[grapeskin]

Imagine a man being visited by the police for eating a ham sandwich, which his neighbors found morally questionable.

Being released is better than what it could’ve been. The fact he was visited at all is terrifying.

[cm2187]

The fact that he was arrested over a ham sandwich is even worse.

It's funny because on one side the UK is the birthplace of most of how democracies work today, and the oldest continuously running democratic parliament. So it has fairly good credentials.

But on the other hand this system is so dangerous, there is only really one chamber (the other one has no power), no counterpower, no constitution (the precendents thing is a joke, given that they are free to make up their own precedents on the fly), it is free to basically vote whatever it wants with a 50% and 1 vote majority, and that includes wiping out any civil liberty they feel like.

Again hard to call "unstable" a system that has shown to be so stable for so long, but it feels that it is not stable by design.

[dmix]

Canada's legal system is heavily inspired by the British one (at least outside of Quebec) and even they wouldn't touch this sort of thing with a ten-foot pole.

This sort of policing of offensive content on social media among democracies is basically just the UK + the middle east.

I can't think of any other non-despotic countries dumb enough to do this?

[mbrameld]

A more accurate comparison would be a man being visited by the police for possessing ham that may have been illegally imported, or was stolen, or that he was prohibited by law from possessing for one reason or another. The police were there to investigate a potential violation of the law. The fact that some people find the behavior the law prohibits to be morally questionable doesn't seem relevant.

[xdennis]

That's not accurate at all because stealing is a physical action. The police were there to investigate feelings. It's literally in the title: 'causing anxiety'.