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Roy Chubby Brown cancelled in Sheffield...

By moralists whose belief system is based upon censorship, bullying and intolerance


Link Here5th September 2021
A campaign has been growing in support of comic Roy Chubby Brown performing following the news that a planned gig in Sheffield has been cancelled.

Following complaints from a number of people, Sheffield City Trust decided to censor Roy Chubby Brown's show and remove it from the City Hall's programme of upcoming events.

A statement from Chief executive of Sheffield City Trust, Andrew Snelling, said:

We have decided to remove the rescheduled show by comedian Roy Chubby Brown at Sheffield City Hall on January 29, 2022.

We don't believe this show reflects Sheffield City Trust values, particularly our ambition that our leisure, culture and entertainment venues are inclusive for all in Sheffield.

Roy Chubby Brown responded on Facebook:

Hi all, you may have heard by now that the Sheffield city trust/council have banned me from appearing at the City Hall Sheffield in January 2022 due to the nature of my show, so I just wanted to put my view on the record -- At first I had a sense of anger and disbelief, but on reflection I now feel just disappointment and sadness with the decision and the way things are going generally.

I have been performing at the City Hall annually for the last 30+ years and have always had great nights there and a wonderful working relationship with the management and staff at the City Hall, and my fans have always come along and supported me in their thousands through the years.

Now in these strange times of snowflakes and political correctness it has been decided that I am no longer welcome.

Why Now! is my question, WHY NOW! is my show unsuitable after 30 years at the City Hall??

Nothing has changed, the show is performed behind closed doors, and it clearly states on all advertising that IF EASILY OFFENDED! PLEASE STAY AWAY!We don't allow children in! It is strictly 18+ and people who come to the show know exactly what they are coming for206. A GOOD LAUGH! it's an act with one sole purpose, and that is to put a smile on people's faces, certainly not to offend, which I'm sure all will agree is much needed in these present times. I understand the content of my show isn't to everyone's taste, and hand on heart I totally respect that, so as the posters and advertising clearly states.. IF EASILY OFFENDED, PLEASE STAY AWAY!

That quite simply means don't buy a ticket to see me if the show is not for you! It's not difficult! I dont buy tickets for things which aren't my cup of tea, but I certainly don't demonstrate to get them cancelled, and spoil things for people who do want to see it! You have a choice!! But the show obviously does appeal to thousands of people or I wouldn't have had to put pen to paper to write this.. as Chubby Brown wouldn't exist if no one came to see him, and I've been going for 50 years..??!!!

Love Roy

A petition in support of Brown has gathered about 29,000 signatures.

 

 

UK and US play silly games with backdoors for encrypted messaging...

The Chinese will be probing your backdoors as soon as they are introduced


Link Here 8th March 2020
Full story: UK Government vs Encryption...Government seeks to restrict peoples use of encryption
   
 Haha he thought he was protected by a level 5 lock spell,
but every bobby on the street has a level 6 unlock spell,
and the bad guys have level 10.

The Government is playing silly games trying to suggest ways that snooping backdoors on people's encrypted messaging could be unlocked by the authorities whilst being magically safe from bad guys especially those armed with banks of Chinese super computers.

The government wants to make backdoors mandatory for messaging and offers a worthless 'promise' that authority figures would need to agree before the police are allowed to use their key to unlock messages.

Andersen Cheng, chief executive of Post-Quantum, a specialist encryption firm working with Nato and Government agencies, said a virtual key split into five parts - or more - could unlock messages when all five parties agreed and the five key fragments were joined together.

Those five parties could include the tech firm like Facebook, police, security service or GCHQ, an independent privacy advocate or specialist similar to the independent reviewer of terror legislation and the judge authorising the warrant.

Cheng's first company TRL helped set up the secure communications system used by 10 Downing Street to talk with GCHQ, embassies and world leaders, but I bet that system did not include backdoor keys.

The government claims that official access would only be granted where, for example, the police or security service were seeking to investigate communications between suspect parties at a specific time, and where a court ruled it was in the public or nation's interest.

However the government does not address the obvious issue of bad guys getting hold of the keys and letting anyone unlock the messages for a suitable fee. And sometimes those bad guys are armed with the best brute force code cracking powers in the world.

 

 

Commented: Orwellian police ticked off for their harassment of people exercising their right to free speech...

Court finds that the police were acting unlawfully in pursuing Harry Miller for Twitter posts insulting trans people


Link Here17th February 2020
Background to the case

1. Between November 2018 and January 2019 the Claimant, Harry Miller, posted a number of tweets on Twitter about transgender issues. He holds gender critical views. The Claimant strongly denies being prejudiced against transgender people. He regards himself as taking part in the ongoing debate about reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 on which the Government consulted in 2018.

2. The College of Policing is the professional body whose purpose is to provide those working in policing with the skills and knowledge necessary for effective policing. The College publishes operational guidance for police forces in relation to hate incidents. This is called the Hate Crime Operational Guidance (HCOG). It requires police forces to record hate incidents whether or not they are criminal. The recording is done primarily for intelligence purposes. A noncriminal hate incident in relation to transgender is defined as

Any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.

3. The Claimant's tweets were reported to Humberside Police by a transgender woman called Mrs B. Mrs B read the tweets when a friend told her about them. She regarded them as transphobic. They were recorded by the police as a non-crime hate incident. Of all the people who read the tweets, Mrs B was the only person to complain.

[An example Twitter post was

You're a man.

You're breasts are made of silicone
Your vagina goes nowhere
And we can tell the difference
Even when you are not there

Your hormones are synthetic
And lets just cross this bridge
What you have you stupid man
Is male privilege.]

4. A police officer visited the Claimant's place of work to speak to him about his tweets. They subsequently spoke on the telephone. What was said is disputed, but in his judgment Mr Justice Julian Knowles finds that the officer left the Claimant with the impression that he might be prosecuted if he continued to tweet. A press statement issued by an Assistant Chief Constable and a response to a complaint by the police also referred to the possibility of criminal proceedings if matters escalated, a term which was never further defined.

The judgment

5. In this application for judicial review the Claimant challenged the lawfulness of HCOG. He argued that, as a policy, it violates domestic law and also Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression. Alternatively, he argued that even if the policy is lawful, his treatment by the police was disproportionate and unlawfully interfered with his right of free speech under Article 10(1).

6. In his judgment handed down today, Mr Justice Julian Knowles concludes that HCOG is lawful as a policy both under domestic law and under Article 10. The policy draws upon many years of work on hate crime and hate incidents which began with the 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The Court concludes that HCOG serves legitimate purposes and is not disproportionate.

7. However, Mr Justice Julian Knowles also finds that the police's actions towards the Claimant disproportionately interfered with his right of freedom of expression on the particular facts of this case. The judgment emphasises the vital importance of free speech in a democracy and provides a reminder that free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, and that the freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.

8. Mr Justice Julian Knowles concludes that the Claimant's tweets were lawful and that there was not the slightest risk that he would commit a criminal offence by continuing to tweet. He finds the combination of the police visiting the Claimant's place of work, and their subsequent statements in relation to the possibility of prosecution, were a disproportionate interference with the Claimant's right to freedom of expression because of their potential chilling effect. In response to the Defendants' submissions that any interference with the Claimant's rights was trivial and justifiable, the judge concludes that these arguments impermissibly minimise what occurred and do not properly reflect the value of free speech in a democracy. He writes: The effect of the police turning up at [the Claimant's] place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated. To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.

9. To that extent, Mr Justice Julian Knowles upholds the Claimant's claim.

The BBC obtained a follow up statement from the police rather showing that the police are wedded to the Orwellian society that they are enforcing.

Deputy Chief Constable Bernie O'Reilly, of the College of Policing, said:

Policing's position is clear - we want everyone to feel able to express opinions as passionately as they wish without breaking the law.

He added:

Hate incidents can be a precursor to these types of crimes and without recording them the police will begin to lose sight of what is happening in their communities - and potentially lose their confidence.

Offsite Comment: We need more Harry Millers

15th February 2020. See article from spiked-online.com by Tom Slater

He fought the thoughtpolice, and he won.

Today is a good day for free speech in Britain. The High Court has ruled that it is unlawful for police officers to harass members of the public for expressing views on the internet that some people find offensive, but are otherwise entirely legal to express. That this even had to be clarified tells us something about how far we've fallen, and how sorely this ruling was needed.

Statement: Index welcomes ruling that police reaction to tweets was disproportionate interference

15th February 2020. See article from indexoncensorship.org by Jodie Ginsberg

Index has long expressed concerns about the way police are handling online speech.

Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said:

All too often speech that breaks no law is being investigated in a way that stifles people's freedom to express themselves -- while direct and credible threats of violence go unpunished.

Index on Censorship provided a witness statement in the Miller case and in particular noted the importance of being able to debate matters of public interest, such as the questions that arose from the government's consultation on the Gender Recognition Act. Index argued that the growing number of cases in which police were contacting individuals about online speech that was not illegal -- and sometimes asking for posts to be removed -- was creating confusion among the wider population about what is and is not legal speech.

Offsite Comment: Unpopular Thoughts Approved In The UK

17th February 2020. See article from reprobatepress.com by David Flint

 

 

 

You can't say that...

Researchers at King’s College London ave published research confirming that free speech has been lost at British Universities


Link Here5th December 2019
Researchers at King's College London (KCL) asked over 2,000 students about their views on free speech on campus and in society.

The majority (59%) of Conservative-voting students said they believe that those who share their views are reluctant to express themselves at university. This compared with 36% of those voted Labour and 37% of those who voted for the Liberal Democrats. Students who voted for the Green Party were the most comfortable with expressing their views, with just 32% saying that their like-minded peers would self-censor on campus.

A quarter of students, irrespective of their political persuasion, said they are unable to express their views at university because they are scared of disagreeing with their peers, according to the KCL study.

Half think that free speech is under threat in society as a whole.


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