Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

text.npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 693 posts

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#191

Post by type0 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #165
gambiting wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like complaining that you will get arrested for having sex in the middle of the street, but sex in a film is somehow fine(surely it's because movie producers have money and are in cahoots with the government, and not for any other, more logical reason, like the fact that art forms, no matter how poor in taste, are protected by society).

In what legal sense is the YouTuber with the pug less protected by the "art form" argument than the movie production? Did the latter get a permit for Nazi jokes? (Sincere question, maybe they did: UK speech norms and laws are incredibly alien to me)

> In what legal sense is the YouTuber with the pug less protected by the "art form"

The rules are different for regular plebs, that's as simple as that. And the lesson is that everyone should know their place.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#192

Post by heavyset_go »

Vecr wrote: post #170
heavyset_go wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > advocating violence or hate > Is illegal and you can be arrested for it. This is untrue. Immediate, direct, actionable threats are illegal, saying "I/we/you need to go hunt down and murder X now" can be construed as an actionable threat. Extolling the virtues of murder and opining about how nice it would be if someone finally hunted down and killed X is legal free speech. You can talk about how X needs to die all…

This is correct, I'm not sure why it's being down-voted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat

Eh, it's an ugly truth and my examples could have been less extreme.

Various circuit courts have different tests for what constitutes a true threat versus legal free speech, some of which can be found here[1].

For example, here's the 2nd Circuit's opinion:

> a true threat is “on its face and in the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.”

[1] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1025/true-threats

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#193

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

tialaramex wrote: post #145
haunter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yes? Elect MPs, vote for parties that support the republic movement for a starter. It doesn't really help when all the mainstream parties in the Westminster are royalists.

I would guess Parliamentarians are likely to have read up a bit and discovered why Parliament is sovereign. The English literally tried not having a monarch, they executed Charles I for treason. This concretely answers any residual question, the Parliament can execute the King, so Parliament is sovereign. Turns out the alternative wasn't better. "Lord Protector" Cromwell (ie a dictator) wasn't an improvement over a K…

Is it going to be one of this discussion where people speak of Cromwell while pretending the USA and France don’t exist? Just asking.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#194

Post by pessimizer »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #159
Gigachad wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the UK. You get arrested for taking a plastic knife outside or making mean tweets.

Or indeed burning a model of the Grenfell Tower at a bonfire party https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/06/grenfell-bon...

No post body was provided.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#195

Post by mikesabbagh »

dijit wrote: post #9

They aren’t being arrested for being anti-monarchy though. They are being arrested for being rude about it. Was the fella on radio 4 who stated to the entire nation that ‘King Charles and his family should be put in a council house and that the Monarchy should be abolished’ arrested? No. If you are going to attend a funeral, any funeral, be it the Queen’s or anyone else’s and hurl abuse or hold up signs with obscenit…

I saw a reporter claiming they are being arrested for their own protection

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#196

Post by delecti »

tills13 wrote: post #103
Havoc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are being arrested for being rude about it. Which is substantially worse. Rudeness is so subjective and context sensitive that it really shouldn't form the basis for arrests

It's likely for "disturbing the peace" which is a little more cut-and-dry than rudeness. So many weird people on both sides of this event, though. I don't care about the queen but props to you if you do. Let's just not make it a thing more than it needs to be.

Isn't the boundary of "more than it needs to be" precisely the source of the disagreement?

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#197

Post by afarrell »

deskamess wrote: post #156
matthewh806 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this exact same comment did pretty well on Reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/xckw5v/comme... 1. Not all of the arrests have been made at a "funeral" 2. It wasn't a funeral 3. If you're going to have a very public precession, parading a body through the streets with all the obedients lapping it up, surely you have to have a level of tolerance for dissenting voices? I imagine the disrupt…

> Otherwise it's just outright sycophancy Well... that's what the monarchy practice is all about. God-like status for some god-forsaken reason. Blind sycophancy.

It is because humans have an irrational tendency towards sycophancy. This was true throughout both the Obama and Trump administrations and before them.

Better to direct that impulse towards a dignified institution that does nothing but attract tourists and occasionally signal society’s values than towards something that tries to have efficient and lethal decision-making power.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#198

Post by type0 »

pera wrote: post #118
dijit wrote: post #9

They aren’t being arrested for being anti-monarchy though. They are being arrested for being rude about it. Was the fella on radio 4 who stated to the entire nation that ‘King Charles and his family should be put in a council house and that the Monarchy should be abolished’ arrested? No. If you are going to attend a funeral, any funeral, be it the Queen’s or anyone else’s and hurl abuse or hold up signs with obscenit…

Note that the arrests happened during the proclamation ceremony of the new king. The funeral will be next Monday.

UK just tries to show they are a real monarchy and not a fake one like Sweden or Netherlands

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#199

Post by ck425 »

matthewh806 wrote: post #109
dijit wrote: post #9

They aren’t being arrested for being anti-monarchy though. They are being arrested for being rude about it. Was the fella on radio 4 who stated to the entire nation that ‘King Charles and his family should be put in a council house and that the Monarchy should be abolished’ arrested? No. If you are going to attend a funeral, any funeral, be it the Queen’s or anyone else’s and hurl abuse or hold up signs with obscenit…

I see this exact same comment did pretty well on Reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/xckw5v/comme... 1. Not all of the arrests have been made at a "funeral" 2. It wasn't a funeral 3. If you're going to have a very public precession, parading a body through the streets with all the obedients lapping it up, surely you have to have a level of tolerance for dissenting voices? I imagine the disrupt…

I live in Edinburgh. Can confirm major disruption and likely costs based on the sheer number of police and event staff I've seen just walking through town.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#200

Post by afarrell »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #178
lliamander wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be good that people are being arrested for rudeness, but it is definitely better than them being arrested for their political views.

Is someone who rudely suggests support for the monarchy going to be arrested? I suspect not.

If a naked man started playing “god save the king” on a vuvuzela? Yes, I think he would be.
Post reply on HN