Earlier quoted context omitted.
"burn auld fella" sounds like a call to action to me.
Isn’t he talking about one’s burning in hell which no humans have a say in.
You are correct, I didn't realise he had already died.
Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
111–120 of 443 posts
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think racist comments, for example, would already be covered under the Public Order Act 1986
It looks like they might be. This seems to be the relevant part of the Act: (1) A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if— (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby. (2) An offence und…
Someone with Asperger's who requires a carer was prosecuted after they loudly questioned a PCSO's sex in a public place.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/teen-prosecute...
So if that is anything to go by, it is "No".
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, he wasn't. It's offensive, but the figure of speech "the only good ... is a dead ..." does not call for murder. And offending soldiers is not a hate-crime, AFAIK. The tweeter should have been made to pay a fine to the charity Captain Tom was endorsing.
"burn auld fella" sounds like a call to action to me.
He's very clearly trying to say that Captain Tom is (burning) in hell.
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with banning things like "racism" is that words change meaning over time. Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance.
Quoted post unavailable.
If you make up excuses for racisim it does not stop being racism.
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
White working class boys in the UK are amongst the least likely to go to university in the UK, they don't have a privilege for being white. I think terms like white privilege drive resentment and are divisive. "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race..." Barack Obama. htt…
they don't have a privilege for being white. As a white (and formerly working class) boy from the UK, I can confidently say that nobody has at any point in my life discriminated against me on the basis of my ethnic background. That is the extent of what this expression means – it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from di…
The entire point of the term "white priviledge" is to justify discrimination on the basis of people's ethnic background.
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Yes, it would have been better if the poster had cited sources instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_g…
So ~0.1% of towns, does that constitue 'widespread'?
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it would have been better if the poster had cited sources instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_child_sex_abuse_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_g…
So ~0.1% of towns, does that constitue 'widespread'?
Those are the ones with wikipedia articles about them that I found in ~5 minutes of searching. Many things can be greatly minimized if we pretend the only instances that exist are those so widely publicized to earn themselves a wikipedia article.
Grooming ‘epidemic’ as almost 19,000 children identified as sexual exploitation victims in England [1] implies it is widespread, but it's not clear from the article how that number is split between grooming gangs and other perpetrators, so it remains a mere implication, not fact.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grooming-chi...
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like they might be. This seems to be the relevant part of the Act: (1) A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if— (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby. (2) An offence und…
Someone with Asperger's who requires a carer was prosecuted after they loudly questioned a PCSO's sex in a public place. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/teen-prosecute... So if that is anything to go by, it is "No".
The article doesn't say Armstrong requires a carer.
> The court heard Armstrong, who acts as a carer for a man he considers his father, had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and suffered from anxiety and depression.
Also, Asperger's is not really an excuse to say hurtful things. I have ADHD, which is related to both Asperger's and autism, and I would never say something like that. It's not so cut and dry to say "oh, they have , so they're excused".
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>"I don’t think you should be able to tweet racist messages for example. " Why not,and who gets to make the determination? I'm an atheist, and having so many blasphemy and religion protection laws in liberal democracies misused (or rather, used exactly as they are truly intended) so horribly has really taught me what poorly defined restrictions on speech mean in the real world. As for racist speech, I really truly b…
Racism is wrong and dangerous, and giving oxygen to it helps propagate and give validity to it. Censoring it might keep the racists to their ugly selves, but that's OK with me.
>>"Censoring it might keep the racists to their ugly selves, but that's OK with me. "
I used to think of "Racism" and "Racist" as binary . You either ARE or are NOT a racist (and "I am definitely not!":). Life, and people smarter than myself, have thoroughly convinced me that it is a spectrum instead. The most open-minded, liberal, self-aware, "un-racist" people I've met realize there are impulses, tendencies, biases in all of us. Kind of like some of the smartest and most knowledgeable people are humble and aware of their gaps of knowledge. Thinking racism is binary and "I'm not it", blinds you to many aspects of it.
I remember a poor but enlightening joke a long time ago: "Those driving slower than myself are idiots; those driving faster are maniacs". I feel we may have similar personal line on racism spectrum: Those more close-minded than myself are "Racists!!!" those more open minded are "Woke!!!".
Which is to say - I don't think there's an easy, small, easily identifiable group that we should just lock up. We can start at the bottom of spectrum and quickly agree that "well these people are definitely racist", but pretty soon we'll get to the delta between our two lines, and then who gets to decide who is locked up / what should be censored? Whoever we eliminate, whoever we lock up, there's going to now be the next person/group/opinion that is now at the new bottom and needs locking up.
Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the UK brought in laws around lockdowns and handling covid people here were complaining that it was a slippery slope and the government would never give up those restrictions yet they did exactly that and those laws are no longer in play. In that case the slippery slope argument was a fallacy.
We've established - quite clearly - that in an emergency the government can lock everything down for 2 years and that lip service to liberty or human rights means nothing. Emergencies happen every 2-3 years. Why won't we see similar anti-liberty measures again in the next 20 years? 'We' 'know' it 'works'. It isn't even clear that we'll be spared another pandemic through that timeframe, the world is quite small these…
> Emergencies happen every 2-3 years.
The last time a pandemic of this scale happened was a century ago. True, with the destruction of animal habitats and climate change ( which feeds into the former), we'll probably see more epidemics from now on. And yes, the restrictions worked against that type of emergency - an airborne virus of pandemic proportions.
It's a fallacy to claim that now that we know all that and the laws have expired, next time there's an emergency of any kind governments will just impose lockdowns and do contact tracing. There's simply no basis for such an outrageous claim.
> The surveillance and enforcement measures used to enforce compliance through COVID are firmly still on the table.
Oh yes, QR codes surveillance.