Good luck Harry The Owl

He wasn't even in the foothills of harassment.

This is one of my favourite things ever.

How the hell did it get to this?

"Judge - he wasn't harassing anyone. He wasn't even in the foothills of harassment.

Counsel for P - er, I am not referring to criminal harassment

Judge - in ordinary English words, he wasn't harassing anyone he was conversing with those who elected to follow him on Twitter."

"Wasn't even in the foothills of harassment"...I love HHJ Wise.

I think I read that it's our very own Spero tweeting, Purple.

Btw I've seen no mention of this on the tg reddit subs

They mostly pretend stuff that makes them look bad isn't happening. If they have to acknowledge it they'll get their spin on and start defaming Harry and the whole of the accursed TERF-ridden UK, but they probably never will unless national headlines emerge.They ignored the Jonathan Yaniv story for months and months, deleting any posts that members of their own community made that referred to him.

"Judge -

....he wasn't even in the foothills of harassment"

[santa]

but someone trained him to believe that he had the right to remove the free speech rights of citizens on the say so of any random who takes offense at something they've said

I think that’s the crux of it. What kind of training are they getting? Who is providing it?

Who is Tweeting??

"Judge I am sorry I have lost the thread
#MeToo"

I agree. I'm actually quite pessimistic about the outcome of this after reading today's exchanges, ie directing any change to individual officer's actions rather than overall policy.

But the overall policy is the College of Policing's business, and today it's the counsel for the Humberside Police not the College of Policing. Am I wrong about that?

There is a lot of focus on PC Gul today but I think that makes sense because the College of Policing already defended their national policy and the Humberside Police simply went along with that defence.

I'm still hoping that Gul will become a cautionary tale for other potentially overzealous police officers AND the policy is going to get shredded.

Telegraph editorial denounces ‘Orwellian expansion of thoughtcrime’ highlights the absurdity of ‘hate incident’ when no crime has been committed and questions why police are wasting time on non crimes when there are actual crimes which aren’t being investigated.

Btw I've seen no mention of this on the tg reddit subs, and not much on twitter. Am I missing a whole furore?

People are being very careful on Twitter because who wants to run the risk of suspension at this exciting time?

Surely it's "the right to not be offended doesn't exist"

I think the point is that while people can be offended by whatever they want, just "being offended" doesn't give them any more privileges or powers than had they not been offended. Despite what they may think or believe.

In general, the correct response to "I'm offended" is "Oh, dear, so sad" the first time, and "So fucking what ?" the second. With apologies and respect to Stephen Fry.

The fact the UK has to have food banks for people to live deeply offends me. Now where's my wind-up plod to set on the Tories ?

"I need the check your thinking" is most likely the result of the individual in question being a bit thick, but someone trained him to believe that he had the right to remove the free speech rights of citizens on the say so of any random who takes offense at something they've said.

Christ, imagine if we could rely on our press to accurately record a sentence uttered in court...! (It may be correct but it's the DM so I have no way of knowing!)

The Telegraph are running an editorial entitled: ‘The police must rethink its Orwellian obsession with ‘transphobia’ Last word in inverted commas. About time.

I mean, a sensible position would be "you can of course be as offended as you like, but your being offended doesn't mean that you have a right to prevent others from speaking". Maybe it was just awkwardly phrased and the papers are keeping the awkward phrasing for the sake of accuracy?

perhaps it is time for the Police and a mass of organisations to consider retrieving the money they paid for such poor-quality and (frankly) wrong training.

Indeed. I wish the judge would look at this. How have they been trained so that PC Gul thought he could scurry over there and accuse Harry of, transphobia, wrong think, whatever.

time for the Police and a mass of organisations to consider retrieving the money they paid for such poor-quality and (frankly) wrong training

It's going to be interesting isn't it. As more and more organisations are taken to court, more and more organisations will start taking a look at who have them the incorrect information in the first place.

Surely it's "the right to not be offended doesn't exist"

You'd think? But I thought I saw a tweet saying 'the right to be offended' (does not exist) yesterday - wasn't sure then if it was typo on tweet or what.
This suggests otherwise:
twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1197173306715254784
"- and no one has the right to freedom from offence."

I thought that was wrong too, but perhaps it's a badly phrased way of saying that offence isn't in the eye of the beholder. That people can't claim something is offensive without any merit?

The tweeting is fabulous. Factual but also with interesting/funny asides. I can’t pull myself away!

As PC Gul did not fail to understand the evidence that was presented to him as part of his specialist diversity training perhaps it is time for the Police and a mass of organisations to consider retrieving the money they paid for such poor-quality and (frankly) wrong training.

Surely it's "the right to not be offended doesn't exist"

I've been thinking that Pope. And I think it's correct.

You can't say you've been offended and it's your right to take it further ?

That DM article (such as I could read without disabling my adblocker) keeps saying 'the right to be offended does not exist' - is this multiple typos or do they not actually understand what was said (or do I not understand it and it's accurate?)

Having worked years ago for a national body where nutjob managers and highly neo lib policies ended in a court/public opinion severely criticising - it was framed in meetings as 'a disaster for us', and blamed on a failure of people whose ignorance and lack of education (including the judges) had led to their coming up with the wrong answer. Instead of seriously considering had policy majorly lost its way and got out of touch with public opinion and duties to tax payers. The way forward was instructed as to continue pushing the criticised policies, just quietly and discreetly and wait for the public scrutiny to go away: the Right Way would be achieved anyway in the end.

Dispiriting but true. Some of the people in high powered jobs in these bodies are quite alarming in the lack of grip on reality and actual employability skills to do the basic jobs in their own departments compared to their political ideals and enormous salaries. The same issue affects many MPs.