When major parts of the country’s busiest motorway are forced to close by deliberate sabotage for four days running, that is a news story of national importance, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph. Why then have the police arrested a journalist for covering the story – and defended their actions by saying journalists should stop reporting on it? Hertfordshire police’s defence of their chilling actions carry dangerous implications, says Janet.
While attending one of the sites of this lunatic delinquency on a busy section of the M25 last week, they formally arrested not only the Just Stop Oil brats but a broadcast journalist who was covering the incident.
Charlotte Lynch, a reporter from LBC radio was a considerable distance from the protesters desporting themselves on the gantry, and was in possession of an accredited press card which a five minute telephone call would have verified.
Nonetheless, she was apprehended by officers on “suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance” and imprisoned for five hours. That is to say, she was potentially to be charged with precisely the same offence as the protesters would be.
Nobody so far as I can see has actually suggested that the arresting officers believed her to be part of the demonstration or even supportive of it. This is where the explanation of the arrest by David Lloyd, Hertfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, becomes really alarming. He did not defend it on the basis that his force made a mistake: that they believed wrongly that Ms Lynch belonged to the Just Stop Oil troops.
What he did say was much more far-reaching and political than that. He advised journalists generally to “think about how we as a society… ensure that the oxygen of publicity that Just Stop Oil is seeking is moderated, so that we don’t end up with people doing this and really they’re only doing it because they know it’s going to be reported.” The syntax may be garbled but you get the point.
When the police say these things “we can see the shadow of the Stasi loom quite clearly before us”, Janet says. And this is far from the only area where silence is regarded as the socially correct choice and speaking out is seen by the guardians of manners as unacceptable.
But almost identical sentiments are now dominating areas of national life that have generally been assumed to be dedicated to the preservation of free thought and uncensored debate. In fact, it is within the social circles inclined to support extreme climate protest that you are most likely to find approval of such censorship.
What Mr. Lloyd advocated is nothing more than yet another species of cancel culture. Put succinctly, it is now a received truth of Left-liberal orthodoxy that if you see views or activities which you believe to be harmful being promoted in your society, it is your moral duty to suppress them or prevent them from being promulgated. That is pretty much precisely the philosophy that Mr. Lloyd is espousing.
The wall-to-wall pro-lockdown narrative during the pandemic is a recent case in point, says Janet:
I – and many others – believed that the uncritical pro-lockdown campaign run by the broadcast media during the Covid pandemic was ethically dubious and professionally misjudged. Those of us who criticised it did so on the grounds that such coverage had ceased to be news at all: that the broadcast organisations had turned themselves into an arm of Government and were effectively now propagandists.
Sceptical viewpoints were deemed dangerous and their proponents attacked and censored. Yet no sceptic is suggesting media should be banned from running alarmist stories, Janet says: “We need to open up the arguments not close them down. That’s the whole point of journalism.”
Worth reading in full.
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Couldn’t believe that vid of the young policeman slapping cuffs on someone for ‘Causing Anxiety’, seriously.
Marvellous. So what’s he doing about the Pakistani grooming gangs which are still visibly operating across his Policing area?
It looks like SFA.
Offence is taken, not given.
Or, as my lovely great aunt used to tell me,
“Sticks and stones may break my bones… but names?! They will never hurt me!”
She was the school secretary for decades at a secondary modern in Barton-upon-Humber. Never had children, but made a big, positive impact on many in her time. She would doubtless have been sacked these days, for saying it how it is and delivering a bit “toughen up, buttercup!”
There is a certain police
forceservice in my region that won’t arrest drug dealers dealing openly on the street on a housing estate where the council places vulnerable ex-addicts. The reason given: We can’t crack down on this area because that would show favouritism to one area over others and we don’t have the resources to tackle them all.That service: Greater Manchester Police.
Mr Watson should be judged by his actions, not his words.
The country has ‘gone to the dogs’. Nothing in this country is working as it should. The police are a joke chasing ‘hurty feelings’ rather than real crime. The government is a joke, they ignore the concerns of the electorate and follow the Agenda of the unelected WEF and WHO, the Judiciary is a joke for ignoring real law breakers and hounding those who stand up for our rights, the Health Service is a joke I’ve been waiting for a hospital appointment for 4 months and all I am told is ‘we can tell you it wont be this month’!
“He said he hoped officers could be empowered to apply their own common sense.”
Officer’s being allowed to use their ‘common sense’ is exactly the problem in the first place.
Anyone who is put into the unique position of being legally allowed to police anyone else needs concrete rules that if they break or overstep, they get a strike. Three strikes and they lose their job and lose their right to reapply.
Sadly it is bigger than this though, as long as we have ‘hate crime’ legislation we are all living in clown world.
A group of police officers turning up at your doorstep would be a likely source of anxiety. Perhaps they should form a circle and hand-cuff each other.
Woke policing in Colchester, Essex.
https://t.me/BerkshireFreedom/2256
This trio arrested people for holding Russian flags
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I applaud the views expressed by this Chief Constable and hope other forces can apply the same approach as his in Manchester. But wait a minute shouldn’t this be directed by our Home secretary? Someone who has proven to be useles at everything supposedly under her control, but clearly not. A more extreme example of incompetence in post can rarely be found. One good thing about our new government in early September is that she should surely be kicked out of any government position and replaced by someone who can do the job.