Opinion What happened to freedom of speech in the UK? (Long read)

So you're saying you think i'm not funny anyway so I shouldn't be concerned about the whether or not the law allows me to tell my jokes?
Here's the thing, amy schumer made millions and I don't think she's funny, If she did that then I like my chances at being able to pay my bills through comedy eventually.
Her routine as a man would not be funny. It's hardly funny as it is.
 
this cunt still going on about being too much of a pussy to make a joke?
 
Actually, you said they criminalized threats to protect people's feeling of safety. I repeated it to make my point.

Everything you wrote about how people respond to threats is about how they feel. Nothing has happened. They're just words. Yet, you can see how some people might feel badly enough about those words that it affects what they do and how they approach the world.

But you don't see how some people might feel badly enough about the words in an edgy joke that it affects how they approach the world?

Let's says you make a joke about people's noses. If someone feels badly about their nose following the joke and they go and get a nose job, is that not your joke affecting their life?

What about threats that don't involve killing people. Say a threat to expose someone's personal information (blackmail). Or a threat to just beat them up. Or a threat to beat up someone they know. No one's life is in danger but it's still criminal.
I was quoting the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Here look
"United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
3. The Right to Life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety."
And threatening people takes away their freedom, because if they're fearful for their lives , which is what a threat can be used for. And so it takes away your right to live freely? Im not sure tbh never looked into this but it sounds like a reasonable thing to have be illigal.

I guess you could argue that you're not living in freedom and safety if someone threatens your life. And so that's why it should be illegal because you're taking someone's right to safety away?

It says you have the right to live in "freedom and safety" not "feel safety", not percived safety ,but actual safety.

You're right nothing has happened, but something will happen and that's actual danger,that takes away your actual safety, not feeling of safety. Also "feel bad" about a joke and paranoia that someone's trying to kill you is just not comparable.

About the noses thing I can't put it any better than he did
That's someone allowing their own insecurity to affect their life. If they're so mentally fragile that it causes them to undergo a physically altering surgery, then a joke is the least of their concerns. I know personally of women who've had boob jobs due to seeing images of Kim Kardashian type celebrities, should we ban images of people who've had plastic surgery in case they negatively affect insecure people?

I had a friend in school who was the butt of many jokes regarding his rather large nose, but through his positive reaction to these jokes he took all power away from them and they very quickly stopped. Obviously some people are incapable of doing that, but the onus to self censor isn't on the joke maker.

About the blackmail/threats of violence point, you're making the person do what you want them to do which is taking away their basic freedom to live their lives how they want and not be controlled by a blackmailing or threats of violence.
 
the UK has some really edgy comedians and none of them have been prosecuted for anything as far as I know. its just idiots being idiots then saying "it was just a joke" afterwards that have been caught out so far.
Just because they didn't get every single person who told edgy jokes doesn't make it any less illigal to do it. What crime has has every single person who committed it prosecuted? None. That's why the judge in the count dankula case said something like they're making an "example of him", to scare and deter anyone thinking about using their free speech to talk or joke. I also haven't been able to find an example of a uk comedian getting arrested for a joke either, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened before. What I found though was mike ward , a Canadian stand up comedian who was fined $42,000 for making a joke about a famous disabled kid.
He was on jre yesterday, check it out

And just remember that the law doesn't have an exemption in it that says stand up comedians can offend people , so if the government wanted to, they could prosecute comedians whenever they like (even it hasn't happened yet) because the law allows them to.
 
So you're saying you think i'm not funny anyway so I shouldn't be concerned about the whether or not the law allows me to tell my jokes?
Here's the thing, amy schumer made millions and I don't think she's funny, If she did that then I like my chances at being able to pay my bills through comedy eventually.

No I'm suggesting maybe spending less time worrying about the possible consequences of edgy jokes you might possibly tell , would leave you more time to come up with said gags .
 
No I'm suggesting maybe spending less time worrying about the unavoidable consequences of edgy jokes you might possibly tell , would leave you more time to come up with said gags .
There fixed.
You're right though, I'm just kinda stuck and not sure if I should risk everything and tell edgy jokes or give in to the government and do safe jokes that I don't want to do. I haven't been on stage for a while and I need to pick a road. I just made this thread to vent about this frustrating situation.
 
For a comic you sure whine a lot, write better jokes rather than relying on teenage shock value
What's that got to do with anything? Better jokes are offensive too. If you're jokes aren't offending anyone then you're talking about nothing. There's a lot of people out there someone will get offended.
 
There fixed.
You're right though, I'm just kinda stuck and not sure if I should risk everything and tell edgy jokes or give in to the government and do safe jokes that I don't want to do. I haven't been on stage for a while and I need to pick a road. I just made this thread to vent about this frustrating situation.

Why don't you just try being funny ? .
 
I would rather see douche bags like those westboro cunts arrested, for that vile shit they used to do at the funeral of servicemen, than have them play the freedom of speech nonsense,

I would rather my government said, "see that gun you have, we're outlawing them a week on Tuesday, put it in the trash or I'll arrest you...I'd rather have that, than say,...the founding fathers said it was our right, then switch on the news and hear a few dozen people had been killed by some nutjob

This is how you deal with funeral protesters not by taking away everyone's free speech to protect hurt feelings.


These laws led to things like this:
Skip to 3:56

19 year old girl quoted rap lyrics on her private instagram to pay tribute to a freind that died in a car accident, apparently it was his favourite song.
She got arrested and convicted because the lyrics she quoted contained the "n word" . For that she got 8 weeks community service , fined £585 and was placed on an eight week curfew (that's where they put the tracker on your ankle and tell you when you can and can't go outside your home).

This is the sorry state of free speech in the UK, you will get prosecuted for speech you didn't even speak. Simply quoting or referencing something the government doesn't like is enough to send you behind bars.
 
Still nothing funny to say ? , why don't try bringing the man down with and edgy gag blow this whole thing open man .
 
Here's an intresting video I found relating to the count dankula case , thought I should add it on here for anyone intrested.
 
But calling victims of truck accident trash or making fun of burning children should not be considered freedom of speech.
You are just doing that to take joy out of other peoples misery.
I dont think you understand what free speech is.
Freedom of speech doesn't only include "good speech" or speech that everyone likes and agrees with. If that's what it was then we wouldn't need to defend free speech, because everyone already likes and agrees with it.

Problem is, that people like different things. Speech that you like I might find offensive and vice versa.
E.g. This sherdoger thought the grenfell tower joke was funny, you thought it was offensive and awful.
Its a sad day when the sources the OP quotes are true. I'm not going to defend them as I find them all to be distasteful, but I still find them to be well withing the confines of where free speech should fall.

I don't think Nazi Pug guy was trying to offend anyone, he was trying to make a joke. A bad one, but a joke either way. The tower joke actually was funny, even though the owners of said tower should be sued into oblivion for being idiots and wrapping the tower into a deathtrap (if they knew, that's all a legal thing). As for the trash truck, I would say the same thing about any dump truck going though Detroit, LA, Cleveland, Miami, DC, whatever...

Regardless, they were bad jokes but jokes either way. They weren't meant to ffoend a singular group, but to make light of a terrible situation. Whcih has been a pillar of comedy for centuries, and shouldn't be stopped. If something is done purely out of hatred, sure. But otherwise, leave it alone.
You see? If you make offensive speech illigal, we'll all be in prison because everything's offensive to someone somewhere.

That's why free speech is important.
It's for offensive speech, speech that's not popular, you're not for free speech if you only defend the speech you agree with, you defend free speech by defending speech that you disagree with, regardless of how vile or grossly offensive you find it to be.

And when I say defend it I mean from cencership, or from things like the government arresting people for free speech. criticism of speech you don't like is ok, but silencing and cencership isn't.

You say "But calling victims of truck accident trash or making fun of burning children should not be considered freedom of speech."
It is freedom of speech. the defenition is clear "the right to express any opinions or ideas without censorship or restraint."
jokes obviously fall under that defenition.

You think it shouldn't be considered freedom of speech because you don't like it. You don’t decide whether or not something falls under free speech based on how you feel about it. You decide based on the defenition of what free speech really is.
 
Britain has been copying American culture and society for the past 100+ years

The one thing that deserves copying the most (freedom of speech), they ignore.
 
I don't understand the hostility that TS is getting from some posters for this.
 
I don't understand the hostility that TS is getting from some posters for this.
I do. I got the same reaction but on steroids from fellow comedians. They're just too consumed by their far leftist ideology that they can't handle any other points of view.
 
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