Yet Another Tale From The Crime Journals Of ...

[Lord Jim]

The British Speech Police...

Man called German neighbour Schweinhund, court told

An Englishman called his German next-door neighbour a "Schweinhund", a court heard.

Clive Robinson is alleged to have deliberately used the insult - used in films and comics - because of Cristine Hurst's nationality.

A court heard Mrs Hurst, who has lived in Britain for more than 20 years, was so shocked that she almost broke down in tears before calling police.

Lincoln Crown Court was told the incident occurred as Mrs Hurst, a magistrate, was taking in her washing at her smallholding in rural Weston Hills, near Spalding, Lincs.

Robinson, 45, later was said to have admitted making the remark - which translates as "pig dog" - but claimed he was referring to one of his Great Danes.[Nice try Clive ]

A jury heard how he had previously been served with a noise abatement order after complaints from Mrs Hurst and her husband Peter.

The couple sought action after Mr Robinson's son and his friends allegedly staged banger races in old cars on the land surrounding their own smallholding.

Giving evidence, Mrs Hurst said that in the past Mr Robinson had also walked by her home while delivering an obscene one-fingered salute.

He had once also erected a plastic hand on the roof of his own home with the middle finger pointing straight up in the air, she said.[I'm starting to like this guy... ]

Bavarian-born Mrs Hurst, who left Germany in the 1980s to become a student in Cardiff, told the jury: "It was Mr Robinson's trademark."

Giving evidence at Lincoln Crown Court, she said relations between the two families had "broken down completely" after a series of incidents.

She admitted: "We are not on speaking terms. I have written to Mrs Robinson to try to sort it out, but I have never got a reply."

She claimed that on the day of the insult she had gone into her garden to bring in her washing when she encountered Robinson.

"I saw his car parked on our verge. When he saw us he reversed into his property. He got out and basically shouted at us," she said.

"He looked at me and shouted: 'Schweinhund!' Then a couple of seconds later he said it even louder. 'Schweinhund' is a German word.

"It means 'pig-dog'. For a German it is extremely offensive. My husband phoned the police straight away, because I was close to tears."

Mrs Hurst, who has been a magistrate in Spalding for four years, denied she was "oversensitive", insisting: "It was so offensive.

"I could not believe he had said that. I was so upset. It's the way I feel - I'm a German, and I'm being sworn at with a German swearword."

She denied the insult was nothing to do with her being German and told the jury: "It was, otherwise he would have sworn at me in English."

Defence barrister Michael Rudd suggested to Mrs Hurst that "Schweinhund" was in common usage in the UK in the '50s, '60s and '70s.

He put it to her: "People of a certain age in the UK might be familiar with that word from war movies and from comics and magazines."

Mrs Hurst replied: "It's an extremely offensive word."

Is it the situation that there is so little real crime in Great Britain that they prosecute this kind of nonsense just to keep the courts busy?

[Lord Jim]

Another reason to like Rowan Atkinson:

Mr. Bean star calls for repeal of British hate speech law



LONDON, October 26, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rowan Atkinson, one of Britain’s most popular film and television comedy stars, has told the government that the hate speech provisions of the Public Order Act must be repealed to uphold the country’s ancient traditions of freedom of speech.

He said he wanted to counter “the Outrage Industry: self-appointed arbiters of the public good, encouraging media-stoked outrage, to which the police feel under terrible pressure to react.”

A “new intolerance” is being fed by Section 5, the “insult” wording of the Act, he said. “A new and intense desire to gag uncomfortable voices of dissent.”

“‘I’m not intolerant,’ say many softly-spoken, highly educated liberal-minded people,” Atkinson said. “‘I’m only intolerant of intolerance.’ And people tend to nod sagely and say, ‘Oh yes, wise words, wise words.’ And yet if you think about this supposedly inarguable statement for longer than five seconds you realize that all it is advocating is the replacement of one kind of intolerance with another.”

The law, he said, is “indicative of a culture that has taken hold of the program of successive governments that with the reasonable and well-intentioned ambition to contain obnoxious elements in society, has created a society of an extraordinarily authoritarian and controlling nature.”

Known mainly to North American for his television and film roles as Blackadder and Mr. Bean, Atkinson is also popular in Britain as a sketch and stand up comedian on stage. In the course of his long career he has parodied the Germans, the French, Spaniards, actors, opera singers, ballet dancers, mimes, rock musicians and pop divas. He has not spared British institutions like Shakespeare, Oxford University, the Royal Family, the military and the police, liberal Christians, conservative Christians, Catholicism, Anglicanism, and the New Atheists.

Speaking at a meeting at Westminster of the campaign group Reform Section 5, Atkinson placed the freedom to offend people as second only to the right to the means of “sustaining life itself.”

He had, he said, enjoyed freedom of speech throughout his professional life, and had no concerns that he would be arrested for insulting someone. His concern, he said is “more for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile.”

Under the law’s current wording, anything could be interpreted subjectively as “insult,” he said. Criticism, ridicule, and sarcasm, any unfavorable comparison, or “merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy can be interpreted as insult.”

He cited “ludicrous” cases of abuse as a student in Oxford arrested for calling a police horse “gay”; a Christian café owner threatened with arrest for displaying Bible passages on a television screen in his business; and a teenager arrested for holding a placard calling the Church of Scientology a “dangerous cult.”

British humor is self-deprecating and outrageous, often rude, and frequently revolves around mocking the stupidity, shortsightedness and banality that plagues humanity in every walk of life. Without the freedom to insult both individuals and groups, including homosexuals, Atkinson has warned, those great traditions of freedom of mockery will die out and give way to a “culture of censoriousness.”

In Britain, “harassment,” or causing someone “alarm or distress,” is a statutory offense, but the many critics of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 have warned that it is a law designed to be abused, with the determination of the offense resting on the subjective feelings of the putative victim.

The key, they say, is in the wording: “A person is guilty of an offense if he: (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior, or disorderly behavior, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.”

Atkinson could also have mentioned that Section 5 charges are increasingly being levied by police against conservative Christians who object either to the homosexual lifestyle or to the government’s plans to institute “gay marriage.” Christian groups have complained that it is being used specifically to suppress any public opposition to the sexual zeitgeist, particularly the homosexualist movement. Several Christian street preachers have been arrested for citing Biblical passages condemning homosexual activity.

One of them is Adrian Smith, a Christian who recently tweeted, “If the State wants to offer civil marriages to the same sex, that is up to the State: but the State mustn’t impose its rules on places of faith and conscience.” Although his position is held, according to polls, by about 80 percent of the British population, Mr. Smith was arrested and charged under Section 5 after his co-workers at the Trafford Housing Trust testified the message was “blatantly homophobic.” Mr. Smith’s salary was docked by 40 percent for “gross misconduct in publishing views which might be taken as Trafford Trust policy.”

Maureen Messent, a columnist for the Birmingham Mail, said that she laid the blame for this rash of “mean-hearted sniping” at the feet of the homosexual lobby, who have “become suppressors of others’ free speech.”

“They believe they alone must be heard,” she commented.

The campaign to reform Section 5 is drawing a surprisingly broad array of supporters, including the conservative Christian Institute, their usually diametrically opposed National Secular Society; the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch and The Freedom Association. The campaign also claims 60 supporters in the Commons and the House of Lords including UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

Speaking at the meeting with Rowan Atkinson, senior Conservative Party MP David Davis, said, “The simple truth is that in a free society, there is no right not to be offended. For centuries, freedom of speech has been a vital part of British life, and repealing this law will reinstate that right.”

Spectator columnist Rod Liddle wrote last weekend that the push to remove “insult” from the Public Order Act has nearly universal support.

He said the main purpose of the law at present is “to criminalize people who express inconvenient political views.”

“Christians have been arrested merely for reading extracts from the Bible, for example. Gays have been arrested for suggesting that Islam is a bit silly on the subject of homosexuality. One old bloke was warned he would be prosecuted because he put a sign up in his window stating that religion was ‘fairy tales for grown-ups,’” he wrote. “If it is even remotely possible that someone might be offended, the Old Bill steps in.”

Even some leading figures in the homosexualist movement say the law goes too far. Peter Tatchell, the head of the radical homosexual group OutRage!, said in May this year that there should be no law against insulting people in a democratic country.

Tatchell told the BBC, “What constitutes insults is a very subjective judgment. It’s been used in very different ways.”

“We may disagree on some those views but I don’t think they should be criminalized in a free and democratic society,” he said. “We should have the right to speak our minds and I think putting up with insults is one of the prices we pay for that freedom.”

Way to go Rowan...

It's heartening to me to see prominent Brits coming forward to stand up against this law, and to discover that there is a serious effort under way to bring an end to this grotesque and dangerous assault on a basic liberty. For the government to be in a position to declare anything it chooses "hate speech" and criminally prosecute those who engage in it is antithetical to the principles of a free society.

[Lord Jim]

Here's the Not the Nine O'Clock News skit that Atkinson refers to in his speech:

[dales]

So glad I was born in the USA where this type of nonsense doesn't clog the court system.

[Gob]

We're a polite society, we'd like to keep it that way. Maybe British police have more time on their hands as they do not have to cope with neighbours shooting each other, rather than calling each other "pig dogs". Just a thought.

[Crackpot]

I thought they used the name calling to justify not having the time to go after the ones publicly calling for acts of terrorism against the state.

[Gob]

No, we have PC laws to prevent the cops taking action against anyone not white.

[Crackpot]

You guys keep this up and you'll be able to defeat the British army with harsh language?

[Crackpot]

BTW when you move back are you going to wear a gag in public you don't strike me as the type who can hold their going when confronted with morons.

[Gob]

Funny you should say that.

I've already been warned by my mate Charlie, who we will be staying with for a couple of days at his new house in rural Wales, that if I get him banned for his local I'm in deep shit. He's promised me never to talk to me again if I get into a fight with a member of the hunting fraternity who use his the pub.

[Sean]

The guy in the OP should be commended for having the decency to insult her in her own language.

[dales]

BTW when you move back are you going to wear a gag in public you don't strike me as the type who can hold their going when confronted with morons.

[Lord Jim]

BTW when you move back are you going to wear a gag in public

Guess who I immediately thought of when I read this one:

One old bloke was warned he would be prosecuted because he put a sign up in his window stating that religion was ‘fairy tales for grown-ups,’”

[MajGenl.Meade]

Funny you should say that.

I've already been warned by my mate Charlie, who we will be staying with for a couple of days at his new house in rural Wales, that if I get him banned for his local I'm in deep shit. He's promised me never to talk to me again if I get into a fight with a member of the hunting fraternity who use his the pub.

When will you be there, Gob? Lynn and I are going over June 24 - July 19. London, Cotswolds, Exmoor, East Sussex.

[Gob]

Bummer, we're there from 1 st Oct to 13 Nov.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oh well. Above to make you wax nostalgic (from our holiday in 2003)

[Lord Jim]

Looks like there's been some progress on this:

Section 5 reform completes its parliamentary progress

MPs have confirmed that a controversial public order law that criminalises “insulting” words or behaviour will be reformed to permit greater freedom of speech.

The move follows the Government giving way on the issue last month, after a bruising vote in the House of Lords.

The bid to change the law was spearheaded by Reform Section 5 – a campaign supported by the National Secular Society and Christian Institute, together with the Peter Tatchell Foundation and others.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the NSS, who has been prominent in the campaign, said that “free speech is a little freer because of this change. Our alliance with the Christian Institute could hardly have been more fruitful.”[Genuine co-operation across ideological lines on an issue of importance to all...nice to see]

In December last year, the House of Lords amended legislation to removing the word “insulting” from Section 5 of the Public Order Act. Despite both Government and the Labour front bench opposing, the vote was 150 in favour to 54 against – the lowest pro-Government vote of the Parliament.

Realising that MPs were also likely to follow suit when the legislation returned to the House of Commons, the Home Secretary conceded defeat and agreed to accept the Lords’ amendment.

The amendment cannot now be overturned, and so will become law later this year.

That is great news...

But either because this has not yet become the law of the land, or because some wannabe tinpot tyrants have found a way around it, this sort of thing continues:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/britain-p ... 58582.html

Here's the website for the folks that are working to bring an end to this:

http://reformsection5.org.uk/

[Lord Jim]

It is very heartening to me to see Brits standing up against this...

1st Amendment or no 1st Amendment, the principle remains....

You can not have the police knocking down doors in the middle of the night to arrest people for saying rude things..and still have a free society...

Maybe they can do that sort of thing in Kirghistan or Byello Russia, But The British People will not put up with it...

[liberty]

U.S. Attorney: Anti-Muslim Speech Could Be a Civil Rights Violation

Jun. 1, 2013 2:A U.S. attorney in Tennessee is reportedly suggesting that anti-Islam postings on social media could actually be considered civil rights violations.
Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, told the Tullahoma News that inflammatory or hateful posts could potentially run afoul of the law. He will speak next week alongside the head of the FBI’s Knoxville office at a meeting sponsored by a local American Muslim advisory group.
“This is an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion,” Killian told the newspaper. “This is also to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”
A Tennessee county commissioner posted this image to Facebook. A U.S. attorney is suggesting that such postings could be considered civil rights violations.
He pointed to a Tennessee county commissioner who posted an image of a man aiming a double-barreled shotgun to Facebook with the caption, “How to wink at a Muslim.”
“If a Muslim had posted ‘How to Wink at a Christian,’ could you imagine what would have happened?” Killian said. “We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected.”
He told the newspaper that Internet postings that violate civil rights fall under federal jurisdiction.
“That’s what everybody needs to understand,” he said.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request from Politico about what it considers offensive speech about Islam, or about using civil rights law to prohibit it.
(h/t Politico)

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Posted on June 1, 2013 at 3:44pm
Shocking isn’t it, they don’t like our bill of rights at all. The ‘supreme’ laws of the land, our rights, this is why we can not ‘compromise’ on the constitution, lest we become canada.
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Richalu
Posted on June 1, 2013 at 3:54pm
“If a Muslim had posted ‘How to Wink at a Christian,’ could you imagine what would have happened?” Killian said.
Yeah. We’d riot. We’d march with our guns raised, blasting rounds into the air. We’d burn and rape and pillage. We’d chop peoples heads off, and drag their lifeless bodies through the streets.
Oh wait. Islamic extremists do that. We don’t do that. We haven’t done that