Can't believe we haven't covered the Grenfell effigy furore.

[Monty92]

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. That judgement is inevitably determined by the political atmosphere 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'.

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.