WRITER argues that controversial football laws put free speech at risk. WHY worry about free speech in Scotland and the UK today? After all, we don’t live in Saudi Arabia, where an insolent blogger has been sentenced to a thousand lashes.Nor are we in China, where a dissident poet has been locked up for taking a selfie in possession of a yellow umbrella (the symbol of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests). No, we live in the democratic UK where, to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, a 24-year-old man was jailed earlier this year for the crime of singing an offensive song. No, it wasn’t in “Tory England” but in SNP-ruled Scotland. In March, Scott Lamont, a numpty and Rangers fan, was sentenced to four months in prison for bawling the sectarian classic The Billy Boys on a Glasgow street before the Old Firm League Cup match. Just to be clear, Lamont wasn’t “up to his knees in Fenian blood”, he was just singing that gory old line. Yet the sheriff jailed him because “a message has to be sent” that “this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated”. When the authorities start using laws not to dispense justice but to “send a message” about what people can say or sing, we are playing on the home ground of tyrants.Whatever anybody thinks of the antics of some Old Firm fans, says Waiton, “arresting people for being offensive at football is stupid, embarrassing and unnecessary”. Yet such stupidity is not confined to Scotland. Football has become an unlikely battlefield in the new free speech wars across Britain. Where once the game was seen as a place people could let rip in a way they would not do in real life, now fans are expected to meet higher standards of etiquette than others, with football dressed up as a “role model” for the rest of society. In England, Kentish coppers arrested Gillingham fans for a “racially motivated public order offence” – for calling the rotund Glaswegian boss of Rotherham United a “fat Scottish ****er”. The crusade to sanitise football has become a symbol of how free speech is being encroached upon everywhere from the football stands to the internet and science labs, where Nobel laureate Tim Hunt has just been driven out of his profession for making some very bad jokes – but jokes all the same – about women in science. The threat comes not from jackbooted political censorship but from a stifling atmosphere of conformism and speech codes, where the chant from authorities and the online lynch mobs is always: “You can’t say that!” Instead of Voltaire’s classic attitude of support for free speech, we now live in the age of those I call the reverse-Voltaires, who turn his principle on its head and declare: “I know I will detest what you say and I’ll fight to the end of free speech for my right to stop you saying it.” http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/billy-boys-awful-offensive-song-5961642
It's farcical and in itself offensive to jail people for such nonsense. Meanwhile, I'll nip off and nick a motor and get maself a suspended sentence.
It is farcical but then a lot of laws are. Then you have the human error factor in judges and jewrays. You wouldn't see me bitching if I was jailed for running a cannabis farm.
Why is it that these articles never contain any information in relation to the persons past. Half these nuggets will have a few breach of peace convictions on top of a few for assault. Even the most hardened, dickhead judges won't jail someone for a first offence so you'll forgive me for not believing these wee ****s never had it coming.
Is it "free Speech" to call someone a fat scottish ****er? II don't think it is. Like "Witch Hunt", "Free Speech" has lost it's true meaning. People are fully entitled to hold opinions on anything they like, they are also allowed to express them, personally I think its common sense that there are laws in place to deal with hate speech, the cases in this piece being good examples.
Show me where it says that in any article. Free speech is a ****ing illusion anyway. We have it better than most countries, sure, but its not free speech.
One of the arguments is that there are already laws in place to deal with trouble at football. This act was not and is not needed. It ridiculous to arrest a man for sectarianism at football one week and then happily marshall him as he plays sectarian songs walking down a road as part of an orange parade the next It's reekin old man piss is what it is
Sorry, I was talking about myself Agree with you on the illusion of free speech but its still a mockery of it imo
Judges can often be prejudiced ****ers, especially against people they've dealt with before. But nowadays they like to fire people into the community payback orders and avoid jailing people. Other than the repeat offenders of course. I've limited experience but I've known people to get quite lucky in not being sentenced. I've never known a first offender to be sentenced to jail for minor offences though (and I include things like serious assault in that category). Not that it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does, just not as often as you'd think.
Charlie Hebdo had "Free Speech" for all the good it did. They went out of their way to insult people, and as will happen, some people don't like it and will act irrationallly to counter any perceived insult. If people want free reign to be able to say anything they like and damn the consequences, then someone somewhere will react. Like some nugget singing in Argyle Street, someone was bound to become angry, the fool was arrrested for his own safety, if not his sanity.
People who kill cartoonists or who want to kill cartoonists in the name of their imaginary sky pixie and an Arabian *****phile warlord should be sterilised or euthanised for their and other people's safety, if not for their sanity.
So do you think singing "Up to your knees" in the street is Free Speech? That's the only point i'm making, I'm not interested in the currrent law, more to do with the article and it's writer.
No disagreement here. I agree but calling it free speech is just a gimmick. You'll enjoy this. It's the guardian, I know, but it only tells one side of the story. There was another group that got arrested as well. Some dance troupe or drama troupe or **** knows. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/19/arrest-without-crime-royal-wedding
Religious wackjobs are free to grumble about how homosexuality is a sin and how insulting their prophet/s is disrespectful, but the moment they attempt or even contemplate to take violent action because of this is the moment they should be put down like the crazed dogs they are. People are free to have their infantile religious nonsense to themselves but that's the extent of my tolerance for it. No public faith schools, no public subsidies for churches, mosques, synagogues and the like and no official religion and/or special treatment for any religious group.
In the eye's of the law we are all equal. Some are more equal than others though. Football fans......forget about it.
