Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
Well, thank God for that!
Well, at least you have set out where you have come from, roughbeast. I would simply say that if a staunch follower of Jeremy Corbyn considers that he would be good at running the country  then goes on to say that he thinks we should have remained in the EU, we Brexiteers must have got something right!
---------- Post added at 14:58 ---------- Previous post was at 14:46 ----------
Just for the record, the Policing Bill does no such thing. What it does do is clamp down on disruptive protests, such as the ones we saw where Insulate Britain brought motorways to a halt. Peaceful protests that still allow people to carry on with their business will not be restricted under this legislation.
Most people were angry about these protesters making people late for work, to attend medical appointments, etc, and want to see this kind of disruption stopped. The government has listened to the people and introduced this Bill.
Just as the government listened when people said they wanted to be out of the EU. I think I’ve spotted a pattern here that indicates your attitude towards democracy. Am I right or am I right?  |
You are wrong. Corbyn would have led us out of the EU if he had become PM, despite the sentiments of the Labour Party as a whole. This makes your Corbyn point a moot one. I supported Corbyn's principled stance of honouring the referendum result, so what is your point about my attitude to democracy? Do I detect binary thinking on your part? If I am not wholly in a agreement with you, I must therefore be wholly against you? There are shades of grey in human affairs you know.
The clause in the policing bill that gives police the right to ban marches that might be noisy is an attack on the right to protest. Noisy doesn't equate to disruptive.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/ho...rities-1407386
We have a long tradition of allowing marches, even if they are down main city roads. Police and marchers have, through cooperation usually ensured that marches are orderly and enable alternative routes for traffic etc. The consensus is that democracy is worth a bit of managed disruption. The government seeing the power of anti-Iraq war protests and the support for Remain marches, i.e. over 1 million. has decided that street protest might be a threat to them. They are looking for excuses to ban the lot.
In my experience, all protests are noisy. The word 'noisy' needs removing from the bill, and any word meaning noisy, because in the wrong hands it could be misused. Imagine if Farage's protest marches had been banned beforehand because they might be noisy. We would never hear the end of it.
If, on the other hand, protests involve criminal damage, violence, and even disruption that has not been negotiated between police and organisers, then the perpetrators should accept the consequences. We already have laws in place to deal with that. No change needed. If I joined an Insulate Britain, protest and glued myself to the road, I must accept my punishment for disrupting lives beyond the agreed limits. Banning protests beforehand should only occur if the protesting group is known for consistent law-breaking, criminal damage and violence against people. e.g. most EDL and Britain First marches, some Insulate Britain protests and the fringes of Farage marches and BLM marches.
In my time, the only violent protest I have been on was the one that became The Battle of Grosvenor Square. It was a march to the US embassy protesting the Vietnam War. I, a 21-year old, was one of those. who slipped through the police cordons and got as far as the embassy gates. I ended up in hospital having been whacked on the head by a member of the US military police. I was responsible for what happened to me, not the MP defending US territory. Oh, to be young and stupid again!
