But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
Like… it's okay to complain about bad legislation without misrepresenting it. It's bad enough that you don't need to make shit up about it.
It's hard to take this seriously, especially when if I ask for citations it'll likely be a couple of extremely obscure cases where the details are being conveniently glossed over.
"As director of public prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer issued..."
Past tense.
> In September 2022, a British woman was arrested and charged for holding up an "abolish monarchy" sign at a proclamation ceremony for King Charles III in Edinburgh. Similar arrests throughout the country around this period over anti-monarchy republican sentiment have alarmed human rights groups.
actually no. its grossly offensive. Not someone finding it offense. And normally its a legal garnish, for something like trying to get someone else killed or injured via text.
However you can be arrested for organising a protest that someone might reasonably find annoying. That has much less legal oversight.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
You're still subjected to exactly the same legal restrictions on the speech itself as anywhere else in public, and that's nothing new.
I'm not defending his arrest, and quite obviously something went very wrong there, but again, we're talking about jail here. Posting an obscure cockup as if its the norm is pretty disingenuous.
You're free to complete saying something unlawful because until you've said something unlawful you haven't committed a crime, but furthermore, English law on what is "unlawful" to say or do is also complicated in that many things are okay to say or do in contexts where they will not cause offence but becomes illegal if done in front of the "wrong" people or with the "wrong" intent.
As such, until there has been a complaint there often will not be a basis for saying that something was unlawful to say unless it is really far over the line.
If you were to start shouting something blatantly illegal such as chanting support for a proscribed organisation, you must certainly would not find police standing there and waiting unless they deemed it likely to be more disruptive to peace and order to stop you right away.
This expends past speech - e.g. public nudity is in the same category that isn't illegal in itself but where intent or the effect on others can make it unlawful - and this notion on relying on intent and whether or not someone present took offense rather than clearly delineating where the boundary is, is a challenge with English law because of the huge gray areas it creates.
[used "English law" as shorthand here - really it is the law of England & Wales, and much of it will be the same in Scotland, but Scotland does have a separate legal system, hence why it isn't "UK law"]
What do you think happens when you are arrested? You are taken to jail. At least for a few hours, or overnight, or even several days depending on the court schedule. And then there are the mountain of legal fees and dread of your fate hanging in the balance.
Sure, it’s not necessarily long term incarceration, but it’s enough to scare most reasonable people into submission.