Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Not my country anymore

The UK used to be a place where you could speak your mind and face nothing but public censure if what you said was disagreed with. But the creeping hand of authoritarianism has gradually stifled this right in its efforts to 'protect' certain people and issues.
Guardian.
A drunk woman who racially abused fellow tube travellers in a tirade that was posted online has been jailed for 21 weeks.
Jacqueline Woodhouse, 42, from Romford in Essex, launched an expletive-laden rant at passengers on the Central line, telling those seated near her: "I used to live in England and now I live in the United Nations."
A seven-minute video of the verbal assault was uploaded to YouTube and viewed more than 200,000 times.
District judge Michael Snow told Westminster magistrates court, central London: "Anyone viewing it would feel a deep sense of shame that our citizens could be subject to such behaviour and may, as a consequence, believe that it secretly represents the views of other white people."
Perhaps what she says does represent the views of some white people, it's not for me to say, certainly not an area for a judge to comment upon either. Certainly her views were unpleasant, but she certainly had the right to say them in my view, sadly not any more, nor can I understand the attitude of those who chose to film her yet didn't step in to argue back, choosing instead to grass her up on youtube, home of a thousand other rants calling for the beheading of infidels by the likes of 'Hook' Hamza.
My advice for what it was worth is that Woodhouse should have opted for crown court and a jury of her peers, perhaps then she may have gotten a fair trial and an attack on this nations freedom of speech by a moronic magistrate avoided.
A dangerous precedent has been set now, the state now has claimed the power to lock you up if you say something it doesn't like.

4 annotations:

William said...

No the state will lock you up because it hears nothing. It is a truly dead entity that only exists in peoples minds.
People run the country let's not let the humans responsible for this action hide behind a label.

The Police like the council have to act if an anymous member of the public reports something offensive to either body of people.

I used to think the sheeple were those in front of the telly box but the reality is the sheeple are all employed in the running of the United Kingdom.

Anonymous said...

We no longer have freedom of speech. It truly scares me what is happening to this country and you can't say what you think out loud.

Road_Hog said...

@William,

No the police do not have to act. Recent examples of this is, an EDL member receiving written communication from the police, that Youtube does not have to be acted upon and they will only do something if the person actually witnessed then event personally.

Which is obviously a complete lie, because they can IF they want to.

Also, the Sikh girl that was sexually assaulted in Luton this week. The family had complained four times and yet the police do nothing.

Back to the article, the proof in the pudding of crown court and juries will be shown very soon, as Emma West goes to trial in June.

Anonymous said...

I see too that no demonstrations will be allowed anywhere near royal "celebrations" (or as I prefer to call them, wastes of public money) this weekend, as a grateful nation pays dutiful homage to its monarch (or as I prefer to call it, a whole pile of brain washed morons troop out and wave plastic union jacks to an old woman who in reality wouldn't give them the time of day unless she had to).

Nor was any demonstration allowed anywhere near the William and Kate Middleton extravaganza of last year, or whenever it was.

I understand that none will be allowed near the Olympics in London, nor, when Mrs Thatcher dies, at her funeral. (I assume here that they will wait till she is dead.)

Of course many of these things would be distasteful, as distasteful as the drunken woman's rant.

It's not the Queen's fault she's been able to hold down the same job for 60 years while other people can't get one. She's had little say in it. And it's not quite the done thing to demonstrate at people's weddings, even if the whole thing puts the country back into recession. Nor is it nice to hurt the feelings of the family and cheer at a funeral, no matter how glad hey are to see her gone (and Mark can get his hands on the money).

It's not nice, but no one ever said it was a nice world.

So yes, I think it is wrong that the woman was imprisoned and I think that she has, no matter how distasteful I find them, every right to her opinions.

I wonder how she would have felt had I been on the train ranting about the fact that women shouldn't be drunk in public and dressed like tarts and that it would go better for her if she was at home making soup and darning her man's socks, and keeping the place clean as women should be.

Probably she'd have been a wee bitty cross, and the politically correct brigade would have had my guts.....