Police forced to issue apology after claiming “being offensive” is a crime

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Criticising the message, Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union said: “It’s deeply alarming that Merseyside Police have such a poor grasp of the law. As Lord Justice Sedley said in a landmark case in 1999, ‘free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having’.”

Ewan Somerville, The Daily Telegraph, 22nd February 2021.