I have read the Frost speech and it is head-scramblingly inane. His actions have directly contradicted nearly every aspect of it.
"We need to stick together". You negotiated our departure. "It is our responsibility to safeguard peace in Northern Ireland." You yourself aggressively pursued the project that put that at risk.
"The protocol has lost consent in Northern Ireland". You imposed it against the consent of Northern Ireland. "We are being asked to run an EU boundary through the centre of our country". That is the product of your negotiation.
Hindsight narrative is gaslighting on a national scale. I remember exactly what it was like in March 2020. The pressure was intense for the government to take action weeks before it did so.
And even if that wasn't the case, they made precisely the same mistake in autumn. Weeks of warnings, completely ignored, thousands dead.
We literally just lived through this. Don't now come and tell us that it didn't happen.
The police have been broadly interpreting this law since it was passed to interfere with people's right to speak or express themselves exactly as we see here.
It's left to the police officer to decide if a passer-by could be caused distress by the 'threatening' words.
So of course someone saying 'fuck' in a conversation outside the pub isn't targeted by police, but people holding political placards/wearing political T-shirts with the word 'fuck' are.
Priti Patel's 'protest banning orders' are a direct threat to freedom of speech and assembly inews.co.uk/opinion/column…
They’re basically a copy-and-paste job from football banning orders, which are used to tackle violent hooligans, or criminal behaviour orders, which are used to tackle anti-social behaviour. But there is a crucial distinction.
Those orders prevented people from going to football matches or engaging in misconduct. These orders prevent people from exercising their democratic rights.
Grim to hear her respond to Sarah Everard case by citing provisions in the policing bill. If they really believed in those provisions, they wouldn't have stuffed them in a bill which also worked to silence those who demonstrate to protect women from violence.