Graham Linehan was arrested by 5 armed police officers as he arrived at Heathrow yesterday. His crime? Tweeting that a man cosplaying as a woman in a woman’s toilet is committing a violent act and must be resisted, and if all else failed ‘kicked in the b0ll0cks’.
Graham Linehan believes he knows which particularly unhinged gender activist reported his tweets to the police. That activist might be advised to reflect on whether he’s advanced his cause at all, given the backlash today. Even Owen Jones has been forced to defend Linehan’s right to say stuff Jones himself vehemently disagrees with. The only person who seems to have made a bold defence of the police is the new leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, who made a spectacle of himself on Newsnight last night by claiming it was reasonable and proportionate to send 5 coppers to intercept Linehan, keep him in custody for 18 hours and then ban him from Twitter as a bail condition.
Now even the Met Police commissioner, no less, has weighed in, demanding that the law and guidance that goes with it is changed because officers, he claims, are being forced to act in situations where he seems to think they shouldn’t have to.
This is what happens when you try to legislate what people can and can’t say, by centring the hurty feelings of people who claim that ‘words are violence.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1mx09l5297o
Quote:
The head of the Metropolitan Police has called on the government to "change or clarify" the law following the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan over posts he made online.
The 57-year-old was arrested under the Public Order Act on Monday on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to posts about trans people on X.
On Wednesday, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley defended the officers involved, but said he recognised "concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world".
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I started off posting this in the gender ideology thread but the issue is far broader than the subject Linehan chose to tweet about. We have sleep-walked into a position where police are going in mob-handed against popular comedians for making obviously satirical, if somewhat angry, social media comments. We are in danger of becoming the laughing stock of the ‘free’ world.