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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Two different topics I am not qualified to talk about but am interested in hearing your opinions on:

  1. Apparently there is now a crime in Britain called a 'homophobic public offense.' Committing this crime will get you arrested. This has come to the wider world's attention because of a video of an autistic teenaged girl being dragged out of her home for telling one of the police officers she looked like her lesbian nana. I will speak plainly that I read the same evil on the face of the lesbian-nana-cop that sent the kulaks to the gulags and now have the impression Britain is pretty well not a free country. But it's a big country, anyone can cherrypick one terrible story out of millions (or billions, in the new case of that little girl in india who had been gangraped and then gangraped again in the hospital by the doctors), and I am not British so I can't speak to the probative value. Throwing it out there though https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12396427/Lesbian-nana-arrest-police-autistic-exclusive.html

NB This was a few days ago and the cops have since dropped the charges after public backlash. This time.

  1. A new audio sensation is sweeping the nation, a previously-nobody named Oliver Anthony has come out with an actually-good red tribe anthem called 'Rich Men North of Richmond.' Over the last week or so it's become ubiquitous in 'the RW blogosphere' - too many big names to list have independently drawn attention to it and Anthony is going to need some serious professional help to manage all of the invitations to appear on, well, everything. Give it a listen and see if it does anything for you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

I'm not from the south, but I and most of the rest of non-southern righties decided a long time ago we would just appropriate it. Confederate flags in rural Michigan, etc. To me it has a kind of universality to it. Don't miss the line 'if you're 5 foot 3 and 300 pounds, tax dollars shouldn't pay for your bags of fudge rounds." Interested to hear your thoughts

As far as I’m aware if the police were prosecuting her under Part 3A 29B of the public order Act she has a clear defence because she was in a private dwelling and only people within that dwelling heard her. Now, maybe she is screwed because the police recorded it and the police then played the recording to people outside the dwelling but I think you can claim a defence that you reasonably believed your words would not be heard outside the dwelling. I suspect the reason for this defence is to cover situations where the accused is being secretly recorded. Of course it also completely ridiculous for the police to accuse you of a crime that they have facilitated by their own actions.

2)An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.

In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for the accused to prove that he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the written material displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/3A

The whole situation is a bit sad because without the altercation at the end it does look like good community policing. Maybe the officer was just sick of being a glorified taxi driver for bratty girls and kicked off.