Freedom of Expression

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Tommy Robinson has rapidly been sent to prison for filming outside a court but you won't hear about it in the media because the judge has decided to use the Contempt of Court act to silence them for some reason. The purpose of the act is supposed to be to avoid biasing juries, but it was a revoked suspended sentence so there was no jury to bias.

Technically me posting this is probably illegal.

 

[PuB]

Hmm how come I've heard of it then, and watched the clip of him being arrested?

 

[Benji]

I'm calling the police.

 

[PuB]

YOU WONT HEAR ABOUT THIS IN THE MEDIA!!!!!??!!!'@!!!

https://metro.co.uk/2018/05/25/tomm...child-grooming-trial-breaching-peace-7579280/

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Oh OK, good. That will teach me to trust Twitter arguments.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

As that brief Metro report makes clear, he actually received a suspended sentence when he was found in contempt of court in relation to a separate case last year. It's perhaps worth mentioning that the laws concerning contempt are reasonably broad in scope. Certainly one of the main functions is to ensure that nothing is reported that might prejudice a jury, but they're probably best understood as a set of laws designed to safeguard the fairness and integrity of legal proceedings. Something such as taking photographs/moving images inside a court building, for example, would see you in contempt. This has been an offence for almost 100 years, dating back to the Criminal Justice Act and it's why a lot of court drawings look quite shonky, because the artist has to do it from memory when outside the court room.

I gather that with the Canterbury trial last year he was effectively guilty of doing the above - live-streaming from inside the courtroom as defendants and members of the public (which might obviously have included jurors) entered and exited, as well as labelling the defendants paedophiles. You can see why this, against the backdrop of a "Muslim paedophile gang" narrative, isn't exactly conducive to the successful execution of a fair trial. It goes without saying that someone with a suspended sentence subsequently caught doing something very similar is behaving somewhat foolishly. Indeed, those of us of a cynical disposition might very well conclude that he's looking to garner attention as a poor put-upon free speech martyr. If the judge is concerned that his antics and the media circus surrounding him will disrupt criminal proceedings in the Leeds trial then I think he might quite understandably decide to impose reporting restrictions, which would no doubt be lifted at the end of the trial in question.

 

[Nilsson]

Tommy Robinson has rapidly been sent to prison for filming outside a court but you won't hear about it in the media because the judge has decided to use the Contempt of Court act to silence them for some reason. The purpose of the act is supposed to be to avoid biasing juries, but it was a revoked suspended sentence so there was no jury to bias.

Technically me posting this is probably illegal.

Tommy Robinson or whatever his real name is is a thug. People spreading lies about him to try to turn him into some sort of man of the people who's standing up for what's right are off their heads.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Tommy Robinson or whatever his real name is is a thug. People spreading lies about him to try to turn him into some sort of man of the people who's standing up for what's right are off their heads.

He probably is a thug, but there are certain issues that need to be talked about and I'd rather a thug persued them than no one at all - especially if many of a mind to do so are being banned from entering the UK for life.

 

[Nilsson]

He probably is a thug, but there are certain issues that need to be talked about and I'd rather a thug persued them than no one at all - especially if many of a mind to do so are being banned from entering the UK for life.

Don't you think he does more harm than good? His name attached to anything is going to lack credibility due to him being involved. Right minded people know he's pond life who's more often than not looking for a fight and to stoke up tensions, the idea that he genuinely cares about any victims is hard to believe.

I'd much rather the issues be talked about by someone like Maajid Nawaz than a thug. Here's something he wrote on twitter a few days ago:

"1) Grooming gangs are a real & under-reported problem in the UK (disproportionately by Muslim men against teenage white girls) https://www.quilliaminternational.com/press-release-new-quilliam-report-on-grooming-gangs/
2) justice has evaded its vulnerable victims for too long due to authorities heinous fear of appearing racist
3) ongoing trials can be subject to restrictions in reporting, any violation of this is contempt of court
4) Tommy Robinson already been found guilty of contempt of court last year, and was handed a 3 month suspended sentence on condition he did not repeat this offence
5) Tommy repeated the offence&has been returned to jail
6) orders like this are to ensure a fair trial so that a mistrial by media doesn’t occur &the guilty can actually be jailed
7) Tommy’s behaviour in contempt made it more likely that victims are denied justice,not less likely
8) I wish those girls saw such speedy justice instead of being ignored for so long due to our crippled establishment’s toxic PC culture
9) there’s disparity between swift justice against Tommy & justice delayed for teenage white victims, which only stoke’s racial tension further"

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

Not sure the lazily tossed out "toxic PC culture" stuff does very much to further debate either tbh.

 

[Nilsson]

No one's perfect.

 

[silkyman]

In summary.

Tommy Robinson broke the law and was given a suspended sentence.

So he was told very clearly 'doing that is illegal, and if you do it again, you are going to go to jail for it. Don't do it again.'

So he did it again.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

The Telegraph have successfully challenged the reporting restriction imposed on the case at Crown Court, and the Nationals can now report the incident as they wish / if they wish.

 

[PuB]

The issue, I believe, was with the case that Tommy Robinson was trying to 'report' on, which is ongoing and is subject to a blanket media ban until it reaches it's conclusion. Robinson was live feeding information from the trial, including showing the jurors, which risked a mistrial (which would be a huge cost to the taxpayer, never mind obstructing the course of justice). As well as that it's the second time he's done it.

In short, Tommy Robinson is an idiot who was warned not to do something or face prison, but then did it anyway.

 

[Benji]

Is Ebeneezer Goode getting off scot-free!?

 

[PuB]

Is Ebeneezer Goode getting off scot-free!?

The lack of replies suggest he's already been banged up. Sharing a cell with our Tommy hopefully.

 

[markwwfc1992]

Been sent down for 13 months. 10 for contempt of court and 3 for the suspended sentence.

 

[Abertawe]

 

[Johnnyt]

hope he doesn't radicalise more EDL types in prison

ive heard that happens with other religons

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

He probably is a thug, but there are certain issues that need to be talked about and I'd rather a thug persued them than no one at all - especially if many of a mind to do so are being banned from entering the UK for life.

Ooh, "certain issues" how delightfully vague. Go on, tell me what the "certain issues" are. Cos if you're referring to the sexual abuse of working class women you'll probably need to reconcile that with your previous comments about women lying about being raped and witch-hunts.

Cos the things that have allowed groups of men (whether south asian or otherwise) to systematically abuse working class kids isn't cops' fears of being called racist (maybe if that was a concern they'd stop being racist), but cops' disinclination to believe women, especially working class women, (especially, especially working class women who are racialised as non-white - who are statistically the most likely to be victims of gendered violence).

Anyway, just popping in to call out your cryptofascism for what it is. Ta ra.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

^ Yes. It's very interesting how, in these sort of cases, there's this insistence that the greatest problem is a culture of PC-motivated silence. That seems a serious accusation, serious enough that one ought to be able to substantiate it. So far as I'm aware, no one successfully has, and yet it's tossed around, by media, by politicians etc, with gay abandon as though it were some self-evident truth. The one common thread in these sort of cases is the vulnerability of the victims because of their age, gender and socio-economic background. I'm sure it's possible to identify some institutional/systematic failings but the vulnerable status of the victims will surely always make these cases difficult to establish and difficult to prosecute. It seems to me that that ought to be the main focus of our attention, not the skin colour of the perpetrators.

It's a bit like "legitimate concerns about immigration" where there was, for a long time, this ridiculous insistence that people were being silenced on the issue, despite loads of media discussion and lurid headlines to the contrary. And hey, before you know it HMG are covertly deporting lots of nasty forrins...

These right-wing suppositions are simply not rooted in reality.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Excitedly refreshing this thread to see the fascist apologists free speech lovers on this forum come to the defence of Lush's anti-Spy Cops campaign, which they've been forced to abandon after harassment from law enforcement.

Also waiting for them to denounce Niall Ferguson, who organised smear campaigns against left-wing students because "conservative ideas are facing extinction on campus" - clearly opposing the dearly held principle of the right that universities should be a marketplace of ideas.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Ooh, "certain issues" how delightfully vague. Go on, tell me what the "certain issues" are. Cos if you're referring to the sexual abuse of working class women you'll probably need to reconcile that with your previous comments about women lying about being raped and witch-hunts.

What were those alleged comments? Do you know? Can you remember what they were? Or is it hope (not hate) on your part? Delightfully vague indeed.

Cos the things that have allowed groups of men (whether south asian or otherwise) to systematically abuse working class kids isn't cops' fears of being called racist (maybe if that was a concern they'd stop being racist), but cops' disinclination to believe women, especially working class women, (especially, especially working class women who are racialised as non-white - who are statistically the most likely to be victims of gendered violence).

It's interesting how the ills of human behavior can always be explained by how people are socialized by their peers until those peers are an inconvinient colour. Maybe you could tell us again about how this is actually just the result of the white man's racism forcing brown people into the taxi industry and such like, rather than the influence of an ultra-conservative Islamic cultural background with a tendency to frame non-Muslim girls as worthless sluts (even on tape in government-backed faith schools). The latter must be a coincidence, just like the post-scandal report about crippling fear of being branded racist among Labour councilors in Rotherham, or the conspicuous absence of a proportionate child grooming phenomena among the non-Muslim taxi driver majority. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that any liberal who thinks this is an issue worth talking about is almost certainly just a secret nazi.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

^ Yes. It's very interesting how, in these sort of cases, there's this insistence that the greatest problem is a culture of PC-motivated silence. That seems a serious accusation, serious enough that one ought to be able to substantiate it. So far as I'm aware, no one successfully has, and yet it's tossed around, by media, by politicians etc, with gay abandon as though it were some self-evident truth.

The initial investigation into what happened in Rotherham by Louise Casey found that there was widespread reluctance to address what was happening for fear of being branded racist, and openly accused councilors of turning a blind eye to - and even covered up - grooming by Muslim men of non-Muslim children. I'm not sure how much more it can be substantiated, it's not like politicians are going to go on the record admitting that they'd sooner a child was raped on their watch than they be accused of racism. Not that anyone should really need an excuse to attack political correctness, in matters of discovering truth it's an innate impediment.

It seems to me that that ought to be the main focus of our attention, not the skin colour of the perpetrators.

Their skin colour is not an issue as far as I can tell. There is a staggering over-representation of perpetrators from a particular ethno-religious background however that you cannot expect rational people to ignore, especially when it's a trend we now know has been repeated up and down the country.

It's a bit like "legitimate concerns about immigration" where there was, for a long time, this ridiculous insistence that people were being silenced on the issue, despite loads of media discussion and lurid headlines to the contrary. And hey, before you know it HMG are covertly deporting lots of nasty forrins...

These right-wing suppositions are simply not rooted in reality.

I'm not sure that those "lurid headlines" suggest the contrary. The fact that only the bottom feeding tabloids would ostensibly voice that side of the debate serves to illustrate how hostile the broadcast media and mainstream political establishment is to a position that is ironically as mainstream as they come amongst the British public. Yeah you could always point to headlines about benefit scroungers and such like in the rags, but who was actually taking part in the debate in the political arena? Who was the voice of the majority? Nick Griffin?! That was the state of the debate until Farage arrived on the scene, and even then most with a platform would rather just call him a racist than refute what he had to say.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Excitedly refreshing this thread to see the fascist apologists free speech lovers on this forum come to the defence of Lush's anti-Spy Cops campaign, which they've been forced to abandon after harassment from law enforcement.

Also waiting for them to denounce Niall Ferguson, who organised smear campaigns against left-wing students because "conservative ideas are facing extinction on campus" - clearly opposing the dearly held principle of the right that universities should be a marketplace of ideas.

Are we to assume then that the only reason you don't talk about the issue of free speech more is because you think it some sort of right wing gimmick? For what it's worth I'd never heard of either of those cases until now. I would oppose the state interfering with the free sharing of ideas no matter who is sharing them. I would even get rid of legislation criminalizing the "glorification of terrorism" (which can mean anything), personally.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

It's interesting how the ills of human behavior can always be explained by how people are socialized by their peers until those peers are an inconvinient colour. Maybe you could tell us again about how this is actually just the result of the white man's racism forcing brown people into the taxi industry and such like, rather than the influence of an ultra-conservative Islamic cultural background with a tendency to frame non-Muslim girls as worthless sluts (even on tape in government-backed faith schools). The latter must be a coincidence, just like the post-scandal report about crippling fear of being branded racist among Labour councilors in Rotherham, or the conspicuous absence of a proportionate child grooming phenomena among the non-Muslim taxi driver majority. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that any liberal who thinks this is an issue worth talking about is almost certainly just a secret nazi.

The fuck are you on about you racist weirdo.

If you're trying to frame an argument about over-representation of South Asian men in jobs that give an opportunity to prey on vulnerable children leads to over-representation in a specific category of sexual offence is an argument about "how it's the result of the white man's racism" I fear for your comprehension skills.

Anyway, much of the scaremongering about "Asian grooming gangs" is a moral panic, based off racism, disproportionate coverage of asian offenders and some very dodgy research.

This goes into it as much detail as you'd like including references, sources, links to more reputable studies and papers. Sure you won't read it because it doesn't legitimise your racism though.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

The initial investigation into what happened in Rotherham by Louise Casey found that there was widespread reluctance to address what was happening for fear of being branded racist, and openly accused councilors of turning a blind eye to - and even covered up - grooming by Muslim men of non-Muslim children. I'm not sure how much more it can be substantiated, it's not like politicians are going to go on the record admitting that they'd sooner a child was raped on their watch than they be accused of racism. Not that anyone should really need an excuse to attack political correctness, in matters of discovering truth it's an innate impediment.

There were some grave failings in Rotherham, there's no doubt about it, but there seems to be a tendency to extrapolate and assume that the same failings have been repeated in other local authorities where the perpetrators happen to be from 'a particular ethno-religious background'. That's not a reasonable conclusion to draw. It's interesting also that more than one report into Rotherham has remarked on the Council having been a macho, sexist and bullying place, not usually things which are associated with an all-pervasive culture of political correctness. You'd have to imagine that this would have always made them poorly-equipped to deal with the concerns being raised.

Their skin colour is not an issue as far as I can tell. There is a staggering over-representation of perpetrators from a particular ethno-religious background however that you cannot expect rational people to ignore, especially when it's a trend we now know has been repeated up and down the country.

I'd urge you to read that link of Ian's actually, because it's quite illuminating on this front. You can always frame the terms in such a way that will lead you to a particular (desired) conclusion. Even if we could accurately pinpoint this sort of stuff I'm not altogether sure what we ought to be taking from it. If it was revealed that the white male population was over-represented in terms of a particular type of sexual offence what conclusion ought we to draw from that?

I'm not sure that those "lurid headlines" suggest the contrary. The fact that only the bottom feeding tabloids would ostensibly voice that side of the debate serves to illustrate how hostile the broadcast media and mainstream political establishment is to a position that is ironically as mainstream as they come amongst the British public. Yeah you could always point to headlines about benefit scroungers and such like in the rags, but who was actually taking part in the debate in the political arena? Who was the voice of the majority? Nick Griffin?! That was the state of the debate until Farage arrived on the scene, and even then most with a platform would rather just call him a racist than refute what he had to say.

The "bottom feeding tabloids" have considerable reach and influence so blithely dismissing them doesn't serve as a very effective rebuttal to my point. Not that more respected organs are necessarily very much better in their coverage - see the criticisms of The Times in Ian's linked article. This was the same paper who recently got into trouble with the press regulator (quite a feat!) for distorting a story on a Muslim foster care case. If you refer (again) to the linked piece, the research it discusses has been widely reported, from the Independent, to Sky News, to the Mail. Whatever you think of the conclusions the authors draw, it's obvious that the research itself is hugely flawed, and yet it's being widely circulated with very little scrutiny. It is but one small example, but worrying one, of the media's approach to an issue where they ought to be highly sensitive as to the facts they're reporting. The broadcast media, who regularly take their cue from the traditional press in their coverage, have a funny way of displaying their hostility given they afforded Farage ("if the shoe fits...") a QT platform for his views every other week. But prior to that mainstream politicians were actually running on anti-immigration platforms (eg Michael Howard) but losing.

 

[Red]

Tommy Robinson or whatever his real name is is a thug. People spreading lies about him to try to turn him into some sort of man of the people who's standing up for what's right are off their heads.

Never thought I'd find myself in agreement with you

 

[Benji]

Some violence at the weird Free Tommy protest which is disgusting. In my opinion, if you want to live in this country, you should follow our laws.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

If you're trying to frame an argument about over-representation of South Asian men in jobs that give an opportunity to prey on vulnerable children leads to over-representation in a specific category of sexual offence is an argument about "how it's the result of the white man's racism" I fear for your comprehension skills.

I'm fairly certain that you went further than that, and blamed societies racism for forcing them into that industry in the first place. I remember it because quite a few people were talking about it not long after in chat. Maybe we all misremembered/misinterpreted it. A point not worth pursuing no doubt.

Anyway, much of the scaremongering about "Asian grooming gangs" is a moral panic, based off racism, disproportionate coverage of asian offenders and some very dodgy research.

This goes into it as much detail as you'd like including references, sources, links to more reputable studies and papers. Sure you won't read it because it doesn't legitimise your racism though.

I read it when you posted it. It's an article primarily attempting to refute a single study published by South Asians that we are to believe was designed to deliberately racially discriminate against South Asians. It does a decent job of illustrating the flimsiness of the Quilliam Foundation findings and some of the numbers that have fueled/muddied the debate, but it shows it's own hand in continually seeking to conflate race with cultural background and religion, and makes leaps about motives that it's unable to substantiate. There's a giant chasm of difference between demonstrating that someone like Maajid Nawaz, as an example, is willing to play fast and loose with statistics, and proving that he has a racist agenda against a demographic that he himself belongs to. It also fails to refute the notion that the trend we see is a trend at all, although in fairness I'm not sure it sets out to.

On a side note it does make some bizarre claims though, like "There is not a single report in existence that has found that British Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslim men have been involved in grooming white girls" that I'm not sure I really understand. Maybe they mean there's no proof they target them based on race, but the wording seems either clumsily written or deliberately misleading.

There were some grave failings in Rotherham, there's no doubt about it, but there seems to be a tendency to extrapolate and assume that the same failings have been repeated in other local authorities where the perpetrators happen to be from 'a particular ethno-religious background'. That's not a reasonable conclusion to draw. It's interesting also that more than one report into Rotherham has remarked on the Council having been a macho, sexist and bullying place, not usually things which are associated with an all-pervasive culture of political correctness. You'd have to imagine that this would have always made them poorly-equipped to deal with the concerns being raised.

The original point of contention was not that one side is right or wrong, it's that both sides need a voice. A discrepancy in reports or incidents suggest more research and debate is needed, not less. Surely even if you think that this is a bogus nationalist cause you would prefer it be challenged out in the open where it can be refuted, rather than being censored or suppressed and given the air of government conspiracy, or worse, a righteous far-right. Because there is a risk of surrendering an ostensibly virtuous cause to actual fascists, and not just the people the left cries wolf about.