I find it odd that burning an effigy of a building on a night based on the tradition of burning an effigy of Catholic fella who plotted to blow kill the king would cause outrage.
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I find it odd that burning an effigy of a building on a night based on the tradition of burning an effigy of Catholic fella who plotted to blow kill the king would cause outrage.
I'm not open to that argument at all, I'm afraid. It places the power to make a wholly subjective judgement of what is or isn't 'offensive' and thus requiring of police intervention with individual coppers. That judgement is inevitably determined by factors such the political atmosphere and leanings of that policeman's superiors rather than by legal principle and thus becomes a means of stifling legitimate political expression from the side you arbitrarily decide are 'the bad guys'.
it shouldn't be a police matter.
in years gone by, it would have been a private 'joke' amongst like-minded vermin, that was never mentioned again after the event.
it just goes to prove that once you post something on the internet, you've lost any control over it and it may come back and bit you squarely on the arse.
Indeed, hence my reference to opening a Pandora's Box.
But there are already crimes relating to public harassment, etc, that require a subjective judgement of what is or isn't offensive. This isn't ideal either, but there's little option other than to make anything that doesn't involve physical violence -or the explicit threat of it - permissable.