not “puppets” working for some higher power behind the scenes, unlike Starmer, Johnson, Sunak, Biden, Obama, Clinton (both), Bush (both).
So you know the truth about where this country is going. What will you do about it. Perhaps you lack the opportunity or the means or the wherewithal to leave. You could encourage your children to leave. Encourage them to learn a foreign language or two. If you can get out then you must get out even if it is a pain in the arse.. We are at that point. Don’t be lazy because those tendencies lead to the nastiest outcomes.
I may just end up doing that with a girlfriend abroad.
Flee where? The Rona fascism was a global phenomenon. Even Russia played along. Now the fascists are pushing the Mpox fake virus. Just in time for the US election.
Florida, Texas, Carolinas…?
Parts of Africa were not taken in by the BS despite the vaccine campaigns there.
Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA are usually the preferred destinations for emigration but sadly they are as far down the road of tyrannising their own people as Britain. All Europe is consumed in the same way same except Hungary and Slovakia – perhaps Iceland and parts of Norway too.
Possibly parts of South America would be agreeable.
I don’t think the USA should be viewed as one possibility – individual states have a large amount of autonomy and, in addition, I think the First Amendment will continue to be effective in safeguarding free speech and avoiding government censorship. And, who knows, Trump might save the country…
It’s a shame GB News is also doing paywalls for some of its articles, nevertheless I like Connor Tomlinson’s comment here;
”Leaked messages from the Home Office show civil servants have attacked senior bosses and the government’s response to the Southport knife attack and subsequent anti-immigration protests, accusing them of not calling out Islamophobia
The comment I provided to @StevenEdginton
for this story:
“While all right-thinking persons condemn indiscriminate violence and criminal damage, the unrest following the Southport stabbings was caused by this exact sort of attitude by civil servants.”
“Islam is not exempt from criticism; nor is world-historical levels of immigration something the betrayed voting public should be expected to accept.”
“Keir Starmer has unilaterally declared the Far Right at fault, but it is clear that – whether assaulting GB News’ camera crews outside Downing Street, or embedded within the institutions tasked with administering the state – vitriolic revolutionary leftism is just as culpable for bringing Britain to a boiling point.”
“For these spontaneous outbursts of disorder to cease, Keir Starmer must do the unthinkable for his colleagues: end mass migration, deport the criminals exploiting Britain’s generous asylum system, and apply the law equally to socialist, pro-Palestine mobs.”
https://x.com/Con_Tomlinson/status/1824087697540977047
A damned sound and much needed comment from Connor Tomlinson.
Thanks Mogs
Yes those soy boys (is that illegal now) at GBN need some stones and invite him on more often.
You try to help people but they don’t understand the lateness of the hour. Maybe some do but the overall impression is one of ignorance and we don’t have that luxury on our time.
Granted it’s getting worse now, but have we ever been “free”..
Bread and Circuses has always worked for the RPTB but the debacles of covid, lockdowns, mmRNA gene therapies, climate change/net zero etc. are waking up too many for their liking. At last.
And it’s social media that’s stiring the pot. Thank God.
Before all this, the closest we got in my lifetime to shaking the Elites was when they were scared Corbyn might actually win an election. He was quickly annulled by a dose of perceived anti semetism -even the Guardian trashed him. It was actually quite funny at the time – the BBC wheeled out some important General to say that the Army would have to consider its position were Corbyn to become PM.
So much for “Democracy”.
They are not journalists on the BBC SKY etc, they are campaigners & pom pom girls for Big Pharma. Whitney Webb would put them all to shame. Bet Piers Morgan wouldn’t interview her, if he did he probably wouldn’t let her get a word in edgeways!
There is also this “Legal but harmful” nonsense Starmer wants to wedge into the “Online Shut You Up Act”——–Harmful to who? Or should I say Harmful to what particular government policy? Criticising mass immigration is the current bit of free speech the government want to clamp down, and government policies are so terrible, and so anti what the general public really want (except the Amy Michel Turners of this world) that they are desperate to shut everyone up talking about and pass draconian laws like this so they can bury the criticism. Eh now where do I remember seeing this before? –Oh yes The Soviet Union.
In uniparty governments it doesn’t feel like there is a shadow anything to challenge any aspects of what feels like totalitarian over reach in some cases.
There’s evidently alarm and alarm.
How much alarm does the legacy media cause when it publishes articles online or in print? Consider the language used.
There are the stories of Russian nuclear bombers being ‘intercepted’ ‘heading towards Britain’. Is this the Battle of Britain? Should we get down the Anderson shelter? Or, translated, is this the sort of thing that has gone on since the 1970s?).
Then there’s the violent language used by MSM in their articles. Someone is ‘destroyed’ in an exchange of views. Even if ‘destroy’ means just to be rendered ineffective it describes the person has been they had been the target of ATACMS missiles.
Another person is ‘slammed’. Aren’t doors slammed in heated moments of temper? Another is ‘attacked’ (verbally). Yet others are ‘shut down’ (silenced, implied as by superior force). There are ‘campaigns’ (armies used to go on campaign when fighting was regulated by the seasons).
Then there are the particular online editions of the print media where one notable example reports almost daily on ‘fears exploding’. Does fear ‘explode’? Emotions are contagious. Without being transmitted from person to person emotions would have no communal effect. A factor to consider in these recent disturbances. If a fear ‘bomb’ is exploded, are there emotional ‘casualties’?
What weather pattern is created by this violent language?
If it is illegal to send a message known to be false and intended to cause “psychological or physical harm”, then it must be illegal to write that vaccines are safe and effective.