The outrageous
Section 127
criminalises all electronic communication that is
"grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character".
i.e. Almost anything could be illegal.
Certainly the Bible and Koran are illegal.
All Internet porn is illegal in the UK.
Saying "fuck" on the Internet is illegal in the UK.
These laws are phrased so vaguely that all sorts of offensive speech,
and all sorts of criticism of religion, could be illegal.
The UK badly needs something like the US First Amendment.
Almost any speech can lead to a UK police visit for almost any reason.
The Index Index.
Global ranking of free speech,
from Index on Censorship.
Because of its endless "hate speech" laws, the UK is now in the 3rd tier.
What a disgrace.
David McConnell, a Christian street preacher
was preaching
in Leeds city centre in June 2021.
A "trans woman" (i.e. a man)
stopped to argue with him.
McConnell called him
"a man in woman's clothing",
which is simply a fact.
For this he
was sentenced to a 12 month community order.
In Nov 2012,
some guy called
Linford House
in Kent
burns a poppy and posts it on the Internet.
So what. You know
what I think of such people.
But he is then
arrested by Kent police!
This is an outrage.
Is burning the poppy illegal now?
Is burning the Koran illegal?
(Yes, it seems.)
Is burning the Bible illegal?
The right and the counterjihad
(all friends of the troops, like me)
are appalled at the arrest of Linford House.
Some tasteless people burn an effigy of the
Grenfell Tower in Nov 2018, and mock the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Yes, disgusting, but shrug and move on.
Not in 21st century Britain.
The police arrested them.
Arrested them!
For a joke.
What an abuse of state power.
The police arrested them under the Public Order Act, 1986,
under which almost anybody can be arrested for almost anything.
Is it now a crime to be a twat?
Brendan O'Neill, as usual, makes the outraged case for a free society
against the mob.
Serving police officer
James Watts
shared this meme, or a variant of it,
mocking George Floyd,
in a WhatsApp group chat with colleagues in May-June 2020.
And he was prosecuted, convicted and jailed for 20 weeks.
The meme is nasty. No serving officer should be sharing that.
But jailing him seems incredible.
Are people who celebrate Margaret Thatcher's death jailed?
No they are not.
He should not be jailed, or even prosecuted.
But still nasty.
As a prank,
Internet comedian
"Count Dankula"
(Mark Meechan)
taught his girlfriend's dog to become excited by the phrase "Do you want to gas the Jews?"
and to make a little Hitler salute.
I actually laughed out loud watching it, since I am a dog person and
I have done similar nonsense talk to dogs (minus the Nazi theme).
I thought it was just daft humour, not pro-Nazi at all.
But in modern Britain, in the 21st century,
Meechan actually got a hate crime conviction for this joke in Mar 2018.
In April 2018 he was sentenced. He avoided jail but was fined.
Jesus Christ.
I sometimes wonder if Freedom House should downgrade Britain to "Partly Free".
Click to play.
See copy.
And here.
The very fact that you can censor movies in the cinema, on video and on TV
only shows how flawed these old media are.
TV is simply far too easy to control.
Around the world, every dictatorship and oppressor uses state control of TV
to spread government lies and suppress the news.
Across the
unfree world,
state TV is the voice of the oppressor, and the spreader of lies,
just as
Orwell imagined it would be.
In the disturbing new world of the Internet,
governments everywhere must be longing for the return of TV.
Whether
enemy media
can be attacked during war is a difficult question.
I think we should
hear what the enemy has to say.
But it must be admitted that as a war escalates,
this may have to change.
Article 40.6.1
is basically a green light to all forms of censorship:
"The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of the following rights, subject to public order and morality: -
The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.
The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.
The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law."
The pisspoor
Natural Born Killers (1994)
was also banned.
Although I think this film is painful rubbish,
being anti-censorship does not mean you're only against censorship of things you like.
Otherwise it is a meaningless term.
In fact, a lot of so-called liberals who claim to be anti-censorship
turn out only to be against censorship of things that have
artistic or intellectual merit.
Whether a film has any artistic merit or not is irrelevant
- the worst you should be able to do with anything is simply classify it for adults-only.
Actually banning any film or book for adult consumption is an outrageous abuse of law.