UK free speech crackdown sees up to 30 people a day arrested for petty offenses such as retweets and cartoons

[edjr 6,704]

https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a-day-censorship/

Quote

 

Bernadette Spofforth lay in jail on a blue gym mattress in a daze, finding it difficult to move, even breathe.

“I just closed down. But the other half of my brain went into Jack Reacher mode,” she said, referring to the fictional action hero. “Every single detail was in this very vivid, bright, sharp focus.”

She remembers noticing that you can’t drown yourself in the toilet, because there’s no standing water in it and the flush button is too far to reach if your head were in the bowl.  

Instead, horrified, and in the fog of a developing tragedy, she’d reposted on X another user’s content blaming newly arrived migrants for the ghastly crime — clarifying in her retweet, “If this is true.”

Hours later she realized she may have received bad information and deleted the post — but it had already been seen thousands of times. 

The murders resulted in widespread civil unrest in the UK, where mass migration is a central issue for citizens. Four police vehicles arrived at her home days later. Spofforth, 56, a successful businesswoman from Chester, was placed under arrest.

“We’re a year on now and I can honestly tell you that I don’t think I will ever recover,” she told The Post. “I don’t mean that as a victim. Those poor children were victims. But I will never trust anything the authorities say to me ever again.”

Her story is one repeated almost hourly in the UK, where data suggests over 30 people a day are arrested for speech crimes, about 12,000 a year, under laws written well before the age of social media that make crimes of sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character.”

Social media continues to be flooded with videos of British cops banging on doors in the middle of the night and hauling parents off to jail—all over mean Facebook posts and agitated words on X.

Maxie Allen, a radio producer in Hertfordshire, was on a Zoom call at home when he saw police standing over his shoulder from the camera view on his screen. Six officers came knocking — his partner Rosalind Levine, who answered the door, thought their disabled daughter had died — to haul the couple off over comments they posted in a private WhatsApp group for parents at their children’s school.

In the chat, the couple had been repeatedly critical of the public school’s slow pace to recruit a replacement headteacher.

“It’s shaken the faith of the country I thought I lived in. I never imagined that just by airing your views  about how an organization was run, trying to hold people to account in public office, that you get arrested for that,” Allen, 50, told the Post.

“If you have a vague law and then it’s enforced to an officious and stupid degree, then it’s always going to end in tears.”

Similar stories abound. In 2018 a man identifying himself as “Adam” phoned into the British talk radio station LBC to describe his encounter with police earlier that year.

“I’m Asian myself and I did this drawing of a mate of mine, who’s also Asian, and I said, ‘you look like a terrorist.’ And he took it really well. He thought it was funny,” he told the host. 

But someone else saw the humorous doodle, took issue, and called police. Months later, Adam and his friend were interviewed by authorities — the friend told cops he laughed at the drawing and wasn’t offended — but police still made an official report for a “non-crime hate incident” and forced Adam to write a letter of apology to his friend, which he had to email to him. 

Last year, 21-year-old student Jamila Abdi of East London, who is black, was charged under the Communications Act of 2003 for “indecent or grossly offensive [speech] for the purpose of causing distress or anxiety” after she used a version of the n-word in post on X out of frustration while watching a soccer match.

“I’m so p—-d off let me get my hands on that f—–g n—a,” she wrote about black footballer Alexander Isak. 

 

wow

[Hardcore troubadour 15,627]

I hope our national treasure in exile Rosie O’Donnell won’t be affected. 

[listen2me 23 1,909]

Ive been saying England is broken for a bit now but many people dont notice.  Not only arresting people for "mean tweets" which is beyond insane.  But the immigrant issue.  Right now people are getting in trouble for waving English flags.  Talk about the twilight zone.  (But its not happening)

Or the one story of a couple of 13 year old English girls found drunk and half naked in a house full of Paki nationals.  Cops show up and actually arrest the young girls for underaged drinking.  No questions for the immigrant men and why they are in a house with teenagers who are drunk.  

If anyone wants to see where America is eventually heading, just read up on the current situation across the pond. 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 4,266]

25 minutes ago, listen2me 23 said:

Ive been saying England is broken for a bit now but many people dont notice.  Not only arresting people for "mean tweets" which is beyond insane.  But the immigrant issue.  Right now people are getting in trouble for waving English flags.  Talk about the twilight zone.  (But its not happening)

Or the one story of a couple of 13 year old English girls found drunk and half naked in a house full of Paki nationals.  Cops show up and actually arrest the young girls for underaged drinking.  No questions for the immigrant men and why they are in a house with teenagers who are drunk.  

If anyone wants to see where America is eventually heading, just read up on the current situation across the pond. 

Yep.  England has a very short window to turn things around here otherwise they're going to be totally lost to the muslim horde and the oppressive, totalitarian leftists that have control in that country.

Take note, people, this is what leftist ideology does.  It ruins countries and piles up the body counts.

[weepaws 3,237]

Coming to America soon.