[0x3f]

> You can say pretty much anything so long as you don’t insight violence or religious hatred.

I don't think that's a fair characterisation. Recently we've convicted:

  - an ex-footballer (i.e. someone with the means to mount a proper defence) for calling someone a 'diversity hire'; and
  - someone burning a religious text in the street, as a protest.

Are these really meeting your bar for inciting violence and/or hatred? At a level might warrant imprisonment? For me, these things are not even borderline; they are well into legitimate free speech territory and the government shouldn't be trying its best to stifle them.

And those are just successful convictions, not initiated prosecutions, or the wider chilling effects of it all.

Even if what you said were true, those two things are largely legal in the US, so I wouldn't really say it's their tabloids over-hyping it as much as they legitimately find the actual standards here questionable.

[andy_ppp]

Haha - you aren't even allowed to say what you think about the US government on social media and then travel to the US despite what the constitution says. Donald Trump has also made flag burning a crime. So it's not as if the US is a champion of free speech anymore.

I looked up the case against Joey Barton and it looks like he was deliberately trying to antagonise and abuse people upset which yes is illegal here. He could have easily made any points he wanted without abusing people. Note that he was given a suspended sentence in the hope that he would stop abusing people and has served no jail time as yet. Seems like a sensible decision.

The Quran burning outside the Turkish Consulate was even more weak stuff from you. The guy was fined £240 and told not to do it again.

Neither of these are about freedom of speech are they, they are about abuse online and deliberately trying to provoke muslims.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04vqldn42go

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9v4e0z9r8o

[0x3f]

> you aren't even allowed to say what you think about the US government on social media and then travel to the US despite what the constitution says.

Does this matter? The question is whether the UK has a moral authority to tell China off over free speech. Nobody has said that different countries don't have varying types of restrictions on speech.

Even if I agreed with your characterisation of the US, you're talking about visitors, not residents or citizens. The UK also regularly denies visas for speech.

You're defending against whataboutism from China to the UK by invoking whataboutism from the UK to the US here.

> I looked up the case against Joey Barton and it looks like he was harassing people online which yes is illegal here.

No, harassment is a specific and different offence. He was convicted specifically for sending 'grossly offensive' messages, not harassing people. The definition of that crime is based on the content of the messages, not the pattern of their transmission.

> The Quran burning outside the Turkish Consulate was even more weak stuff from you. The guy was fined £240 and told not to do it again.

I don't really get how this refutes anything I've said. It's illegal to protest in this manner in the UK.

What is your argument here, that OK it's illegal but the punishment is not very severe so no problem? You understand that the specifics of _what_ is illegal is the criticism.

> Neither of these are about freedom of speech are they, they are about harassment online and deliberately trying to provoke muslims.

Neither of these is about harassment. Or they would have been convicted of harassment.

[andy_ppp]

None of these laws limit your freedom of speech do they - you can perfectly well say you think that a TV presenter is incompetent without being arrested - it's the abuse that is the problem here. If your style of communication involves burning religious texts you must have very big mental health issues so I'm sorry for that.

[0x3f]

> None of these laws limit your freedom of speech do they

Of course they do? Think we've descended into absurdity here if that's the claim.

Suffice to say, the Chinese response to Jimmy Lai would be along the lines of "well of course he has free speech, if only he did it in a completely different way that was acceptable to my sensibilities".

[andy_ppp]

So what would you like to say specifically that would be stopped by these laws?

[0x3f]

I'd like the right to burn any religious text I please, and to call someone a 'diversity hire', if those were my feelings. I thought that was clear from me using them as examples.

Crticisim of religion, through symbolic speech, is pretty classically part and parcel of the tenets of free speech. It's hardly some fringe belief.

Even if you think calling someone a 'diversity hire' is often untrue, or often racist, or some such thing, there are surely some cases where it is true or a legitimate criticism of hiring policy. Should we not be able to claim as much? On peril of imprisonment?

I don't think your views on this are particularly uncommon. It's just that British people don't have a history of wrestling with free speech, or its importance. Tone policing is a thought-terminating cliche in the UK.