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points

by chmod7755 hours ago |

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by foldr5 hours ago|

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This was, obviously, stupid and wrong, but:

* The Police admitted their obvious error and paid £20k in damages: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gz1qy30v5o

* This bizarre case has nothing to do with "speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy" (root comment).

If you look for examples of the police arresting people for stupid and unjustifiable reasons, you can find them in lots of countries, including the US. For example, here is someone being arrested in Kansas for clapping too loudly during a meeting: https://www.kbtx.com/2026/07/27/teacher-arrested-repeatedly-... It's absolutely right that this sort of thing is reported and it's right for people to be outraged about it. However, I'd be cautious about drawing overly sweeping conclusions about the UK from such cases.

by FridayoLeary49 minutes ago|

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Yeah, but in the UK it's systemic and on a national scale.It would be less obnoxious if they were really good at fighting regular crime, but they are atrocious at that.

So yes, we might not be so dreadful compared to Hicksville, US or some craphole country like India,but that's a very low bar for the police of a G5 nation.

Absolutely go ahead and make sweeping generalisations about the state of the police in the UK. It's all true (except if anyone claims they are systemically racist, or some other clickbaity nonsense).

by foldr44 minutes ago|

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What exactly are you saying is systemic and on a national scale? I certainly don't think the specific news story we're talking about is typical. That's why it was widely reported and why the Police had to admit their error.

by FridayoLeary39 minutes ago|

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Basically every week there's another story that makes it onto the news about yet another outrageous apprehension. 60,000 arrests or so over the last couple of years IIRC. What's disgraceful is that for years the police whined that they didn't have enough resources because of Tory budget cuts, something which I can personally attest, and then you get this...

by foldr34 minutes ago|

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I could find one news story a week about an outrageous arrest in the US, or in many other countries. You don't give a citation for the 60k figure, but I imagine it's the same one that has to be laboriously debunked every time someone brings social media talking points about the UK to one of these threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49830776