Are there no Liberal Parties Anymore? Conservatives Clamp Down on Freedom

[Aexodus]

The Tory party has failed to roll back Labour established hate laws - like a Liberal would do - and is actually bent on expanding them. They wish to include ageism and misogyny as illegal forms of ‘hate’. I hate to make a slippery slope argument, but first it was racism, but now it’s sexism, ageism, and well, what comes next? They’re also considering misandry and prejudice against Goths, of all things as crimes of hate.

Goths, men, women and elderly people could receive protection under hate crime laws after officials announced a wide-ranging review of current legislation.

The Law Commission, the independent body that recommends legal reforms, will look at whether there are any gaps in hate crime legislation as part of a package of measures announced by the Home Office on Tuesday.

Both misogyny (prejudice against women) and misandry (prejudice against men) will be considered by the review, as will attitudes towards alternative lifestyles such as goth subculture, and age.

Race, religion, trans identity, sexual orientation and disability are the so-called “protected characteristics” covered by current legislation.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that the prevailing winds of social justice-ism seem to be having an influence here. Frankly it makes me feel ashamed to call myself social conservative. Sajid Javid had this to say about the potentially tighter laws.

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “Hate crime goes directly against the longstanding British values of unity, tolerance and mutual respect, and I am committed to stamping this sickening behaviour out. Our refreshed action plan sets out how we will tackle the root causes of prejudice and racism, support hate crime victims and ensure offenders face the full force of the law.”

He seems to have forgotten the quintessentially British value of Liberty, alongside of course democracy, rule of law, mutual respect and tolerance.

The problem with hate crime is that it has such a wide net. I have no problem with prosecuting racially motivated assault and so on. The problem is that kind of serious crime, is lumped in the same basket as offensive speech. It makes hate crime and hate incidents as a recorded statistic totally and utterly useless. No one likes, harassement of women, but if you think it’s the government’s job to prosecute someone for wolf-whistling (as advocated by “Liberal”-Democrat Deputy Leader Jo Swinson). These people aren’t Liberals and we shouldn’t call them such.

Hate crimes and hate incidents

In most crimes it is something the victim has in their possession or control that motivates the offender to commit the crime. With hate crime it is ‘who’ the victim is, or ‘what’ the victim appears to be that motivates the offender to commit the crime.

A hate crime is defined as 'Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.'
A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.

Not all hate incidents will amount to criminal offences, but it is equally important that these are reported and recorded by the police.

Evidence of the hate element is not a requirement. You do not need to personally perceive the incident to be hate related. It would be enough if another person, a witness or even a police officer thought that the incident was hate related.

Particularly concerning where it comes to hate incidents specifically, is that evidence of a crime or of hate is not required.

One thing I find disturbing from the Guardian article is this quote by the government’s Minister for Faith Nick Bourne.

“The publication of today’s updated plan reaffirms this government’s belief that there can never be an excuse for hatred towards anyone. Wherever we find it, we will oppose it and challenge it.”

Huh. No good reason to have a gun, no good reason to have a knife, now it’s no good reason to hate anyone. How can you make a stand against an emotion? Hatred is just a natural human emotion. Taking a stand against one individuals hatred of another, and making a statement of intent to ‘stamp it out’ by the government, is too far. I don’t like defending things I don’t like such as verbal abuse, but I hate banning it more.

In an August article Politico noted the recent Tory push for interventionism towards free speech.

The push for a more interventionist approach to the online world was driven forward by ambitious former Digital Secretary Matt Hancock (who was promoted to health secretary in the July reshuffle prompted by Johnson's resignation). The 2017 Conservative election manifesto, which Hancock helped to compile, shows the direction of travel. "Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree," it declares.

The document pledges to "put a responsibility on industry not to direct users — even unintentionally — to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of harm" and to make clear the responsibility of platforms to enable the reporting of inappropriate, bullying, harmful or illegal content, with take-down on a comply-or-explain basis."

...Officials are drawing up proposals that could force platforms to verify the age of their users; bring in new transparency rules on how quickly social media companies are taking harmful material down; and to legally underpin a code of conduct that includes demands that users should have the capacity to report abuse targeting gender, transgender identity, disability, race, sexual orientation, religion and political views. Officials are also looking closely at Germany's hate speech law known as NetzDG — which requires tech platforms to remove posts or face fines.

As the above says, there is a fine line between censoring ‘hate speech’ (which I disagree with) and political censorship (which I definitely disagree with). This is highlighted by taking to court political figures like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, not that I agree with all his stances. The idea we can’t offend people is totally wrong.

The ‘libertarian wing’ is weaker than ever.

Ministers will want to avoid such a response to their own plans from Tory MPs, but Nigel Huddleston, who is new Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright's parliamentary private secretary, said there is a pragmatism on the backbenches. He said the libertarian wing of the party is weaker than it has been in the past and many Tories agree that privacy laws are not fit for the digital era.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Conservative MP Lee Rowley, a leading figure in Freer, a new think tank based within the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs, said he thinks the government's plans are a "sensible place to start" but said the Conservative Party is instinctively questioning "what government can do and is able to do and should do."

"There is a cultural issue, and there is a manners issue and there is something beyond just what you can do in legislation," he said, "As somebody who starts off being instinctively wary about legislating unless there is a necessity, I recognize there is a series of legitimate questions. I am not sure I or a lot of my colleagues have quite got to the place as to where there are answers."

Freer's director, Rebecca Lowe, went further, calling some of the government rhetoric on online regulation and the 2017 manifesto "pretty worrying,"

"Sometimes things with good intentions have bad consequences would be my fear here," she said.

I haven’t even got started on the 18+ age verification for porn to be introduced in Spring 2019.

Rules for how the ban on under-18s will work were quietly passed by the House of Commons on Monday this week – and are expected to be in place by April. From that date, anyone who visits a porn site from a British IP address will be asked for ‘proof’ they are 18, provided either from ID such as driving licences or from age verification cards bought in shops.

Note that the age of sexual consent in Britain is 16.

The Conservative leadership don’t value free speech or light-touch government, and neither do the lib dems it must be said.

And Labour is worse.

Diversity and inclusion and tolerance are important, but let’s not lose our ing minds. Liberty matters too.

[mongrel]

Why shouldn't women and wrinklies* get further protections from abuse? What positive freedom is there to protect in respect of those abusers? Worried that one's hatred would get on the wrong saide of the law? Simple, don't act like an arse every time one sees a woman or an old or brown face. We are, after all, supposed to be grown up after a certain age.

For those too embarrassed to view porn without showing id, I suggest aquiring either a companion or a hobby. In my day one had to buy a Playboy magazine to hide one's copy of the Daily Mail in. There are surely greater issues affecting the country than free access to sloots and titty images.

* My token concession to this obsessive ranting about the virtues of being un-PC.

[Muizer]

Tbh I think in the broader sense Aexodus has a good point. When it comes to things like drugs and petty crime, it's usually been the liberal approach to try to address the root causes rather than settle for suppressing their symptoms. Why would discrimination be different? The goal should be to change people's attitudes. Of course people need protection from discrimination, but creating laws that result in dragging people into courts on often unprovable charges is pointless and more likely to martyr the accused.

[mongrel]

Tbh I think in the broader sense Aexodus has a good point. When it comes to things like drugs and petty crime, it's usually been the liberal approach to try to address the root causes rather than settle for suppressing their symptoms. Why would discrimination be different? The goal should be to change people's attitudes. Of course people need protection from discrimination, but creating laws that result in dragging people into courts on often unprovable charges is pointless and more likely to martyr the accused.

We all know that given the current state of politics and the media.When there is political and financial benefit for maintaining poor relations between differing groups, this ain't going to happen.

Indeed. At some point there’s human behaviour that the government has no business in, and root causes of consternation between ethnic groups, such as segregation, are the real issue.

Since when were women , wrinklies and goths 'ethnic groups'. Are there ghettos of women? Coz the naughty part of me would like to visit these fabled places. Or have you betrayed the real reason for the thread, it's a Trojan Horse for yet another attack on ethnic minorities.

[Aexodus]

Indeed. At some point there’s human behaviour that the government has no business in, and root causes of consternation between ethnic groups, such as segregation, are the real issue.

[Himster]

Frankly it makes me feel ashamed to call myself social conservative.

At least something good came from all of this. If you work really hard at it and feel ashamed about everything then one day you can qualify as Irish.

But seriously, yes one cannot legislate against something as ephemeral as "hate", that's simply a fact. What actually happens is one person performs an action (it can be an action of literally any kind involving people of any type) and then another person will interpret and presume the intent of that action. This process can only be categorized as guessing, it has nothing to do with "hate" or even protecting people. It is 100% random. These legislations can only achieve nothing by their very nature.

It takes a particularly anti-liberal mindset to even contemplate these notions as being an acceptable mode of conduct, let alone enforcement. The fact that we're seeing the adoption of similar processes all over the western world by both ends of the (increasingly divergent) spectrum is strong testament to the hypothesis that liberalism is no longer adequately represented politically if at all.

[Aexodus]

I mean the Republic’s not perfect either when it comes to hate speech laws.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Ireland

The Constitution of Ireland guarantees Irish citizens the right "to express freely their convictions and opinions"; however, this right is "subject to public order and morality", mass media "shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State", and "publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence".^[36]The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 made it an offence to make, distribute, or broadcast "threatening, abusive or insulting" words, images, or sounds with intent or likelihood to "stir up hatred", where "hatred" is "against a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origins, membership of the travelling community or sexual orientation".^[37] The first conviction was in 2000, of a bus driver who told a Gambian passenger "You should go back to where you came from".^[38] Frustration at the low number of prosecutions (18 by 2011) was attributed to a misconception that the law addressed hate crimes more generally as opposed to incitement in particular.^[39] In 2013 the Constitutional Convention considered the constitutional prohibition of blasphemy, and recommended replacing it with a ban on incitement to religious hatred.^[40] This was endorsed by the Oireachtas,^[41] and in 2017 the Fine Gael-led government planned a referendum for October 2018.^[42]

I assume you voted yes Himster? https://www.irishtimes.com/news/soci...78935?mode=amp

[conon394]

I haven’t even got started on the 18+ age verification for porn to be introduced in Spring 2019.

I'm not feeling outrage on this although not matching age of consent does seem odd. Make those lazy millennials pay attention to the address bar and simply opt for porn that is not .UK

As to the OP I would reserve judgment and see how the policies are implemented and what the public response is. After all the UK is not Russia and the Tory government is not strong. If poor reaction figures in weakening the party one can assume the the regulations might get rolled back at least how they are implemented. In enforcement I mean Jay walking laws are obviously a huge impediment to libertarian sensibilities but of course they not enforced all the often if ever in most places in the US. Thus it may that in breach they used for egregious examples most of the time

[Yayattasa]

Are you seriously trying to defend the right to wolf-whistling?

[Prodromos]

You got a license for that honk?

An elderly “pillar of the community” had to be questioned under UK so-called hate crime laws because she honked her horn at a woman who happened to be black, revealed a senior police commissioner.

Anthony Stansfeld, the police commissioner for Thames Valley, used the example as he called for a change to legislation that he said means anything “perceived” to be a hate crime has to be investigated.

He told the Times, “It was an absolute classic. An elderly couple turned up at a petrol station and there was a woman who had filled up with petrol in front of them.”

“She was taking ages fiddling around and the lady who was driving, who was in her seventies, peeped on the horn and out flew an Afro-Caribbean lady who screamed abuse at them, went into the kiosk, and reported it as a hate crime,” he said.

According to Stansfeld, current legislation meant the police had to investigate, and the elderly woman was questioned under police caution.

He said that they had to put the incident on record.

“She asked us to remove it but the law is such that once it’s on the books we cannot do so,” said Stansfeld.

Stansfeld however, said that even as it stands, current legislation could lead to “huge injustices” and is calling for it to be changed.

He voiced his support for other senior police officers who have recently pushed back against the recent emphasis on hate crimes.

They argue there are simply more important things to focus on, such as growing knife crime, record homicide levels, and the fact that only one in every 20 burglaries is solved.

In a speech on Oct. 31, Sara Thornton, chair of the National Police Chief’s Council, said that misogyny should not be added to what many police officers feel is an ever-growing list of hate crimes.

She said that while it was “a concern for some well-organized campaigning organizations,” it should not be a matter for police.

‘Thoughts Should Not Be Criminal’

“Police-recorded crime has risen 9 percent,” she said. “Homicide has hit the highest point for more than 10 years. There’s been a 12 percent rise in knife crime. Robbery has gone up 22 percent and vehicle theft 7 percent.”

Last summer police chiefs were asked to start recording hate incidents, including misogyny, when no crime had been committed. Some refused.

Other top-ranking police officers rallied behind Thornton’s remarks, including the head of London’s Met Police, the most senior police officer in the country.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/police...n_2708402.html

[Aexodus]

I'm not feeling outrage on this although not matching age of consent does seem odd. Make those lazy millennials pay attention to the address bar and simply opt for porn that is not .UK

There’s no good reason for this law. That is reason enough for me to oppose it. It’s just another nanny state intervention.

As to the OP I would reserve judgment and see how the policies are implemented and what the public response is. After all the UK is not Russia and the Tory government is not strong. If poor reaction figures in weakening the party one can assume the the regulations might get rolled back at least how they are implemented. In enforcement I mean Jay walking laws are obviously a huge impediment to libertarian sensibilities but of course they not enforced all the often if ever in most places in the US. Thus it may that in breach they used for egregious examples most of the time

With respect I don’t think these can be implemented well. 9000 people were arrested for ‘offensive’ things said online last year alone.

You are correct that the Tories are not strong, however the party that would replace them is even more extreme.

They are enforced quite notoriously I assure you, unlike jaywalking perhaps. Jaywalking however is at least a more credible law.

Are you seriously trying to defend the right to wolf-whistling?

Yes



Edit:

[Himster]

Well Ireland has always had trouble with the boundaries of public discourse, mostly not wanting to annoy you boys up north too much while also really wanting to annoy you... a lot. Then there were the in the church hiding pedos using hush money and the IRA blowing off the kneecaps of those who spoke out of line, wide spread corporal punishment imposed on children for all sorts of infractions by any and all authority figures. Imagine a movie set in America in the 30s, but with more potatoes and way more elderly virgin men in dresses telling people what to do. All in all, we've come a long way since the 90s.
Of course I voted yes, blasphemy laws in the 21st century? No thanks, we're not the Afghanistan of Europe anymore. Someone else can be the Afghanistan of Europe now.

[Gaidin]

Isn't that covered under gender?

[conon394]

There’s no good reason for this law. That is reason enough for me to oppose it. It’s just another nanny state intervention.

Technically as was noted it is a conservative nanny state issue and one with a long history in the US at least. They had a lot porn in the books shops back in my young teen days but picking one or buying I was not going to happen unless you could prove you were 16. Getting pron now is so easy I have little sympathy.

[Aexodus]

Technically as was noted it is a conservative nanny state issue and one with a long history in the US at least. They had a lot porn in the books shops back in my young teen days but picking one or buying I was not going to happen unless you could prove you were 16. Getting pron now is so easy I have little sympathy.

I’m not sure you’re getting the point. Directly regulating the internet like this is the wrong direction. It’s not a conservative nanny state issue, all the main parties are in agreement on this. It’s not actually about access to porn per se. Obviously VPN networks are going to become very popular in the UK quite soon, as they are in China and other heavily regulated countries.

People had concerns going back to 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/...bsites-privacy

“This is cutting-edge censorship,” said Myles Jackman, a lawyer specialising in obscenity law. “We are now becoming the world leaders in censorship. And we are being watched very closely from abroad.”

Adult websites would offer visitors a choice of identity providers – from Vodafone to the Department for Work and Pensions – to vouch for their age, O’Connell said. The user would sign in to the provider with a username and password, and a check would be run against the data it holds.

But critics warn against any system linking use of pornography websites to identity. Jerry Barnett, a free-speech campaigner and author of the Sex & Censorship blog, said any such system must make detailed records of web-browsing history.

“And we know that privacy in such cases is often breached by accident, by hackers, or secretly by the police and intelligence services,” Barnett said. “This is the state, yet again, intervening in people’s private lives for no reason other than good old British prurience and control-freakery.”
The Conservatives made age verification for online pornography a key part of their election pitch. Checks would “stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online,” the Tory manifesto vowed. “Websites that do not put them in place will be blocked,” Sajid Javid, then culture secretary, added in an election campaign Facebook post.

Ensuring under-16s don’t have access to porn is purely the job of parents.

Few politicians would oppose child protection. Chris Bryant, Labour’s culture spokesman, has already accused the Tories of being slow to act.

As mentioned Labour agree.

According to Tory proposals, a regulator would have the power to block sites that don’t use stringent enough checks. Observers believe this will be the Authority for Television on Demand (Atvod), which currently enforces age-check and obscenity rules on UK streaming video sites.

Barnett pointed out that age checks can only work with “draconian” levels of censorship. “I don’t believe Atvod’s plans can be achieved without drastically changing the face of the internet,” he said. Neither the US nor most EU states have gone so far.

Overblocking is also a fear. Facebook has been criticised for censoring pictures of nursing mothers. Filters introduced by British ISPs since 2013, which users have to ask to remove, have blocked sex education sites and even refuges for victims of domestic abuse.

The legal situation is also confused. Ratcliff said it was unclear whether new rules would make content not behind age filters illegal. Jackman added: “As a matter of international law, I don’t understand how it can possibly work. And I don’t understand how it can work under the Obscene Publications Act. It’s just being made up as they go along.”

[Heathen Hammer]

You can't really have a free society where notion of "hate" is viewed as a legal concept, since such notion is highly subjective and vague, opening doors for a pletora of bias. Europe would benefit greatly from adopting American model, where you can say anything as long as it is not a call for immediate violent action.

[Gaidin]

You can't really have a free society where notion of "hate" is viewed as a legal concept, since such notion is highly subjective and vague, opening doors for a pletora of bias. Europe would benefit greatly from adopting American model, where you can say anything as long as it is not a call for immediate violent action.

It's not where hate is viewed as a legal concept. It's where crimes inspired by hate is viewed as a legal concept and carry a longer sentence. However, redundant hate crimes are redundant. Misogyny based hate crimes when you can already charge someone with gender based hate crimes? Is she also going to push for Misandry based hate crimes in an equal society? And then, thus, we have two redundant hate crimes in the world where a law is already passed and enforced regarding gender based hate crimes? What is she smoking and can I have some?

[I_Damian]

The Conservative party hasn't been Conservative for at least 20-years. None of the three main parties in the UK today are Conservative, or even close to the centre. They're all left wing parties and none of them give a crap about Britain or British people... just immigrants.

Also I guarantee you this law will only ever be deployed against white men and perhaps the occasional white woman. The Muslim who spat at a baby and told its mother that "white people shouldn't breed" would never be charged with a hate crime. The Muslims who raped tens of thousands of white children over the last 40 years in organized gangs would never be charged with a hate crime, despite the fact that they targeted specifically white children because they hate white people.

Mark my wonds and watch them come true.

[mongrel]

The Conservative party hasn't been Conservative for at least 20-years. None of the three main parties in the UK today are Conservative, or even close to the centre. They're all left wing parties and none of them give a crap about Britain or British people... just immigrants.

Also I guarantee you this law will only ever be deployed against white men and perhaps the occasional white woman. The Muslim who spat at a baby and told its mother that "white people shouldn't breed" would never be charged with a hate crime. The Muslims who raped tens of thousands of white children over the last 40 years in organized gangs would never be charged with a hate crime, despite the fact that they targeted specifically white children because they hate white people.

Mark my wonds and watch them come true.

What's this rubbish got to do with curbs on ungentlemanly behaviour? I could almost swear that your stuff is randomly generated by a Russian bot.

Fact - Anjem Choudary was jailed for 5 and a half years and his organisation proscribed. The ultimate in 'no-platforming'. I don't see any 'phobes crying 'free dumb of speech' over that.

[mongrel]

It's not where hate is viewed as a legal concept. It's where crimes inspired by hate is viewed as a legal concept and carry a longer sentence. However, redundant hate crimes are redundant. Misogyny based hate crimes when you can already charge someone with gender based hate crimes? Is she also going to push for Misandry based hate crimes in an equal society? And then, thus, we have two redundant hate crimes in the world where a law is already passed and enforced regarding gender based hate crimes? What is she smoking and can I have some?

This argument is a worthwhile one. If you wrote the OP we would have a proper discussion going.

I’m not sure you’re getting the point. Directly regulating the internet like this is the wrong direction. It’s not a conservative nanny state issue, all the main parties are in agreement on this. It’s not actually about access to porn per se. Obviously VPN networks are going to become very popular in the UK quite soon, as they are in China and other heavily regulated countries.

People had concerns going back to 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/...bsites-privacy




Ensuring under-16s don’t have access to porn is purely the job of parents.



As mentioned Labour agree.

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So men exchanging baby nude/abuse pictures is of no conern to the state? ( 'average crime'-Ziltoid)

One thing the OP has not considered , probably because he's in scaremongering mode, is the chances of these proposals becoming law. I can suggest it is nil, given that Brexit is consuming all legislative time, causing even the Finance Bill to drop measures.

So much hot air, just for the right to bother strange women, scare the oldies and and sneak a few minutes of anonymous time, cracking one off to a sex cam. Big ing deal.