{"id":13013,"date":"2012-01-12T10:18:04","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T15:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13013"},"modified":"2012-01-12T10:18:04","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T15:18:04","slug":"when-is-an-insult-a-criminal-offence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/01\/12\/when-is-an-insult-a-criminal-offence\/","title":{"rendered":"When is an “insult” a criminal offence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The answer, in the UK anyway, may well be “any time the insultee cares to call in the police<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

\n

If you are reading this, chances are, you are a moron. There, have I insulted you? I’m asking because I have no idea if what I just stated has insulted you. Only YOU can be the judge of what you find insulting, yet plans are afoot for it to be a criminal offence to “insult” someone. So if you feel insulted, there is nothing to stop you ringing 999 and having the evil perpetrator banged up, DNA’ed and given a criminal record, although they will have had absolutely no idea that their actions or words have insulted you. If we criminalise “insults”, we shut up everyone and everything. For ever. Do you want to live in a society where you dare not speak in case the State decides your words may cause offence to people you will never meet? Now’s your chance to speak against it, USE IT, whilst you still can.<\/p>\n

Now, I choose to be anonymous on my many public outings because, well, my face is my business. Unless I am actually committing a crime, it is not the business of the State to know what I look like anymore than it is the business of the State to randomly sweep bus stop queues for fingerprints. One of the reasons I wear a mask is because of the habit of the state to record the faces of those “who might” cause trouble, “for future reference”. The Met employ teams of photographers to take photos of any members of public who may be dissenting, sticks them on a database and cross references them. No thanks. My face belongs to me, it is my property, I will cover it when and if I choose. Naturally, this proposal is stop women wearing Burqas because some sensitive souls “may be offended” (see above), but as always, I say it is not the role of the State to dictate how I may dress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The answer, in the UK anyway, may well be “any time the insultee cares to call in the police“: If you are reading this, chances are, you are a moron. There, have I insulted you? I’m asking because I have no idea if what I just stated has insulted you. Only YOU can be the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,10],"tags":[318,186,322,238,154],"class_list":["post-13013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-liberty","tag-anonymous","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-nannystate","tag-offensensitivity","tag-privacy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3nT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13014,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13013\/revisions\/13014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}