UK Gvmt Say Mask Wearing At Protests Will Soon Be Illegal
UK Gvmt Say Mask Wearing At Protests Will Soon Be Illegal
Rights groups say proposed police powers for England and Wales are pandering to ‘culture war nonsense’
"Protesters who wear masks could face arrest, up to a month in jail and a £1,000 fine under proposed measures that human rights campaigners claim are pandering to “culture war nonsense”.
Police in England and Wales will be given the power to arrest people if they are wearing face coverings at specific demonstrations, the Home Office has said."
Been a bad 18 months or so for privacy in the UK. Online Safety Bill passed, the right to take strike action curtailed, people in receipt of benefits (including disabled people) will soon (as from 2025) have their bank accounts open to the government, the right to protest curtailed and now this.
This is just the first step at making protests illegal.
Yeah, no, we're long past that point
https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_information/pcsc-policing-act-protest-rights/
by decades
https://socialistworker.co.uk/reviews-and-culture/police-brutality-against-striking-miners-and-cover-ups-laid-bare
centuries..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_MassacreThe first step? They've been on this path for years
I think you mean the ninety first step.
I see no hope for this country. Things are just getting worse and worse every year, how long can this keep going?
It’s pretty bad now, but I seriously worry what things will be like in 20 or so years.
World
FTFY
I lived in the UK not that long ago and I lived and live elsewhere in Europe.
It really is a bigger problem in the UK than most of Europe, probably because it apes the US so hard and somehow combines some of its worst shit with their very own local shit (classism, very low social mobility, entrenched ancient elites, post-imperial hangover and other) rather than combining qualities.
It's mainly Anglon-Saxon countries that are speed running the rise of Fascism, not most of the World.
Tories on a any% speed run to the government from Children of Men, while the left is worried about which way Kier decides to lean that afternoon
Yall need to grab some pitchforks
Hmm...I wonder which political spectrum the current government belongs to...
Whatever gets them votes. Actual conservatives would at least pretend to care about the economy.
Why? Conservatism is about preserving traditional values and traditional power structures not the economy.
If you actually care about the economy that means you care about progressing a more effective and efficient state for the benefit of the people. Afraid that makes you a progressive which the conservatives assure us they aren't.
Remember remember the fifth of November,
When Guy Fawkes took the fall.
Be sure to wear your mask from now on,
They can't arrest us all
Was just setting up my viewing for the rest of the evening, and ironically enough, it's on tonight! 9pm on Quest (and again on Quest +1) .
So at 9 I'll be watching the last episode of Miners' Strike 1984: The Battle for Britain, then V for Vendetta at 10.. Good inspirational viewing.
damn, gpt is terrible at poetry
So if someone doesn't want to get sick for being in a huge crowd, they get arrested? Truly genius.
Oi you got a loicence for that mask?
I do but ye cant see mi face on the loicence photo anyways
What's aw 'is, den?
Hahaha
Fake beards, wigs , sunglasses and presumably face paint should be ok
Stay safe protestors. Leave id and phone at home, don't hold anything that could be interpreted as a weapon, and carry a "your rights" card to help you remember what to do if the police try to take away your freedom.
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Don't talk to Police
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Don't talk to police
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It looks like this would apply to any item used to conceal one's identity. So, it's possible that all of those things could be included.
Face paint would be mind blowing, what will all the football fans do?
Man its like the UK is an authoritarian shit hole or something. Y'all need weapons and resistance. And no, I'm not American before someone asks.
Curious, where are you from? I like it when people from other countries use y'all, especially when the apostrophe is in the right place 🙂
Is the UK turning into a dictatorship or an undeveloped country ? How is independent press doing over there ?
More like fascist-adjacent. And we started the process of underdeveloping ourselves when the fascist-adjacent leaders persuaded the terminally ignorant that Brexit would be great when it was obvious it was going to lead exactly where it is leading right now.
dictatorship or an undeveloped country
Right-Wing Government: why not both?
I think it's important to relate the latter part to the former - beyond the privacy issues with not being allowed to wear masks (and having our bank accounts invaded), there is also the health aspect, and disallowing masks is one sure fire way to keep disabled people from assembling, since, you know, we don't want to get covid, being significantly more likely to die from it (not necessarily because of the illness, but because our lives are deemed less worth saving).
The lack of any mask mandates already excludes disabled people from so many public spaces, this is just another way to keep us (as well as others, you know, first they came for..) from fighting back. as they strip us of every last human right.
Not comparing, we have our own issues, but the US just said not wearing a mask in public is akin to not paying taxes or speeding - it’s still illegal and not free speech because it affects others.
This is an admittance that you have no right to protest.
What are.you going to do about it?
You've got to understand the 'average' British psyche at this point in history. The majority simply don't care that people they see as troublemakers and/or scroungers are having their rights dismantled. They lack the empathy to give a shit for these people and they lack the foresight to see that it'll be their rights gone one day too. What stirs the average british gammon off their collective arses these days is the rumour there might be an immigrant in a hotel somewhere or that a drag queen exists.
Prote—ahhh nearly got me!
I have never seen a cucked nation like the UK in the world before. u guys have no resistance what so ever ! the french should have bought you some freedoms a few centuries ago.
It's not even that - the people this is directly affecting (for now) are the people who, if they raise their head above the parapet, it'll get shot off - the people least able to protest. 95% of the country are not lacking resistance, they're lacking empathy and foresight. They show plenty of resistance to media driven culture war bullshit like immigration and LGBTQIA+ issues.
Yet they can't stop making fun of the French. Hahah le protests amirite?
But they already made protest illegal.
They need the facial recognition software to do it's thing so they can make sure life gets difficult for anyone conscious of their actions.
V for Vendetta wants their timeline back.
A little from V, a little from children of men
it will be interesting to see if we ever get to a point during the next inevitable global pandemic where masks are compulsory in some places and illegal in others
The last one hasn't ended yet
Fuck this country. I'm moving out.
You know what I hate about it? I've always been quite the anglophile, but never saw the chance to move there because I was uneducated. Now they might even want me to come and I don't think I want to anymore :(
Well that should put us back on track as a nation, practical solutions for our modern problems. What a relief.
Face paint.
You bring up a good point. What qualifies as a mask? Do fake beards and mustaches count? What about religious face coverings? What about people who have prosthetic noses? I have a feeling this is going to be a tricky one for them to enforce in any sort of reasonable way.
A big thing you can hide is the distance between your eyes. Cover one of them with hair or something and any FR tech won't work as well. You could also have a bunch of infrared led's on your hat or something then the camera wouldn't see shit. There's a video out there that's an interview with an ex-CIA agent or something that talks about disguises and whatnot.
Does it apply to FFP2 respirators?
What if you're feeling unwell?
JAIL!
Face paint and glasses to break up facial recognition
😷
Hmm… I may be mistaken but can they not already arrest troublemakers, arsonists, violent/aggressive individuals and other sort of rioters/agitators with preexisting laws/bylaws/regulations ?
On the other hand, I'm trying to see the silver lining here… perhaps this new law will make it difficult for agent provocateur¹ from operating without repercussions and anonymity unless the law specifically has a carve out for them (I wouldn't be too surprised, but it would be another major blow to the resiliency of democracy in the United Kingdom).
Police discretion will already make an exception for them even it's not explicitly carved out, there is no silver lining, it's just more police state shit
I'm sure there'll be a carve-out to the mask prohibition. I mean, what if there's protest action a minister/police department dislikes? They need a way for their agents to don confiscated Nazi paraphernalia before joining the event to poison its media coverage, while remaining unidentifiable as state actors.
They don't need a carve out for that, police discretion will do
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Protesters who wear masks could face arrest, up to a month in jail and a £1,000 fine under proposed measures that human rights campaigners claim are pandering to “culture war nonsense”.
Police in England and Wales will be given the power to arrest people if they are wearing face coverings at specific demonstrations, the Home Office has said.
The move is in direct response to the four protesters being cleared of criminal damage after toppling a statute of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol in 2022 .
Ministers will also make climbing on war memorials a specific public order offence, carrying a three-month sentence and a £1,000 fine.
Shami Chakrabarti, the human rights lawyer and peer, said: “Should rape victims or refugees peacefully protesting really be punished for covering their faces to protect their identities?
The home secretary, James Cleverly, said that recent protests had seen “a small minority dedicated to causing damage and intimidating the law-abiding majority”.
The original article contains 681 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
that has been forbidden in Germany for years
What did they do during covid ? Arrest both mask wearers and nonmaskers ?
To police, that's a feature, not a bug.
They're wrong, it's not illegal in the general public but on public gatherings and as the driver of a car.
Because Germany is here to set a good example right?
First they force you to wear masks in public, then they ban it. Fucking clowns.
Nah, not this rhetoric. Masks were mandatory because of COVID, and that was the right move. Get out of here with your bad-by-association argument. Making masks mandatory then was the right move. Banning masks during protests is not the right move. Both these facts are not mutually exclusive.
When you make such weak, bad faith arguments, you only give fuel for the other side to break down even your valid arguments.
There are plenty of reasons to call UK clowns, but masks during this centuries worst version of the black death (so far) isn't one of them.
I think I need to clarify.
I support mask wearing, I wore one despite being legally exempt on health grounds (autism).
The fact is covid is still here, if anything wearing masks at a large scale gathering like a protest is still a very good idea on health grounds, especially for those with weakened immune systems, the unvaccinated, etc. It's utterly mad to ban a protection device you once mandated when the problem it protects from never went away.
I would do it anyway in mass. I want 100 people to show up somewhere with masks.
100,000 people. With 100, they'll just take as many as they can. With 100k, they just have to let the sea wash over them and hope they aren't swept out with it.
I wonder where that energy was in the 852nd month of "two weeks to flatten the curve". 🤔
Antifa ain't happy about that.