Wanna really insult someone? Log off and yell it in the street - gov

Typical double standards! Can't the 'glish get anything right?

I hate being surrounded by these retards.

I should be able to call someone a swearword. Everyone from Dickens to Shakespeare has done it, and it's not in any way affecting a normal person's life. We really are wasting people's time here by trying to regulate that.

Also, the only logical conclusion would be that films and TV shows would have to ban almost all swearing - if the act is illegal itself, then depicting someone getting away with that act might well end up being regulated by the same rules, whether by word or law, or fear of prosecution, and we'll wind up in the same situation as smoking on TV has experienced. I can probably name 10 famous characters from movies who were never depicted without a cigarette or cigar, but try to do it with modern ones. They've gone. Sure, you can still see cigarettes but the law had an impact on silly things like movies too. (Side-note: I'm a non-smoker and always have been).

I can think of a myriad variations that are "threatening", "abusive", or "grossly offensive", but that's not the sort of thing I mean, so the law is getting closer to a common sense rebound. "Insulting", however - why should that be a crime? If you're an idiot, I can say you're an idiot. It's insulting, sure, but it's hardly devastating to your life unless I do it in an "abusive" manner or I "threaten" you - both of which are covered.

As people are wont to point out, personally I find religion offensive and insulting, especially if they tell me I will burn in hell, or that I'm not "one of God's children" or whatever fancy phrase they want to use to separate me from an ordinary person. That's insulting in the same manner. And though I'd quite like to shut them up, I don't think this law (which would have eventually permitted me to do just that) is sensible or reasonable or can be enforced fairly while it contains the word "insulting".

Insults happen, thousands, even millions of times a day. There is no clear line of justification in the word "insulting" that you can use that separates incidents that are harmless, and those that are not. The definition is just not clear enough.

And I don't see why you can't call someone the same things in person as you do online with the laws as proposed. If something is "grossly offensive", then it overlaps and will be covered in the same definitions as "abusive" or "threatening" in some manner - the only difference is that online publication allows posts that are not just verbal but visual too, and thus "grossly offensive" covers things that include obscenity of a non-verbal nature too, which I think it needs to.

If you're insulted by something I've said to you, maybe you should either ignore those people, or fight your corner (verbally speaking). I find people who are "insulted" but can't be mature enough to ignore childish ramblings, or provide their own justification for someone not doing that to be the "babysat" adult of the worst kind.

If my opinion matters to you, and you're insulted by me, maybe you're doing something very wrong and should look at what you did to cause it. If my opinion doesn't matter to you, then you won't be insulted by anything I say. The same is NOT true if you substitute "insulted" for "threatened" or "abused" (however, it does work for "offended", hence why "grossly" has been added to the definition to push it into the realm of extremes, not the everyday).

This seems a sensible step, and the fact that someone in government has GONE BACK and CHANGED SOMETHING quite publicly means they recognise that. Maybe now we can spend less money on enforcing the ridiculousness that the police and prosecution services should have just said "we're not able to enforce that well enough" in the first place and never tried to (they have done just that for several other laws in the past).

Gay horse

To be fair, having read up on the student who called the Police horse "Gay" he was an Oxford student who appeared to be deliberately pushing it and then got arrested. He came over as the sort of snotty posh boy who didn't really believe that he would be arrested because only oiks get arrested (not that all Oxford students are posh or snotty, just this one seemed to be). I can't say that I don't believe it was a valuable lesson for him or that the same wouldn't happen again if someone else did the same thing.

How about posting a video of someone standing in a street and dishing out insults?

Is that allowed?

Or, how about someone on some online forum or social media recalls the details of their earlier public verbal insults?

Is that allowed?

The police arrested someone for calling a horse gay?

So the police are saying that it's insulting to be seen as gay? Interesting...

did you look at my pint?

Not arrested for calling someone gay, but for calling a horse gay.

Apparently its been off sick since and has been receiving counselling for its PTSD.