Start the week happy: court says it’s REASONABLE to call Iain Duncan Smith ‘Tory scum’
Tory Scum: some might call that mild criticism of the man who inflicted Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax on the UK.
Protesters were within their rights to call Iain Duncan Smith “Tory scum” outside the 2021 Conservative Party Conference, the High Court has ruled.
A judicial review found that the use of the words was to highlight the policies of the Tory the rest of the world diminishes to IDS and This Site calls RTU (“Return To Unit” in honour of his failures in the armed forces):
Lord Justice Popplewell and Justice Fordham said no fault in law was made by a senior district judge last November in finding Ruth Wood, 52, and Radical Haslam, 30, not guilty of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent.
In response to a request for a judicial review from the director of public prosecutions, the high court found that Judge Goldspring, who is also described as the chief magistrate, had made the important finding that “the use of Tory scum was to highlight the policies” of Duncan Smith, and that this was relevant to the “reasonableness of the conduct” in relation to the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.
There was nothing to undermine Goldspring’s conclusion that criminalising the words “Tory scum” would be a disproportionate interference in the two protesters’ rights, the high court ruled.
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‘Reasonable’??
It ought to be COMPULSORY.
Come the revolution, comrades, it will be illegal to be that complimentary about the likes of IDS. “Tory scum” barely scratches the surface.