A woman who had (what I certainly think was) a humorous sign on her gate saying “Our dogs are fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses” was forced to take it down by British police because it is “distressing, offensive and inappropriate”. Yet seeing as Muslim extremists can walk down the street holding signs threatening to decapitate people, all with a police escort, it is clearly time to stop co-operating with the police and being so damn polite to them. Instead urge them not to allow themselves to be used to repress people’s right to express themselves and force them to fill out as much paperwork as possible. Got a lawyer? Call him. Just do not meekly co-operate.
We need to establish that there is no right not to be offended that trumps the reasonable right to self-expression. In fact I would argue that police escorted Muslims have already established that. If Muslims extremists can threaten people with death unless they express themselves in accordance with the restrictions Muslim activists want imposed on them, then we clearly do indeed have the right to make jokes about feeding Jehovah’s Witnesses to our dogs.
So stop making the job of the police easy when they try to impose such restrictions. If they want to stop you expressing themselves, do not threaten them but do not feel any great need to be unduly polite, make them arrest you and take the matter to court, every single time. I often go out wearing a tee-shirt saying “My Imam went to Mecca and all he got me was this lousy Tee-shirt”. Offensive? I do not think so but if anyone disagrees, I will not take it off and will force any policeman who takes issue with it to arrest me if he wants to stop me walking around wearing it.
