RuamRudy

Then be bold and speak plainly. What is going on?

Maybe it's Tory Britain that's the problem here?

3 years of imprisonment or 10 hours of community service? Balance isn't really your thing, is it?

Yeah, but you know that's not correct - or at least if you were willing to actually educate yourself about his speech you would know (although I appreciate that you take comfort from your position of Daily Mail fed ignorance). You also know that even were his speech to have been racist, it would not be covered retrospectively by this bill (or is that something else you have failed to grasp) yet you still chose to waste the valuable time of police in another country by raising a vexatious issue for fits and giggles.

I would hardly call JonnyF a leftie...

You speak about me in the 3rd person with such confidence, despite being so utterly wrong. What utterly sanctimonious, poorly thought out tripe you wrote. How far can you see from up on that high horse of yours? The case was hardly a secret, having been splashed across the UK news at the time. I said then and I say it again now, 3 years is a disgusting penalty designed to scare people away from protesting against the interests of big business and their friends in government. Should they have been punished? Yes, of course they should have been. But the penalty was wholly disproportionate to the offence.

Good - as long as these policies remain in force, the international community should continue to isolate Uganda.

A rather one sided article - did the Jewish Chronicle give the organisers of the march an opportunity to address the points made against them? That's how unbiased journalism generally works.

Did that really make sense to you when you typed it? If there were no black or Asian MPs in Westminster then maybe it might have worked (and, of course, if the UK parliament was still blighted by that grifter'a presence) but the point Humza Yousef was making is that there are very few people of black or Asian heritage in the Scottish parliament despite Scots of ethnic heritage making up a sizeable number of our countrymen.

Hatred against the Scottish people? He IS Scottish. Is it self loathing that you are accusing him of?

Why did you stop so soon? Maybe the bus could have careered into a nuclear facility and created a Chernobyl type situation across the south east, or it might have taken out a passing world leader, sparking an international crisis that led to global nuclear war? Your fantasy has so many more miles left in it.

That it seems reasonable to you comes as no surprise, but I am sure that there are many who recognise it as being truly authoritarian and Draconian; the sign of a weak government who uses fear and bullying to quash dissent.

Regardless of the details of his banner, 3 years for protesting is an outrage. I don't recall that law generating nearly so much umbrage on these boards.

3 years for hanging a banner off a bridge? That is not the sign of a healthy democracy.

Off topic? Are the parallels not obvious to you? Seriously? You called Scotland a police state yet you have no comment on the much worse situation across the UK? I would say that your position is not objective but political.

A genuine question - how do you feel about Sunak's attack on the right to protest? "For holding a sign outside a courthouse reminding jurors of their right to acquit defendants, a retiree faces up to two years in prison. For hanging a banner reading "Just Stop Oil" off a bridge, an engineer got a three-year prison sentence. Just for walking slowly down the street, scores of people have been arrested." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/the-right-to-protest-is-under-threat-in-britain-undermining-a-pillar-of-democracy

And yet not a single charge resulting from it. Could it be that it's possible for all laws to be abused thus?

Why would you do that? I presume that you know that the law is not retroactive so you know that your complaint is going to waste limited police resources? Why waste police time then boast about it?

It's called politics, but fortunately it's nothing like as bad as the cronyism and corruption that saturates English politics and, subsequently, pollutes the rest of the UK.

That reads a bit colonial - sort of like the natives can't be trusted not to pass laws their betters disapprove of. The bill received cross party support when it passed in 2021. This is not a single party imposed law.

There are 2 different issues here. One is the intent of the law; the other is the abuse of it by those who object to it or the party that implemented it. Note that the SNP does not have a majority in the Scottish parliament. The law was passed with cross party support, 82 for, 34 against and 4 abstentions. This is not an SNP whim.

I disagree. All laws are open to abuse. Should we avoid passing any law because of a small number of people with malicious intent?

I don't keep a log on anyone's activities, but then again even if I was why would you be aware. Are you keeping a log on users' activities? Based on this rant, i suspect it is you who needs to take the break.

Indeed, there is seemingly no limit to the idiocy of malicious, bigoted people. I think each one should be charged with wasting police time - but that would, of course, waste even more police time on these idiots.

Positive political discourse is taking a stand. Making vexatious complaints to the police about wildly misrepresented occurrences is not.