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Well said, Oliver.

BTW, I must add that there is certain difference between writing tweets and confronting people face to face... and that is when the police has more independent power to intervene.

has the person he confronted been identified yet? did this even take place anywhere outside of this fool's wankbank? if we're arresting people based upon apocryphal stories that result in internet witch hunts, we're more fucked than i thought.

Inciting racial hatred according to the BBC (insert standard disclaimer on source bias here)

Let people say what they want. It lets you know who you're dealing with.

It's just a prank, bro.

I had English folk in London demanding that I justify something Alex Salmond's said or even, why 'Scots are obsessed' with 1314... As much as I think the people that say such cretinous things are ignorant cunts and I'd throw them in a live volcano, I think it's a waste of time and money trying to arrest stupidity and put it in jail. I'd much rather the Po-Po towed and fined drivers who park in cycle lanes, but then that's not going to happen either, is it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibHtwz49vSg

Just for some important clarification, he wasn't actually arrested for the "mealy mouthed" tweet.

He was arrested for inciting racial hatred which was based on a number of subsequent tweets which where racially charged in nature and included one where he blanket referred to muslims as "towelheads".

Whether that was right depends on your views of the fine balance between freedom of speech and the right not to be discriminated against and abused because of who you are rather than what you do.

He was arrested for inciting racial hatred which was based on a number of subsequent tweets which where racially charged in nature and included one where he blanket referred to muslims as "towelheads".

From what you report, it looks like a section 5 offence, at worst.

Aroogah nailed it.

Nobody has any right to not be insulted by anyone, even by racists and bigots.
Nobody was being discriminated against - insofar as discrimination is defined as being illegal or unlawful
Nobody seems to have been abused, other than in a general sense, and general untargeted abuse is, as far as I know, not illegal, other than from a section 5 public order offence perspective, and not from a moral perspective.

Without knowing the full context, it's probably best not to make a call though., I guess.

From what I had seen it wasn't just a tweet but also dozens of things on facebook, I think the tweet is just todays episode in a long string of stuff for one of Croydons many right wing activists.

I'd also guess with Apollo House being in Croydon and the dozens of attacks/protests/whatever aimed at the people legally coming into the country who visit it that the police are on edge expecting it to kick off with some sort of revenge attack.

not illegal, other than from a section 5 public order offence perspective

fry.jpg

i'm going to get the plod to have a crack at feeling up the collars of some of the nodder-abusers #onhere.

#nopasaran

The air strikes are slowing the progress of ISIS.

Thats kind of like how a nuclear bomb would sort out your ant problem..

http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-deletes-racist-genocidal-tweets-from-ai-chatbot-tay-2016-3

theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/­mar/23/london-man-confronted-muslim-woma­n-explain-brussels-attacks-arrested>

"It's not like I'm a guy with tattoos who pushed her against a wall."

"If I was xenophobic I wouldn't live in London.. I have a Muslim neighbour who got burgled, and I was one of the first people to go around to help."

"I never meant for the post to go viral. Bonnie Greer, whom I don't particularly like, has been passing judgement on it."

"Thanks all you tweeters for proving I can still do PR.
I really was thinking about throwing the towel (head) in !"

"Holy Fuck ! The Towel head in my local kebab shop speaks no English? Has no NI number and was on his mobile to Syria #help"

the witterings of a solid gold idiot for sure. do any of them justify an arrest? probably not.

no but the assault in the street does ( if it happened )

Nobody has any right to not be insulted by anyone, even by racists and bigots.

I think this is something that I fundamentally disagree with.

And this isn't in some namby-pamby cotton wool and coddling ideal that everyone must be lovely to each other.

This is from the perspective that if you don't have a right not to be insulted by someone then we, as a society, consider racist, facist or otherwise bigoted abuse to be both acceptable and reasonable behaviour and should held as normal. You're welcome to believe that to be true but I don't think it is, or ever should be.

If we do take that as a truism, that bigoted abuse of people is acceptable and normal, when does the line get drawn? When do we say that someone has gone too far? Does it have to get a bit sweary? Do taboos like the N-word have to be breached? Does someone have to be physically hit?, Do they have to bleed? Be hospitalised? Die? Or how about if a collective group of bigots are all a little bit abusive towards an individual? None of them singularly cross a severity line, is it all just a matey jolly wheeze and the victim is to blame if they, for some crazy reason, feel that the insults are compound due to their multiplicity?

Yes, we shall call it #OpPronoddercollarjerk

This is from the perspective that if you don't have a right not to be insulted by someone then we, as a society, consider racist, facist or otherwise bigoted abuse to be both acceptable and reasonable behaviour and should held as normal.

This is a false dichotomy. It's not binary, and you can't draw that conlusion from that premise.

If we do take that as a truism, that bigoted abuse of people is acceptable and normal, when does the line get drawn?

You're conflating abuse & insult, irrespective of the fact that it is not a truism.

What assault? I don't think asking someone a ludicrous question passes for assault.

This is a false dichotomy. It's not binary, and you can't draw that conlusion from that premise.

So what is it then? Because I can't see how not having a right to not be insulted doesn't essentially condone and normalise abuse. How exactly are you reconciling that this isn't the case?

And yes, I am conflating abuse and insult. I accept that my opinion is probably very biased on that though. Working in domestic abuse it's, perhaps, difficult not to see how insults are a form of abuse. If you want to expand on why you think they aren't then I would be quite interested to hear what you have to say.

No, your a cunt.

Billions of people could be insulted by single sentence. Nobody is being abused. We may not even know that they are insulted. Even if we did, the insult is their inference, and contextualised by them.

Let's take religion as an example.

Say someone declares their opinion that belief in a sky wizard is idiotic.

Billions may be offended by that.

They don't have a right not to be insulted (either actively or passively) by that.

That neither condones nor normalises that person's opinion on sky wizards.

I have always thought that the social and political theory of John Mill (whose ideas were hugely influential in the US Constitution amendments) to be very useful in these cases (emphasis mine):

" He concluded that, except for speech that is immediately physically harmful to others (like the classic example of the false cry of "fire" in a crowded theater, or the incitement of violence towards others, lynching and so forth), no expression of opinion, written or oral, ought to be prohibited. Truth can only emerge from the clash of contrary opinions; therefore, robust debate must be permitted. This "adversarial" theory of the necessary nature of the search for truth and this insistence on the free marketplace of ideas have become central elements of U.S. free speech theory."

Truth can only emerge from the clash of contrary opinions

This assumes that everyone is speaking from the same platform at the same volume, which they're not.