Over the last year or so a trend seems to have been developing here in the UK that is increasingly worrying to me. Multiple people now have been arrested for causing offence in varying ways. Most of these transgressions have been online, usually on social media and usually involve some bad taste joke or remark. There has also been the whole pleb-gate thing and the t-shirt in Manchester regarding the murdered police women. All these crimes have involved the criminal charge of causing offence.
Now, I feel really stupid, because I've lived nearly 40 years without realising that there was such a law... am I the only person not to realise this? I myself have had reason for calling a policeman a pig before now (and didn't get arrested) - just as well I didn't call him a pleb instead! It's interesting that only a year ago a simillar incident was dismissed from court as the judge couldn't see how swearing could cause any reasonable harm to a police officer. But the online thing really worries me and seems to be triggering a specific law that is being used in a heavy-handed manner and largely out of context from what it was intended. I tried Googling the actual law (it was mentioned on Newsnight last week) but I couldn't find it.
No doubt Miscellaneans from the US must be scratching their head over this as I guess the idea of 'offence' is covered in the rights to free speech and the constitution, etc... But over in the UK it would seem that something that causes offence is now considered to actually cause physical harm to the offendee and thus offensive offenders need to be locked up for the good of society and the faint hearted. I have a feeling that our culture of offence-sensitivity originates in political correctness and cultural relativism and has now been extended into the wider public to mean that we all have some right not to be offended by anything.
Personally, I have a theory that being offended is just your brains way of telling you that you are an idiot.
Anyway, to my mind these news stories have been the narrative of 2012. Anyone else concerned? Or not?
Now, I feel really stupid, because I've lived nearly 40 years without realising that there was such a law... am I the only person not to realise this? I myself have had reason for calling a policeman a pig before now (and didn't get arrested) - just as well I didn't call him a pleb instead! It's interesting that only a year ago a simillar incident was dismissed from court as the judge couldn't see how swearing could cause any reasonable harm to a police officer. But the online thing really worries me and seems to be triggering a specific law that is being used in a heavy-handed manner and largely out of context from what it was intended. I tried Googling the actual law (it was mentioned on Newsnight last week) but I couldn't find it.
No doubt Miscellaneans from the US must be scratching their head over this as I guess the idea of 'offence' is covered in the rights to free speech and the constitution, etc... But over in the UK it would seem that something that causes offence is now considered to actually cause physical harm to the offendee and thus offensive offenders need to be locked up for the good of society and the faint hearted. I have a feeling that our culture of offence-sensitivity originates in political correctness and cultural relativism and has now been extended into the wider public to mean that we all have some right not to be offended by anything.
Personally, I have a theory that being offended is just your brains way of telling you that you are an idiot.
Anyway, to my mind these news stories have been the narrative of 2012. Anyone else concerned? Or not?
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