@HOkieCOkie do you even understand that many of the rights you currently benefit from were gained due to the actions of protestors? Especially if you're a woman!
Banning protest massively stifles civil liberties and the possibility of gaining fair treatment for all by the state.
What kind of state do you think bans such things?
It's places like China, North Korea, Russia, Iran...
Do you REALLY want to live in a country like those?!
Think this couldn't happen to you? That may be so but then you've just revealed what an 'I'm alright jack', 'don't give a shit about others' person you are.
Yep! And attitudes like this absolutely call to mind the poem by Niemöller!
The way to enact change is at the ballot box.
That too assumes certain facts are in place - which there is some evidence already is not the case in the Uk, not to mention the flaws in the FPTP system
In addition this govt is already considering removing postal votes and making it so only those with photo ID can vote (which is expensive and for some groups virtually impossible to obtain), we can’t enact change at the ballot box if we’re prevented from voting!
The police force has been defunded for years. The court system has been defunded for years
Just watch the funding "suddenly become available" just for this!
but they don't compare to the real thing
They are far too easily ignored!
Exactly
@User133847 - here's a question, if protests are so useless and pointless - why do you think they want to stop them?!
This is what a police state looks like
Precisely
Police states rarely occur overnight, even where there's coups, there's a buildup, there are signs.
My Mp has responded that he will be voting against the bill, as I thought he would. He agrees it is disproportionate and oppressive.
people marching holding placards doesn't bother them.
Really? Then why does this bill contain clauses that would outlaw exactly this?
Most protests will be unaffected by this law.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Having read the bill most protests WILL be affected by this law
The law is to stop disruptive protests - thugs smashing shop windows and setting cars on fire, idiots supergluing themselves to trains, that sort of thing.
We already have laws to deal with more extreme behaviour like this, plenty of them!
who don't care about a particular cause from the minority who want to force them to.
That's the whole point of a protest! To get the apathetic and unaware to know, to alert people to injustices and to show in physical numbers how many people hold that same view.
How that can possibly be a bad thing I really don't know
not even the Guardian, which, for all its faults, was a liberal voice
I think "was" is the operative word here. It's long since abandoned its liberal stance
Frankly it’s desperate agreed
@CrunchyBiscs on another thread regarding the vigil and I believe even some reporters and MPs are backing this up, there are multiple reports that women SITTING in SILENCE were grabbed and roughly handled by police at the vigil, including a homeless woman and a disabled woman who was pushed off her crutches! WHILE obeying a direction from the police to move - she simply wasn’t moving as fast as they wanted because she was disabled!
Why would they act so foolishly and apparently against their own interests? Because they are feeling defensive due to one of their own being accused and their own force under scrutiny for protecting him from other prior alleged offences AND because they arrogantly think they can get away with it
But I think your use of the words thugs and idiots reveals what side you are on.
Absolutely.
I’ve been on protests and marches and to vigils in the past. I am a 5’2”, softly spoken irl, disabled woman, I have never broken the law. I have witnessed police officers being over zealous and over stepping their bounds and even arresting people who’d done absolutely nothing wrong who were then released without charge without even an official warning and apologised to. Because this is not uncommon, it’s not new, such police behaviour has been an issue for literally ages, ever since the police came into being.
Based upon this interpretation, "the minority" who have no voice anywhere else, are being silenced and will no longer have a platform to raise awareness to their issues & concerns.
This!
This is why such laws are oppressive and dangerous
It makes it illegal to stand outside parliament as an individual and shout your opinion. Illegal. How is that not a terrifying restriction of our rights???
It IS absolutely terrifying