The Thought Police Are Here

by Guest Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:55 am

The Thought Police have arrived and it is doubtful they’ll ever go away. This isn’t an hysterical reaction with a hyperbolic headline. The UK police have quite literally announced they police thought crimes. Well, ‘thought crimes’ isn’t quite accurate because one’s thoughts aren’t actually crimes, but the police will knock on your door or come to your place of work anyway.

The Telegraph reports that a man has had a visit from the British Police because he retweeted – not wrote, mind you, retweeted – a satirical limerick about transgenderism.

But this is the terrifying part: When the man asked why the police were questioning him even though they acknowledged he had committed no crime, the officer told him:

“We need to check your thinking”.

“We need to check your thinking.” Is there a more ominous phrase in a democratic society which favours free speech and liberty?

After it was determined that the man had the wrong thoughts, a police officer advised him of the correct thoughts. “I’ve been on a course and what you need to understand is that you can have a foetus with a female brain that grows male body parts and that’s what a transgender person is,” regurgitated the officer remembering his thought training.

This is not up for debate. He has been trained. This is correct.

This follows a recent call by the police for citizens to report non-crimes as well as crimes if they felt insulted, hurt, or offended.

Deputy Chief Constable Mark Roberts of the South Yorkshire Police explained: “We record non-crime hate incidents in the same way we record non-crime antisocial behaviour incidents and non-crime domestic abuse incidents, so we can gain a fuller understanding of actions which cause distress to people within our communities.”

What a “non-criminal domestic abuse incident is”, is a question for another day, but the police have now decided to take an active role in ensuring that everyone is always nice to each other, and appear to have advice on purity of thought and deed to dispense when they visit people who haven’t committed crimes.

A common excuse for the failure to address the rise in violent crime by the police is that they are under-resourced. Yet, they appear to have the time, money and resources to investigate a legal tweet, including visiting the man’s place of work and interviewing his bosses.

More worrying is that celebrity Katie Price is behind an initiative to criminalise online abuse. Now, it should go without saying that abusing people online – especially people with disabilities – is a vile and nasty thing to do. But beyond the usual rules of slander, libel, incitement, etc, it is incredibly dangerous for civil liberties and freedom of speech to start criminalising speech. As with the examples above, the police are already overzealous in pursuing non-crimes. A change to the law will simply give them the green light to harass people expressing robust opinions with greater conviction, and confirm that their role is to shepherd our thoughts and opinions towards the correct ones.

It is easier, after all, than tackling gangsters and organised criminals, and it gives a greater buzz of virtue.

http://hurryupharry.org/2019/01/25/the-thought-police-are-here/

by nicko Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:57 am

Shades of 1984 !

by Andy Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:59 am

Shades of V for Vendetta. Thr UK ruled by a Fascist far right government.

by nicko Mon Jan 28, 2019 11:01 am

Oh do fuck off and continue sucking Corbyn's cock !

by nicko Mon Jan 28, 2019 11:02 am

PS, sorry about the language, but that man really is an idiot !

by Andy Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:20 pm

Yawn. Go drink some Horlicks.

by Andy Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:26 pm

Some light viewing for Nicko and Tommy. No wonder they shit bricks when they see and hear "V". Twisted Evil

by nicko Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:32 pm

Shit Bricks ? you don't have a fucking clue about my life, you'v only played Cow boys and Indians !

by Syl Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:37 pm

nicko wrote:Shit Bricks ? you don't have a fucking clue about my life, you'v only played Cow boys and Indians !

Dont rise to it Nicko. Wink

by nicko Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:43 pm

Can't help it Syl, he's such a Wanker ! But your right love, he's not worth bothering about in future .

by Andy Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:45 pm

The future with Brexit and a Britain plagued by the far right IS a grim prospect.
It will keep you happy.

by 'Wolfie Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:22 pm

Britain is apparently already experiencing these beginnings of Orwellian 'thought police' indoctrination attempts, under the watch of a centre-right Tory government...

Imagine how much worse it could be if you lot ended up with an extremist authoritarian regime -- whether that be a Tommy/nicko/gelico style fascist utopia, or the Marxist hellhole that Thor&Lord Foul claim that Corbyn is preparing to visit upon Britain..

by eddie Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:04 pm

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Britain is apparently already experiencing these beginnings of Orwellian 'thought police' indoctrination attempts, under the watch of a centre-right Tory government...

Imagine how much worse it could be if you lot ended up with an extremist authoritarian regime -- whether that be a Tommy/nicko/gelico style fascist utopia, or the Marxist hellhole that Thor&Lord Foul claim that Corbyn is preparing to visit upon Britain..

How about....you talk about the topic and not other posters?
Try it!

by eddie Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:06 pm

Re the OP...

It’s so easy to be offended now that I genuinely hope my son’s generation will piss all over that. They certainly have a no-nonsense approach to things like this so let’s hope they stomp this shit out.

by Andy Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:30 pm

So many stories about a dystopian future under a hard Brexit.
Fuck medicines running out, KFC's could be in short supply.

KFC could run out of food under no deal Brexit' retail chiefs warn

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/kfc-could-run-out-food-13918415#ICID=Android_TMNewsApp_AppShare

by Guest Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:19 am

Following from my piece last week in which I complained about the growing trend of people being contacted by law-enforcement officers (or to put it another way “The Police”) after they’d expressed opinions of one sort or another – as they are legally entitled to do in a free and democratic country – online via their blogs or social media, I feel it is necessary to write about this topic again because there’s been another incident.

The Thought Police Are Here Screen-Shot-2019-02-06-at-14.34.30

For the full background read the twitter thread belonging to Margaret Nelson, the woman whose morning was interrupted by the Thought Police. Actually, calling them “the thought police” diminishes the severity and urgency of this issue for these are not some self-appointed committee tasked themselves with interfering in online discourse. No, these are the real police. These are uniformed officers of The Crown with the full powers of arrest and the monopoly on force, neither of which – thankfully- they have opted to use so far.

They can’t arrest people because no crime has been committed, but this does not stop them from knocking on doors and ringing people at home and at work to chat and chastise following an incident of non-criminal speech which has caused ‘offence’. During these calls, the ‘offenders’ are typically urged to remove their blog posts or tweets, or whatever form their offensive thoughts were expressed in.

They’re keen to stress to to the people they contact that they have not broken the law. But here’s the thing: The police do not have the right to make public policy – that is for parliament. Their duty is to enforce the law as made by our elected representatives. That is democracy. That is democratic policing.

If they believe their mandate exceeds enforcing the law, who mandated it?

The United Kingdom has always prided itself on the idea of “Policing By Consent”. Explained on the UK Government website, it is, succinctly, for those not familiar with the concept:

“[A] philosophy of policing … derived not from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect and affection of the public’… [T]he power of the police [comes] from the common consent of the public, as opposed to the power of the state.”

The question the British police need to ask themselves before they lose the respect and affection – or indeed the co-operation – of the public is: Who consented to this police behavior?

If a police officer knocked on one’s door with a ‘complaint’ about something one had written on a blog or on social media and conceded it did not break the law, one should (and probably does) have the right to tell them, politely, to leave one in peace. They have no right to interrupt the peaceful enjoyment of one’s day except where they believe a crime has been committed and where one is involved in said crime.

What’s more, one should have the right to sue to police under the Data Protection Act if they retain one’s name on any official record not pertaining to the investigation of a crime. If this is nt the case, it ought to be an urgent civil liberties issue.

The trouble is, making a fuss will provide the police with an incentive to either (1) seek to have online speech come under their remit, or (2) to find creative interpretations of existing law to actually charge people with something so they can continue with the practice of policing thought and expression – a practice they appear to enjoy, have taken up with self-righteous zeal, and which they show every sign of getting comfortable with.

People who value freedom of thought and expression in a modern liberal democracy really out to write to their MPs so something is done about this obvious mission creep. The police are seizing powers they don’t have, and they must be stopped. In addition, someone ought to put in a freedom of info request and find out how much it costs the police to process and follow up on a Twitter non-crime.

But most importantly, a free society must make it very clear we never consented to be policed in this way.

http://hurryupharry.org/2019/02/06/the-policing-of-thought-expression-in-britain-today/

by Original Quill Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:28 am

Ehhh...I think nicko and Andy were just having a little banter among friends. Let 'em be.

by Fred Moletrousers Thu Feb 07, 2019 9:43 am

Andy wrote:Shades of V for Vendetta. Thr UK ruled by a Fascist far right government.

Apologies for being so behind with this contribution, but you do realise, don't you, that this sort of operational policy decision is now taken largely by Police and Crime Commissioners?

The incumbent in the "People's Republic of South Yorkshire" since 2014 has been one Alan Billings of the, er, Labour Party...

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