Also more seriously, the actual old blasphemy laws (which the article isn't really talking about despite acknowledging their existence) were already de-facto dead before being officially repealed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_Ki...
Now, should burning a book be a crime? I say no, as long as it's your own book and not part of another crime like "arson" — a "public order offence" is a crime, though one I don't grok because I don't work in law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Act_1986
bko · 11h ago
I don't know if thousands are being arrested, but I know that I can't rely on what's being reported out there.
A little while ago I was curious if people were actually being arrested for posting mean tweets in the UK so I looked for a fact check (top google result for "fact check arrest mean tweets UK"), and sure enough I was told that an 11 year old was NOT arrested for mean tweets.
But as I read further I was less convinced. An 11 year old boy was arrested for "suspicion of violent disorder" although the fact check didn't elaborate what that was. Then it went on a non-sequester about a different 11 year old boys arrested for arson. Finally it got around to admitting sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence.
Never mind the tweet from West Midlands police bragging about arresting a 12 year old boy. Pretty wild you get this as the top result when you search "fact check arrest mean tweets UK".
> The UK police arresting thousands per day for speech crimes is crazy to me.
Good thing that's not happening, then.
like_any_other · 11h ago
There were 140k recorded hate crimes in 2024 [1]. The government only gave the breakdown by type of crime if they are against Jews or Muslims (figure 2.2), so we will have to assume they are representative of hate crime overall. ~47% were "public fear, alarm, or distress" (that is what the person the article is about was charged with for burning a Quran), and ~12% were "malicious communication". For just the 47% category, that works out to 180 recorded hate crimes per day, that presumably someone was arrested for (the report doesn't say).
So you are correct, "thousands" is an exaggeration.
It should also be noted that merely viewing "far-right propaganda" carries an up to 15 year prison sentence in the UK [2], but I'm not aware of any cases of this law being used to this extent yet.
The UK police arresting thousands per day for speech crimes is crazy to me.
They are essentially handing the next election to nigel farage if they dont implement free speech.
More seriously, don't trust that Farage wants free speech, he's opposed to the Human Rights Act: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nigel-farage-human-righ...
Also more seriously, the actual old blasphemy laws (which the article isn't really talking about despite acknowledging their existence) were already de-facto dead before being officially repealed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_Ki...
Now, should burning a book be a crime? I say no, as long as it's your own book and not part of another crime like "arson" — a "public order offence" is a crime, though one I don't grok because I don't work in law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Act_1986
A little while ago I was curious if people were actually being arrested for posting mean tweets in the UK so I looked for a fact check (top google result for "fact check arrest mean tweets UK"), and sure enough I was told that an 11 year old was NOT arrested for mean tweets.
But as I read further I was less convinced. An 11 year old boy was arrested for "suspicion of violent disorder" although the fact check didn't elaborate what that was. Then it went on a non-sequester about a different 11 year old boys arrested for arson. Finally it got around to admitting sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence.
Never mind the tweet from West Midlands police bragging about arresting a 12 year old boy. Pretty wild you get this as the top result when you search "fact check arrest mean tweets UK".
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-fact-check
https://x.com/WMPolice/status/1282627004018364416
Good thing that's not happening, then.
So you are correct, "thousands" is an exaggeration.
It should also be noted that merely viewing "far-right propaganda" carries an up to 15 year prison sentence in the UK [2], but I'm not aware of any cases of this law being used to this extent yet.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/03/amber-rudd-v...