{"id":333067,"date":"2026-11-14T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=333067"},"modified":"2026-11-14T06:48:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:48:29","slug":"beware-the-crime-of-muttering-to-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=333067","title":{"rendered":"Beware the Crime of Muttering to Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Jones \u2013 The Daily Sceptic Nov 12, 2026<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n

You might think you\u2019d seen it all when it comes to Britain\u2019s thought police when Graham Linehan was met by five armed officers at an airport. But in the Yookay even muttering to yourself in the privacy of your own car can get you in trouble. Toby has the details in the Spectator<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has fought more than 7,000 cases since 2020 and, frankly, I thought I\u2019d seen it all when it comes to the police overreacting to an \u2018offensive\u2019 remark. Surely, the Met dispatching five armed officers to arrest Graham Linehan when he got off a flight from America for a tweet is the absolute nadir? But no. We were in court last week defending a man who was being prosecuted for saying something verboten while driving his car. The only person who heard it was his four year-old son, yet he was charged with \u201cthreatening or abusive behaviour\u201d with a racial aggravator.<\/p>\n

The story begins in April last year, when our member \u2013 let\u2019s call him Craig \u2013 was driving his son back to their home in Glasgow after a day out at an amusement park in Falkirk. At around 4pm, when he was exiting the M80, he was cut up by another vehicle, forcing him to swerve to avoid a collision. He got the impression the other driver was drunk and called the police from his car. In due course, both vehicles stopped and the police arrived. They declined to breathalyse anyone, but took our member\u2019s dashcam footage to see if any laws had been broken.<\/p>\n

A week later, the officers returned the footage and told him that an offence had indeed been committed \u2013 but by him, not the other driver. His \u2018crime\u2019 was muttering the words \u201csmelly black bastard\u201d under his breath seconds after almost being driven off the road. The windows were closed, so no one outside the vehicle could have heard him, and the other driver wasn\u2019t looking in his direction so couldn\u2019t have seen him say it. The only evidence against Craig was the dashcam footage he\u2019d turned over to the police in the hope of seeing the dangerous driver brought to justice<\/p>\n

This is a near-perfect illustration of \u2018anarcho-tyranny\u2019, a phrase often used to describe contemporary Britain in which law-abiding responsible citizens are persecuted and criminals go unpunished. \u201cHow could you charge me for saying it in my car?\u201d Craig asked the officer reading him his rights: \u201cI was saying it to myself.\u201d \u201cThe language was still racist,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

He contacted the FSU, telling us he was being prosecuted for a thought crime, and it\u2019s hard to disagree.<\/p>\n

Toby cites two other shocking examples, before concluding: \u201cIn the Yookay\u2026 trying to bring criminals to justice is far more likely to get you into trouble than breaking the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Worth reading in full<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern Britain is taking totalitarianism to new levels of petty absurdity <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":333069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333068,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333067\/revisions\/333068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/333069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}