Wow, UK has lost freedom of speech

Also, Mr 56 sir? The avatar changes are making me nauseous. They are not like your tidy whiteys, you know. You don't have to change them every day.
 
Hercules56 said:
,

So freedom of speech should be trumped by the right to not feel shame?

Wow.

"People of Britain, not only do you have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but you also have the God-given right to not feel shame!!"

Huh.
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Freedom of speech within 150m of a healthcare facility is indeed prohibited.
 
arthwollipot said:
He was there. For what other reason would a religious person be praying right outside a family planning facility?
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Doesn't matter, he told the authorities why he was there and after he was there he told a community officer for an hour or so that he should be allowed to protest there. That is the main reason why I had hoped this story wasn't the "gotcha" story Ziggurat wanted to sping on us, he told the authorities that he would be protesting where he wasn't allowed to protest so it is a very poor gotcha if you want to claim someone was arrested for "silently praying" since that is not what he was doing nor what he eventually got arrested for.
 
The "silent praying" is a red herring if you want to criticise the concept of having areas where you are prohibited from protesting because of a right to freedom speech. All protesting in such areas is prohibited, you could be stood silently and be reciting in your head your shopping list or the entirety of Paradise Lost or praying to Satan or planning to firebomb a clinic That makes not one iota of a difference, it is being stood there to protest that is prohibited.

Personally I think the blanket imposition of such zones is wrong, not because I think it is right that residents, workers and those seeking healthcare should be subject to harassment but because that should have to be shown to be the case at a particular location before such a step is taken. And I would say they should have a built in sunset clause.

That to me seems a good balance between competing rights.
 
Emily's Cat said:
I really don't think it's hard to understand why abortion gets viewed differently. For those people who view fetuses as babies from the moment of conception, abortion is quite literally murder. They are opposed to state-sanctioned murder of innocent people. That's why.

Most rational people don't view fetuses as babies from the moment of conception, no more than we view an acorn as an oak tree. It's something that is in the process of becoming an oak tree, but it's not there quite yet.

Let's not pretend that the reason some people are categorically opposed to abortion is some incomprehensible mystery - it's not. It's a perfectly understandable viewpoint. I understand it very well, but I also disagree with it. I can disagree with it, and argue for my perspective, largely because I understand it.
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Quite. So they are free to choose to not have an abortion, and i will support their decision, if they ask me to (for some strange reason). They should not interfere in the medical decisions of others, however, not least since the results of their interference can be, and sometimes is, fatal. And I don't really care whether somone calls it a baby or a foetus, they can call it Betty or Al for all I care, they should not have the right to meddle in the medical decisions of other people.

I do not see why ignorance should be deferred to, when it comes to medical decisions. Do not have an abortion, do not take a vaccine, do not have a blood transfusion, but do not stop me.

But we shouldn't discuss this here.
 
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Dear Mr 56, you have referred to the Black and Tans a couple of times.

It seems clear that you are not asking for a pint of pale ale and stout, so why that particular reference? Are you familiar with said group and their actions? Or is this some attempt at satire or a sort of humour?

Please enlighten me?

Thank you for your attention in this matter!
 
smartcooky said:

Category:Overturned convictions in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Garrison

Thread 'Largest ever miscarriage of justice?'

So some years back the Post Office in the UK installed a new computer system and lo and behold the system revealed a large number of cases of what looked like theft and embezzlement. The accused insisted the computer system was at fault, the Post Office insisted it was perfect and many people were bankrupted, disgraced, convicted and in some cases imprisoned.

What comes next is all too predictable, evidence emerges that the Post Office knew the system was flawed, the post office was sued and forced to payout compensation to those who lost livelihoods. Today it was the turn of those...

Your much vaunted courts concluded that the "truth" in this case, was that all these sub-postmasters were criminals - rather than the actual truth, which was they shafted by a faulty computer system, about which the Post Office and their head staff told lie, after lie, after lie, after lie, after lie - and all those lies were determined to be "truth" by your arbiter of truth, that 500 year old court system you seem so proud of. It concluded these lies were the truth over 950 times in 20 years.
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deathpenaltyinfo.org

Innocence | Death Penalty Information Center

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to serve the media, policymakers, and the general public…
deathpenaltyinfo.org deathpenaltyinfo.org
Since 1973, at least 200 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated.
 
Vixen said:
To be fair, it wasn't Mein Kampf that caused Hitler rise to power. It is widely agreed that from a philosophical and literary viewpoint, it is a laughable load of old drivel. Would normally have sunk without trace but for the fact of Hitler's notoriety. Hitler's power lay in the fact he was the consumate politician, worked and worked and worked on his oratory skills, plus the economical position of galloping inflation. Luck, chance, advantage.

(Writing books and spouting nonsense has never been censored in the UK, although there was a 'Section 28' ban on gay writings at one time - and even DH Lawrence was 'banned' (Lady Chatterley's Lover) - but not because of 'free speech' more to do with moral issues of the day.)
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Curiously the UK never banned Ulysses unlike the USA....
 
smartcooky said:
And yet, 17 years later, here you are...

humanists.uk

CPS in fresh attempts to criminalise ‘blasphemy’ 17 years after abolition

Humanists UK has warned that if a man is successfully prosecuted after burning a Quran, it would effectively subvert the will of Parliament and re-establish blasphemy laws in England and Wales by the back door. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) originally charged the man with harassing the...
humanists.uk

Humanists UK has warned that if a man is successfully prosecuted after burning a Quran, it would effectively subvert the will of Parliament and re-establish blasphemy laws in England and Wales by the back door.​
​
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) originally charged the man with harassing the ‘religious institution of Islam’. But after Humanists UK pointed out that the law doesn’t protect religious institutions from harassment, the CPS has now substituted the charge for one of likely causing harassment, alarm, or distress to individuals. Humanists UK believes that in doing so, prosecutors have sought to take a creative approach to the law that seeks to avoid explicit protections for free speech around religion written into the Public Order Act since 2006.​

In effect, the CPS used Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, to make an end run around the lack of a blasphemy law.

Well in June of this year, the man in question was convicted.

humanists.uk

Public disorder conviction for man who burned a Quran

A man who burnt a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in London has been found guilty of religiously motivated harassment, alarm, or distress by Westminster Magistrates’ Court. He has been ordered to pay a fine of £240 and surcharge of £96. With welcome clarity, the judge said ‘I do not find that...
humanists.uk

Congratulations UK, you now have your blasphemy laws back.
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So does the USA, at least the bit you were stupid enough to give power to. Otherwise the USA hasn't seen a blasphemy conviction since 1928.
 
Hercules56 said:
Which as you know is not actually part of US law.

Regardless, do you think its fair that private business owners and employers have NO control over the speech of their employees and customers? I do not.

I dont think its right that in Britain I can walk into a store wearing a t-shirt that says "◊◊◊◊ yo mamma" and there is nothing the store owner can do about it.
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The straw is flying freely here.
 
Darat said:
Doesn't matter, he told the authorities why he was there and after he was there he told a community officer for an hour or so that he should be allowed to protest there. That is the main reason why I had hoped this story wasn't the "gotcha" story Ziggurat wanted to sping on us, he told the authorities that he would be protesting where he wasn't allowed to protest so it is a very poor gotcha if you want to claim someone was arrested for "silently praying" since that is not what he was doing nor what he eventually got arrested for.
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Im sorry, but banning all protest whether it be peaceful or civil or polite within 500 feet of ALL abortion clinics, is just fascism. Or Stalinism. Call it whatever you like but it is a form of authoritarianism.
 
Darat said:
The "silent praying" is a red herring if you want to criticise the concept of having areas where you are prohibited from protesting because of a right to freedom speech.
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It’s not a red herring if you are troubled by the idea that thought crimes, however limited in scope, can actually be enforced. You keep ignoring this because you like the other aspects of the protest ban. Which, fine, whatever. But the fact that you aren’t troubled by this aspect is itself troubling. They didn’t need to criminalize thoughts in order to stop harassment.
 
Darat said:
Doesn't matter, he told the authorities why he was there and after he was there he told a community officer for an hour or so that he should be allowed to protest there. That is the main reason why I had hoped this story wasn't the "gotcha" story Ziggurat wanted to sping on us, he told the authorities that he would be protesting where he wasn't allowed to protest so it is a very poor gotcha if you want to claim someone was arrested for "silently praying" since that is not what he was doing nor what he eventually got arrested for.
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That is what he was doing. That was all his protest consisted of: silently praying. You cannot seriously argue that he was charged with protesting and NOT silently praying when the silent prayer WAS the protest. They aren’t different things.
 
Ziggurat said:
That is what he was doing. That was all his protest consisted of: silently praying. You cannot seriously argue that he was charged with protesting and NOT silently praying when the silent prayer WAS the protest. They aren’t different things.
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Doesn't matter whether his protest was mime or interpretative dance or doing the 12x timetable in his head. The protest is what he was arrested for, after a long time of him vocally protesting he should be able to protest to a community officer.
 
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