Originally Posted by
KerrAvon
Thank you for numbering your points as it will enable me to deal with them more quickly.
Point 1 - The proposed legisltion permits the Home Secretary to makes regulations to define and give examples of “serious disruption to the life of the community” and “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried out in the vicinity of the procession/assembly/one-person protest”. Personally, I doubt whether that will ever be necessary whilst ever people have access to a dictionary and common sense, but I note that you struggled with words like 'serious' earlier in the thread.
I would imagine that the provison is designed to allow any loopholes to be closed off before they can be exploted.
The regulations won't be made on a protest by protest basis, not least because they would have to be passed by each House of Parliament (see clause 54(4)). If they are not made on a protest by protest basis then by definition they do not give the Home Secretary the power to make 'reasonable belief' decsions or 'decide whether individual protests can go ahead' as you have claimed.
You are wrong. You are tilting at windmills. And if you think it is me who is wrong, why don't you put up a link to the clauses that you rely upon? You say that you have read the bill so you must have access to it.
2. There is no reference to 'serious noise' within the bill. There is a power to impose conditions up to and including the banning of a protest if there is a reasonable belief that the noise generated by persons taking part it may result in the intimidation or harassment of persons of reasonable firmness with the characteristics of persons likely to be in the vicinity, or it may cause such persons to suffer serious unease, alarm or distress.
It may just come down to personal values, but I personally don't like the idea of people being caused substantial intimdation or harassment or to suffer serious unease, alarm or distress and have no problems with conditions being imposed upon a protest to prevent it. If you are happy with people being affected in that manner then we disagree.
There is nothing within the legislation that criminalises making noise, 'serious' or otherwise. The offences within it relate to - as they have since 1986 - breaching the terms of a condition imposed upon a protest. So if an EDL protest outside a mosque had a condition imposed upon it 'not to use sound amplification equipment', but the organisers started to use one that 'goes up to 11', collars might be felt and equipment seized. And it really does come down to personal values in that I can't see anything very much wrong with that notion. It balances the EDL's right to protest with the right of people to use the mosque without substantial inteference.
3. I'm sorry to break it to you, but the 'Institute of Employment Rights' article that you have linked to is rubbish. The passage that you have quoted relates to the offence of publc nuisance. As I have explained,that is not a 'new' offence as the article claims, it is a common law offence. Whilst I haven't checked out its history, most common law offences can be traced back for several hundred years. In making it a statutory offence, the government is merely accepting the recomendation of the Law Commission (an independent body), as I have also previously explained.
Not only is the article rubbish, your interpretation of it is too. As I have explained, the offence is concerned with causing serious annoyance or serious inconvenience to the public, not an individual.
I can only recall one prosecution for public nuisance in the 30 years or so that I have been hanging around the criminal justice system. That was of a bloke who managed to close a motorway for several hours by threatening to jump from a bridge. He was protesting about a child custody decision that had gone against him in the Family Court. It's a personal value thing again in that you might celebrate that bloke's right to protest (and it may be that he got a raw deal in the Family Court - it can be tough when a court has to make a child custody choice), but I also care about the people who were seriously annoyed or inconvenienced - people who were tired and wanted to get home, people who wanted to get to their kid's sports day, people who were trying to get to a crucial job interview or catch a flight. Who knows, there might have been a tranpsplant organ delayed - how about that for inconvenience?
I think public nuisance should continue to be an offence.
There seems to be an answer to my 'yes no' EDL question in the torrent of words within your final paragraph. You are a college administrator, but would support the right of a group to protest in a manner that would disrupt the ability to teach within the college... That is just breathtaking. When you next think about why Labour can't win an election to save its life, forget the MSM and reflect on that for a moment.
Nobody is talking about taking away the right to protest. You will still be able to paint your face and cheer a septegenarian MP for giving a new variant of the same speech that he has been giving for the last 30 years or so about whatever cause is fashionable with the Left. As you point out, protests that cause such serious inconvenience, noise and nuisance are relatively rare and affect very few of us and because of that the new powers will be rarely used.
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