Susan Smith facing charges for trans brolly spat.

Re the “someone high up” are we thinking someone in the government may be interfering?

What I find particularly telling is that its the parliamentary police (yes the same group who are under pressure for not stopping Harlow) who are behind this warning/caution/arrest threat

I have a short video of Susan remonstrating with two police officers just in front of Harlow. The brolly is folded away at that point. Harlow is lounging in his seat.

What stands out is that the police have their backs to Harlow and they are facing the crowd of us demonstrating. That was their stance the whole time. They were protecting him.

Like many others, I asked them to protect me. It was almost impossible to talk without shouting . I showed one of them the noise meter on my phone. He shrugged.

If ever proof were needed that the police are in cahoots...

It’s a nice idea but I doubt it.

The headphones work by detecting the sound waves arriving at your ears and adding the opposite wave. Where the incoming wave goes up, the added wave goes down to match for each frequency in the sound. At the same volume.

The problem would be creating a sound-cancelling bubble around the sound source. You’d have to flood the space around the source with the opposite wave, again at the same volume. The difficulty would be getting the right sound waves arriving to all the points in the bubble.

Though if you could focus close up on the speaker cones that might work. Not wholly but enough. I’m not a sound engineer. It would also need a generator of equal power to the source. I was there, his generator is chunky.

A screen might be more doable but less effective because sound doesn’t travel in straight lines like light does. It’s the air particles vibrating and bashing into each other. They spread broadly from the source. And it would have to be huge. Think of the padding in acoustically silent rooms.

I see that the brolly has a spike and that he was holding it towards her.

Police Scotland has said it will "review" a warning to a women’s rights campaigner who was accused of damaging the umbrella of a man protesting at a Holyrood rally.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25581881.police-u-turn-warning-womens-rights-activist/?ref=twtrec

Police to 'review' warning to For Women Scotland campaigner over brolly complaint
Police Scotland has backtracked on plans to warn a women’s rights campaigner accused of damaging an umbrella during a Holyrood protest.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25581881

I hadn't looked over Harwood's stuff before but Bronies are grim & he's just the right kind of age to have been around when Bronies were posting seriously NSFW crap to My Little Pony fan sites & some of them were contacting small children for all the reasons you can imagine.
A lot of the grimness is documented on Reddit though you have to do a bit of ferreting to get into the unpleasant detail. Time was, I thought a grown man into MLP was just a bit of kitsch fun, now if I see any bloke w MLP merch/ refs I'm backing all the way away.

Yes that’s him. I posted Mr Mennos footage of that day upthread. Mr Menno gets a mention in the OPs article too - hopefully that will mean more followers for him. He’s so lovely.

It alarms the fuck out of me, yes.

Don't forget we have the nebulous Hate Crime Act in Scotland. And apparently a Police force who are either happy to maliciously pursue those they don't like or see as a threat, or are doing so on the say so of someone high up.

Either possibility is murky as all get out.

The story is so absurd it seems funny, but the facts of the matter, leaving aside the bonkers broken brolly specifics, are actually quite chilling.

There are some incidents that give me the absolute rage - this is one of them. PS are utter incompetent fuckwits. I hate being Scottish right now.

I also keep thinking surely this time this is the news story that cuts through through to the general public.

Robert Peel would be spinning in his grave if he knew his 'modern police force' had morphed into the goon squad for the freakerarty, it put's a whole new spin on bent copper. 😂

"Smith, one of the rally organisers, asked him to turn down the music and he responded by shoving a rainbow-coloured umbrella towards her face, video shows. Smith briefly grabbed onto the umbrella, which appeared to have already been broken, leading Harlow to complain to police that he had been “harassed and intimidated”."

If this is what the Times feel they can report as fact having seen the evidence, it raises serious questions about the internal workings of the police force - not just the specifics of this particular case, but how they go about charging anyone and how their resources are spent.

Also now reported in teh Times:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/9f549c7e-6a89-4c11-bd1c-b9695fa92597?shareToken=29bb760189c78f926e40e0810fa7bbd4

Hopefully an adult at PS has heard the media attention and decided to sort this fiasco out.

From Political Ed of HeraldScotland

Climbdown from Police Scotland here? They say they will 'review' the attempt to issue a Recorded Police Warning to For Women Scotland's Susan Smith.

x.com/andrewlearmonth/status/1983576810295034072?t=T3lmyB2Yv_PXDT2QFcdm7g&s=19

Interesting! Language suggests the review is not yet complete which would make going for a Police Recorded Warning very odd indeed.

Anyone would think that the police farce force haven't got enough real crime to deal with.

Was speaking to an ex-police officer about this today. He said there used to be eight chief constables in Scotland, each with their own mind as well as their own area. That meant it was hard for the government to wield much influence as they had to convince them all.

Now everything is centralized and most of the high-ups in the police are more interested in how to get their next promotion than actual policing, which means they follow any new trendy initiative put forward.

I don’t think there’s much doubt these actions are vindictive. Possibly also tactical if they are trying to stop women attending protests. What is happening here should alarm us all.

Not at all obscure!

Fetch my tin foil hat once more - the police are wasting time on this because they are one of the organisations driving the agenda.

Wow. This is bonkers.

I really feel for Susan as the stress of going through this is awful. I also admire her determination to stand up for what is right.

This is an obscure 1960s French cinema reference, but here goes anyway:
'Les Parapluies d'Edimbourg'☂😄

A very long time ago, when New Scientist was still printed on cheap paper, the column attributed to Daedalus had a piece about noise cancelling by using a reverse pattern of sound. Which Bose developed for headphones, followed by others.
Could some tech savvy person cook up a sound system size thing to do this to this guy?

I just want to confirm - are these the police who are working out of the Edinburgh police stations described by Ian Rankin?

I'm a couple of books behind, but I'm having difficultly imagining where Rebus fits into any of this.