[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.

[andy_ppp]

On sentencing, Judge Menary KC told Barton: "Robust debate, satire, mockery and even crude language may fall within permissible free speech.

"But when posts deliberately target individuals with vilifying comparisons to serial killers or false insinuations of paedophilia, designed to humiliate and distress, they forfeit their protection.

"As the jury concluded, your offences exemplify behaviour that is beyond this limit – amounting to a sustained campaign of online abuse that was not mere commentary but targeted, extreme and deliberately harmful."

Seems like you're just lying with the 'diversity hire' content of Barton's posts aren't you?

[0x3f]

Well feel free to roll all those in to what I'd like the right to say. I'm going with the most outlandish thing (to me) that he was convicted on, because by definition even without the other things you've now quoted, the 'diversity hire' comment in and of itself was found to be illegal. Thus it's illegal to say for anyone, even if they don't also call someone a 'bike nonce' or photoshop them onto unsavoury images.

None of this meets the bar for me, and ironically would not be illegal in China or the US, to address the original point.