Friday, January 04, 2008

Take A Raincheck On This Folks!

The blogosphere is going crazy over a posting on this site where someone called Lionheart, based in the UK has stated that he is about to be arrested under the “Race and religious hatred bill” for something he has written on his blog site.

On the comments on his site he has been advised to flee to the US and claim refugee status, others have said that the US should break off relations with the UK and other nonsense statements.

I would advise caution at this stage. I am sure I read somewhere that the bill had not been enacted and indeed a google search does not bring up any date for the enactment of this piece of legislation. As for the public order act, then whatever has been written would have to be really heavy stuff, not just the sort of things we bloggers write about. From a local government website I found this:

”The Bill is aiming to ensure freedom of speech and the right to practise religion without fear are protected by maintaining the right to engage in debate about religion and providing a clear difference between criticism of a religion and the criminal act of inciting hatred against person(s) on the basis of their religion.

The legislation will not prevent people telling jokes about or making fun of religions, causing offence to followers of a religion, trying to convert somebody to one’s own religion or urging followers of a different religion to cease practising theirs or expressing antipathy or dislike of particular religions or their followers.”

Let’s wait for more information on this one. I know that we all like to dummify our dhimmi politicians but England has a very long established justice system. Hell, they can't even deport convicted terrorists.

The first case under such a bill is unlikely to succeed in my view, they couldn't get Nick Griffin on racial hatred under the public order act for saying that Islam was a cruel and wicked religion - or words to that effect.

If anyone can find a source that states the enactment date of the race and religious hatred bill I would be grateful. In the meantime maybe it's a case of I don't want to believe this and it would be a good thing if I am right.

(cross posted with CommonSenseAgainstIslam)

7 comments:

Always On Watch said...

I am in contact with Lion Heart, via email. His may well be some kind of test case.

I did read some months back that some type of hate-crimes legislation did indeed pass in the UK--with something less strong than the original wording.

Ray Boyd said...

As I believe it what we all say about the matter is OK to say but to direct racial/religious comments towards an individual(s)with a view to inciting others is not.

Lots of grey areas here. Do we know what was said was on a public blog site or was it on printed matter? No doubt we will find out in due course.

VinceP1974 said...

We'll wait till they execute him before we say anything. Good enough?

Always On Watch said...

Ray,
Well, I don't have much faith in any legal system any more.

Anonymous said...

Nick Griffin was arrested and put on trial in Britain in 2005 with the threat of 7 years in prison for simply saying that "Islam is a wicked and vicious cult". That was with the old legislation. It's been tightened up since then so that the truth is no justification.

Shug Niggurath said...

Having read the LionheartUK blog posts, I'm not at all sure that any of this is real.

I would definitely look for some evidence to back up the entire thing before allowing blogs such as this post articles which may in the end make you look foolish.

Pastorius said...

Shug,
Lionheart is not very good at providing links or references for the assertions he makes.