Graham Linehan arrested on arrival at Heathrow Part 2

[IDareSay]

First thread here

Started thread 2 as this seems destined to run for some time...

Just because someone start's digging a hole doesn't mean you should make it bigger and more easily to fall into.

Although admittedly whilst I suggested it was the timing of all this that was so odd, there may be something more banal.

ie if Glinner has been in the US for more than 4 months, which is when the tweets deemed offensive were posted, and the complaint was made in the UK, then it could well be that he was put on an alert list (hence funny business as US airport) to have US officials say a person complained about 4 months ago is about to arrive back in the UK.

Nope but I've read enough in the couple of days since the new leadership to think, 'what an out of touch fucking twatbadger'.

Polanski, a former actor who was the party's deputy leader, campaigned on an "eco-populism" platform and has promised to make the party "bolder" and more radical in its approach.

In his victory speech, he said: "If you're feeling hopeless, if you're feeling in despair, if you're feeling politically homeless, there is a political home for you.

No mate, it most definitely NOT the greens. It would be nice if there were more green policies in politics generally as I'm fully on board with a greener agenda.

To be populist, you actually have to have policies which are... hmm... popular and have public consensus. Being radical is fine if its not utter bollocks and fantasy.

I'm already contemplating when the words "Come back Corbyn all is forgiven" might pass my lips at this point!

If they'd tried to get hold off him and could not the Met would have clarified that by now.

There would be a paper trail to issue the arrest warrant.

Police forces are operationally independent. The Home Secretary has ways to communicate the Government’s priorities (including budgeting, some influence over hiring of senior police, and strategic influence over the National College of Policing, amoung others, not just sending them letters), but they can’t tell forces what cases to pursue and which to drop. This is down to the individual police forces and the National Police Chiefs Council - who have been leading up to this point for decades under several Governments.

According to google:

The police at Heathrow Airport are part of a larger force, specifically the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), operating under their Aviation Security Operational Command Unit. They are not a separate force but an extension of the Met's responsibilities for policing London and its airports

No, what I mean is him showing up at the US airport would've triggered something. And if the complaint was made four months ago, then presumably there was a process to follow, some calls to make, what should we do, should we arrest him?

i'm assuming it wasn't just automatic, that there had to be a series of authorisations. And the optics of arresting him with five officers who were armed had to be approved.

There would appear to be no one, along the way, who didn't think yes, let's do this and do it now.

When Sally Rooney declared support for Palestine Action, it was said that she couldn't be prosecuted in the UK because she made her declaration in Ireland. Glinner also wrote while in a different jurisdiction??

I’m really failing to see how it’s proportionate to send so many armed officers to arrest someone following a flight over a couple of tweets online. Linehan is right to sue the police if I’m honest.

This is a good question. I don't know the answers to this but yes it possibly is relevant too.

I don't agree with Graham Linehan advocating violence as part of the solution. However, the Metropolitan Police response and five police being sent to arrest him is wholly unreasonable. The Metropolitan Police is a failed organisation and has been probably for years, along with South Yorkshire Police who ignored men who abused teenage women and girls, and lied profusely over Orgreave and Hillsborough.

Not for any reason except the surprisingly refreshing comments on Reddit here, quite opposite to the usual mantras (as acknowledged by multiple posters in the thread):
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1n6l5ik/graham_linehan_arrested_for_tweets_critical_of/

Also I quite enjoyed the pasting that rentagob T Willett got, even from his online fwends: https://x.com/ThomasWillett9/status/1962836903998242903

And finally even Little OJ realises he can't spin this one, but unfortunately for him, his fanboys are turning on him for not using Approved Texts and normal people are seeing straight through him. Sad times: https://x.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1962942279808639024

OMG. I hadn't thought of that. So what was going to be a fairly obscure hearing, with only a few TRAs and the occasional person supportive of Glinner present outside court, is now going to be a media shit show. Well done Lynsay!

🤦‍♀️ Hoisting himself by his own petard, utter tool that he is.

Freedom of speech is protected in the US (some caveats). If he did it in the US, he didn’t commit a crime. So, it is bizarre if he is arrested for that on landing in England. That would be like someone being arrested in Saudi Arabia for having a few pints in the UK (silly comparison, but you know what I mean).

Pretty much - as I understand it they are a subset of the Met, (? SO18) responsible for policing London City airport and LHR...

At Heathrow there are a few hundred mostly firearms trained officers, with their own police station AFAIK northside of the airport, just off the Bath Road.

That's maybe a bit trivial in the scheme of things but given some previous comments it's maybe worth pointing out the commissioner won't have had to drag 5 officers off London streets and send them out to LHR to arrest GL, the officers were already there.

.

"Particularly the young girl who’d had to kiss him as part of the school play."

WtAf? 😱

Thank-you, that’s helpful.

I wasn’t expecting ministers to have a direct say in how individual cases are handled. But I am surprised that a force (in this case the Met) can decide it can just ignore and not investigate whole categories of offence, as the Met has done with eg burglaries. Who signs off on such an approach? I don’t see how a force can get away with that and no oversight being exercised. It’s the law of the land, they police it, they don’t determine it (well they de facto do, but they’re not meant to).

"ArabellaScott · Today 14:15

The outcome of this tweet is going to be a lot of people wondering whether men who are going into women's single sex spaces are abusive, and what the proportionate response from women could or should be towards men who break the law in order to use women's spaces where women are vulnerable, in a state of undress, etc.
Secondly, they will wonder why a man talking about how women might respond to abuse is being arrested by armed police."

From the end of the last thread, and it's easily answered- because it's an airport.

www.yahoo.com/news/articles/father-ted-co-creator-graham-141003577.html
“The arrest was made by officers from the MPS Aviation Unit,” a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said in a statement to media. “It is routine for officers policing airports to carry firearms. These were not drawn or used at any point during the arrest.”

Wow wow wow, fell off my chair with that comment from Owen Jones! I never thought I'd ever be agreeing with a post from him.

My (imperfect) understanding is that the Public Order Act, under which Linehan was arrested, extends its jurisdiction outside the U.K. This is not the case with most other legislation, which applies to the U.K. only.

From what I could hear on glinners recording, the process was that he’d been put on some sort of ‘watch list’ database triggering him being detained at the airport. But then - while still at the airport - he was given the specific reason for his arrest ie the ridiculous ‘sexual orientation’ thing. So someone, at some point, had looked at those tweets and decided they constituted an arrestable offence.

the July 7th bombers flew under the radar but Graham Linehan is on a watch list? Make it make sense.

Yes, yes.
The firearms were standard kit for them. We know.
but five armed officers to arrest one bloke who had come to the U.K. specifically to attend a court case? He was hardly going to be a flight risk.

Also think about the reverse.

You tweet something in the UK and then are arrested in the US for it...

If you start doing this, you run into issues politically pretty quickly.

The effect in full swing!