Court of Appeal stands up for freedom of expression
“Judges have insisted that freedom of speech includes the ‘right to offend’ in a landmark ruling which could help to turn the tide.“
“Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby said: ‘Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.’”
“Mr Justice Warby explained that the relevant parts of the Communications Act ‘were not intended by Parliament to criminalise forms of expression, the content of which is no worse than annoying or inconvenient in nature’.“
“Miss Scottow [appellant] told The Daily Telegraph: ‘It was necessary to enshrine one of the most fundamental rights of every living being in a democratic society – the right to freedom of speech that is now routinely attacked…’ ” [Daily Mail]
The malicious “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [CAA] conspirators will be tearing their hair out (those that have any). This must be relevant to the ongoing Alison Chabloz saga. Unlike the magistrates’ court decision in Alison’s 2018 conviction, which (contrary to CAA lies) set no precedent, this is a judgment in the Court of Appeal, and certainly does set a precedent.
Can the Alison Chabloz trial (presently set down for 2 days, 30-31 March 2021, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, London) now even be continued? It would seem otiose now to continue the prosecution, quite apart from anything else.
It could be argued that, stricto sensu, there is no precedent set by the Scottow appeal, in that Human Rights Act 1998, s.3 requires the court to interpret legislation in accord with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (which “guarantees” freedom of expression).
Sadly, the ECHR is hemmed in by so many ifs and buts that it is all but meaningless. For example, several EU states, such as France and Germany, are signed up to the ECHR yet have “holocaust” “denial” laws akin to those of the mediaeval times which criminalized “heretical” opinions.
On a practical level, this is a precedent. The ruling reaffirms the right to freedom of expression on political, social, religious, and historical topics.
On a connected point, Scotland may soon have a “hate speech” law that runs counter to the developing law in England. The funny thing is that, if so, anyone in Scotland wanting to post anything online which might be caught by that absurd yet tyrannical law need only go an inch over the border in England to escape such capture. If comments are not posted in the jurisdiction, they will not be justiciable in the jurisdiction.
Radio 4 Today Programme
God, what a bloody bore the Today Programme has become. I wonder how many people listen now. I try it most mornings, mainly if I am awake early enough to listen to the preceding broadcasts (Farming Today etc) but usually switch off before long.
Japanese whaling
Some years ago, when I still had a Twitter account (i.e. before a pack of Jews had me expelled), I often used to tweet about and against Japanese whaling. I also made the point that the international pressure against Japanese whaling, though absolutely correct, would not lead directly to a cessation of whaling by the Japanese.
For the Japanese, saving face is all important. It meant that the Japanese could not be seen to bow to either international diplomatic pressure or to the direct pressure exerted on the high seas by the Greenpeace and especially the Sea Shepherd protective ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shepherd_Conservation_Society.
“In his 2009 book, Whaling in Japan, Jun Morikawa states that Sea Shepherd’s confrontational tactics have actually strengthened Japan’s resolve to continue with its whaling program. According to Morikawa, Sea Shepherd’s activities against Japan’s whaling ships have allowed the Japanese government to rally domestic support for the program from Japanese who were otherwise ambivalent about the practice of hunting and eating whales.” [Wikipedia]
While I personally supported Sea Shepherd to the hilt, the above was obviously correct. However, I sensed that the Japanese leadership was trying to find a way to scale down whaling while still saving face. Whaling was and still is subsidized. Few Japanese now eat whale meat (a practice which, though ancient on a small scale, in modern form dates mainly from the 1940s:
“…demand for whale meat in Japan is very weak. Domestic consumption has plummeted from 200,000 tons a year in the 1960s to just 5000 tons lately, according to government figures cited by Kyodo News. This trend suggests that the marine mammals’ best ally may well be the Japanese people.” [https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/japan-scales-back-its-whaling-program]; https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/04/23/japan-wants-to-catch-whales-but-who-will-eat-them.
Japan has 4,000 tons of almost unusable whale meat in cold storage. https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-04-17/japan-few-people-eat-whale-meat-anymore-whaling-remains-popular
Most other products of whaling as practised in the 19th and 20th centuries have now been superseded by inorganic substitutes.
Japan needed to get out of whaling for both presentational and economic reasons, but needed a face-saving way not to be seen to back down. It found it, as I always thought it would. Simply, whaling has been continued in and around Japanese waters, within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone under the Law of the Sea (i.e. extending to c.200 miles out): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone_of_Japan.
“Following the September 2018 Florianopolis Declaration where the IWC rejected Japan’s latest commercial hunt proposal, and concluded that the purpose of the IWC is the conservation of whales,[112] Japan withdrew its IWC membership on December 26, 2018. It then resumed commercial hunting in its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone on July 1, 2019, but ceased whaling activities in the Antarctic Ocean.[114][115]” [Wikipedia] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Japan
“...without government subsidies, their whaling industry is not expected to survive.” [Wikipedia]
Though unfortunate for those whales killed within Japan’s EEZ, meaning about 200 minke whales annually, the change of policy does mean that Japan is no longer going to kill whales in the Antarctic and South Pacific, or indeed in the North Pacific outside Japan’s EEZ, though Japan retains the purported right to do so if it wishes.
This is a great step forward for the whales. It has also had other effects. Iceland looks like stopping all whaling now: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/commercial-whaling-may-be-over-iceland/
Norway is still whaling, but despite claiming that domestic demand for whale meat (from minke whales) is increasing, the number of whaling ships active in 2020 is only 12 (formerly, 34): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/03/demand-whale-meat-norway-rising-conservationists-regulations-minke-welfare. Norway exports to Japan, but the increase in intra-EEZ whaling by Japan has led to a surfeit of supply, so is likely to destroy demand for whalemeat brought from Norway.
Mostly a positive picture.
Tweets seen
Unusually, I agree with the implication of Jew-Zionist “@Mendelpol” here (as well as with Laura Towler): people should indeed say “Jews” where —and only where— that is both appropriate and true…(though in fact I think that “@thisislaurat” was using the phrase “you people” in a wider way in those tweets).
In any case, I do not suppose that even the most “antisemitic” would claim or complain that everything of importance is controlled by Jews!
More tweets seen
Look at the expressions!
A house I leased for a couple of years about 18 years ago had a real conservatory just like that, though maybe two-thirds of the size. Beautiful.
Tweets
Sick minds,all too typical of the corrupt, entitled msm/Westminster/connected milieux in the UK, especially London. Walls. Squads.
University Challenge
Another Christmas alumni contest. The final one. Wadham, Oxford v. Leeds. Once again I did far better than Wadham’s whole team (inc. Anne McElvoy and Jonathan Freedland), and as well as, maybe better than, Leeds, though the latter were good at science, and I could answer few of those questions; got a few right. Leeds won by a mile over Wadham.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Hopefully, as you state, this sets a legal precedent and proves beneficial in the Alison Chabloz case. On a related matter: https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/10/a-better-web-regulating-to-reduce-far-right-hate-online/ Do you think the ruling will have an impact on the Government’s proposed “Online Harms” bill?
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Watcher:
As to your question, I could not say, not yet having read the bill you mention.
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https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-white-paper/online-harms-white-paper “The power to ban ISP’s as a last resort” and “Disinformation to be labelled harmful and therefore removed” Are they referring to Covid or perhaps Holocaust denial?
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Watcher: Whatever they presently purport to have in mind, you can be sure that “holocaust” will find its way in…
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Off topic again, local Government at it’s worst! https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/walsh-jackson-fenty-alex-may-4797859
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Watcher:
Both local and central government seem easily conned. Look at the contracts given out for ferries, PP equipment, IT etc, for years and years.
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My, my, this virus really has unearthed all the usually libertarian loony extremist morons, hasn’t it? Neil,Clark seems to be yet another one to add to the other cretins like Julie Hartley-Brewer, Peter Hitchens ext.🙄🤬😡
I was reading The Local Germany and Deutsche Welle website yesterday and saw that an idiot parliamentarian from the Alternative For Germany (Afd) party who wore a mask with holes in it to protest about the restrictions whilst making a speech in the Bundestag has now fallen ill with Covid-19!🙄🙄🙄
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Furthermore, an Afd local councillor caught the virus and has now died from it! The German Labour Party (SPD) has done some research which suggests that those areas in Germany which most strongly support the Afd are also where infections are higher than the national average.
That would seem to be the case here as well with regard to Tory constituencies/areas having a large proportion of people spreading the virus because simpletons in these places read Peter Hitchens’s articles and his deranged tweets on the subject and therefore don’t abide by the restrictions. I was talking to one of these idiots the other day in Brentwood on a public street bench! I made sure to keep my distance from her and to wash my hands afterwards with a hand sanitiser in a shop and then again after I got home with my 70% alcohol Carex hand sanitiser!🙄🙄🙄🙄
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Do you often talk to strange women on benches in the street, m’Lord of Essex? You don’t have to answer that question, incidentally…
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No, I don’t! I didn’t start the conversation. I agreed with her when she said that wearing facial masks in the street was rather excessive but didn’t when she opined that wearing them in shops was as well. I said that was a perfectly reasonable mandatory public heath measure by government. She said that lockdowns etc don’t work and used the examples of Italy and Spain to illustrate her point but I said had she heard of famously authoritarian Singapore with their strict enforcement of compulsory Covid-19 restrictions and their world record of a mere 28 deaths? She hadn’t known about Singapore’s success.
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Ha ha! M’Lord of Essex, you are priceless! You have not even described your interlocutor! I was lookig forward to that!
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She brought-up Sweden but I countered that Sweden had a larger death and case rate than the similarly cultured countries of Finland, Denmark and Norway, that even the Swedish authorities are now tightening the restrictions and also that their Monarch has very recently taken the highly unusual step of directly criticising the Swedish government for being so lax on this matter. She had no answer to this and we agreed to disagree.
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The new lockdown/tougher restrictions ordered by Chancellor Merkel or ‘Mutti’ (Mother) as she is known there are supported by those of EVERY main party there from highs of 90% from Green Party voters, 86% by those of the CDU/CSU to even 56% of Afd ones! So, by a margin of around 10-15 points the Afd’s stance of opposing lockdowns etc is not backed, by a majority, of their own party base!
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M’Lord of Essex: that does not surprise me. Germans are even more “controlled” than the British. More fearful too, in some ways. Germany is after all an “iron fist in velvet glove” police state.
The AfD are a weak lot, akin to UKIP/Brexit Party. Not really much good.
I wonder whether the Germans will still be supporting “lockdowns” and all the other nonsense when their economy crashes to the ground? Admittedly the UK one will crash first. It’s halfway there now, tottering on the brink.
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I would call the Germans more disciplined rather than controlled than the British which is a partial reason why they have done so much better than we have but, of course, whatever else Chancellor Merkel is she is emphatically NOT a unkempt clown like Boris-Idiot is and their Finance Minister hasn’t spent his time in cabinet unlike Rishi constantly undermining the government’s anti-Covid 19 strategy. Utterly disgracefully, that Indian has caused avoidable deaths in this country along with the other extra from The Jewel In The Crown, Patel, by successfully winning his fight with Boris over harsher restrictions in September/October. Merkel is a qualified scientist whereas we have a psychopathically lying ex journalist at the helm! God help us!
Yes, the Afd are weaker than the NPD but they are still better than UKIP or the even more pathetic Brexit ‘party’/ Nigel’s fan club/grifter’s ‘party’/ blatant Tory Party front ‘party’.
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As you say, our economy will crash first before Germany’s will since they, unlike us, didn’t have bolshy trade unions in the 1970’s or a radical exponent of liberal, globalist economics in Mrs Thatcher destroying their industrial base in the early 1980’s so they still have one and that has stood them in a better position for their economy to be resilient against Covid19 restrictions. Having an economy like ours based-upon shops and financial services is not good when an international virus pandemic arises.
Isn’t it remarkable what a sane and far more democratic electoral system than our archaic First Past The Post one can do for a country?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Germany
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SOME of the opponents of lockdowns/social distancing regulations in Germany do have a seemingly justified basis for their views in that they fear Merkel and her government want to impose a new ‘Enabling Act’ like Hitler did and begin to destroy democracy but others are just the usual crackpot element/conspiracy theory loons you will find in any society.
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The Afd is supposed to be a national-conservative/nationalist party so it is very disappointing they have allied themselves with all the libertarian loony crackpots/ conspiracy theorists etc that are against the Covid-19 restrictions. This is not doing their credibility with the German electorate much good and it isn’t surprising that they are predicted on current polling to lose some of their 90 plus MPs in next year’s general election after having slid from 12% national support in 2017’s election to only around 9% now!
As I was saying, strongly Tory areas in Britain like mine in Brentwood,Essex seem to have a large number of these libertarian loonies who lap up every word from unscientific idiots like Peter Hitchens, ignore the restrictions and therefore spread the virus so it is no wonder then that ‘True Blue’ Essex is now under Tier 3 restrictions!🤬🙄😡😞☹️
Can’t we deport libertarian loony Peter Hitchens followers from Essex and other Tory areas to the Falkland Islands where they can spread the virus and keep well away from people like me? I want to keep safe from it but that is more difficult with idiots surrounding me here!🤬😡😞☹️🙄
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That is a scary picture from a Quantum Cat! So the fake globalist open borders supporting CONServative Party is letting-in economic migrants from even the most backward nations on earth? I really can’t see how we can maintain an advanced society with having our population changed with people whose average IQ rates are amongst the lowest in the world ie those black Africans in that picture probably come from Central Africa where the average IQ is only a bit over the retard level of 70 or so.
When they allow economic migrants in from the most unadvanced countries in Africa like Sudan and The Congo/Zaire then we can expect crime rates to go up and up as these people have the very low IQ levels which are a good predictor of propensity to commit crime and African men also commit crime in higher numbers due to their having more of the male sex hormone testosterone.
Let us have crime PREVENTION by refusing to allow such low grade people to come and settle here as well as having more police officers employed.🙄🙄🙄
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M’Lord of Essex:
As you say.
IQ is not a perfect measre of human potential, as we know. Other measures such as “EQ” are also important. However, IQ has its place in the determination of “worth”, and the fact is that the vast majority of Africans and even part-Africans (eg West Indians) are not very intelligent when compared to Europeans, even Southern Europeans.
A better society cannot be built on the sands of Africa-in-Europe (or Pakistan-in-Europe, for that matter).
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Import the Third World and become a Third World society with all that comes with it such as a population with an increased propensity to commit crime not just because of Third Worlders settling here either but because the native population will ALSO commit crime at a higher rate since there will be less social cohesion as the social bonds connecting people together weaken ie the less of a ‘we’ sentiment in society means people are more selfish and therefore more ready to commit criminal offences.
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M’Lord of Essex:
I find the whole direction of travel of our society concerning. I refer to the UK especially. It’s not just the proliferating blacks, browns, Chinese etc, and not just the Jew control of mass media, law, and System politics. It goes further, wider than that. A moral/ethical collapse disguised by virtue-signalling nonsense.
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Why doesn’t Peter Hitchens and that terminally stupid Tory/UKIP/Brexit ‘Party’ supporting bitch, Julie Hartley-Brewer, rant about this invasion? It would be more useful, productive and make far more sense than to whine about much needed and pretty mild social distancing regulations to combat a highly infectious worldwide viral pandemic!🙄🙄
Oops, I forgot, preventing our generally advanced European society from degenerating into a very unadvanced one like that in The Congo or Sudan is not very PC and both Hitchens and Julie Hartley-Brewer wouldn’t want to be sacked and lose their very high media salaries, would they?🙄🙄🙄🙄
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Where is Darren Grimes on this issue as well? Oh, he is nowhere to be seen!🙄🙄🙄 No, I didn’t think he would be! That gormless, little, libertarian loony prick is swearing his undying allegiance to the Zionist state of Israel and spouting the opinion that our lockdown in March/April didn’t work! Well, It did but only partially because it was applied TOO LATE, wasn’t effectively enforced and didn’t apply to anyone travelling here through our airports because we have a PC, open borders supporting, globalist Indian as Home Secretary who is about as useful at her job as a chocolate teapot!
Why, oh, why, do these libertarian loony idiots get any publicity? Covid deniers like him should be deported to the Falklands away from sensible and law abiding people who want to follow the restrictions. Darren Grimes and others MUST be kept away from the rest of us! If only people like him caught Covid-19 instead of decent, law abiding people then he might see the stupidity of his unscientific viewpoints and have an unpleasant time in hospital on a ventilator! I only wish illness and death on grotesquely irresponsible idiots like him instead of normal, decent people but, sadly, we get it and the repellent likes of him don’t.🙄🙄🙄🙄😡😡🤬🤬
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