Quite unusually these days in an increasingly censorious United Kingdom, a person has been acquitted of a ‘hate speech’ offence. Not only that but this acquittal has shone a rather bright light on the activities of the Crown Prosecution Service and how they have become so politicised and so eager to prosecute ‘hate speech’ cases that they put forward faulty evidence in order to do so.

Many Britons were like me appalled at the implications of prosecuting people for making jokes about the Grenfell Tower fire, or any sort of joke for that matter. The State I believe should have no business in interfering in a persons right to promulgate jokes or other speech except cases where that speech is deliberately and credibly inciting violence against a specific target. The implications for free speech that such interference has are truly appalling. Jokes in particular are very personal and subjective and what is funny to one person may be a bit of a turn off for another. This is why I was disgusted that a person who was alleged to have shared a video of a group of friends burning a cardboard model of Grenfell Tower was dragged through the courts and I’m even more disgusted by what this case has revealed about the Crown Prosecution Service and its conduct.

This long drawn out case came to a stunning conclusion this week when the London Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, cleared Paul Bussetti aged 47 from South Norwood in London of sharing footage of the burning of the Grenfell model on You Tube. However it turned out that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had brought as evidence for the alleged offence a video that was not widely shared by Mr Bussetti. It appears that the video that the CPS was relying on to convict Mr Bussetti was not one shared on You Tube but instead one that was only shared in a closed social media group.

In short, the CPS was attempting to convict Mr Bussetti on evidence that was nothing to do with the defendant. This case could, as Chief Magistrate Arbuthnot said, led to a major miscarriage of justice. It could have also seen Mr Bussetti gaoled for up to 15 weeks for an offence that he plainly had not committed.

According to a report in the UK Daily Mail, it was the sharp wits and eyes of Mr Bussetti’s counsel, Mark Summers QC, that in the closing stages of the trial noticed and was informed that the video that the Crown was using as evidence against Mr Bussetti was made by someone else. The news that the Crown was running the case based on incorrect evidence that was nothing to do with Mr Bussetti caused the Magistrate to clear Mr Bussetti of causing the video to be uploaded to You Tube.

Mr Bussetti has in my view quite rightly left Westminster Magistrates Court without a stain on his character with regards to this alleged ‘offence’. The situation for the Crown Prosecution Service after this case is the complete opposite. The CPS comes out of this debacle of a case with a very great cloud over them regarding both their competence as prosecutors, their political neutrality and leaves many questions to be asked of the CPS about whether they are overly influenced by SJW and identity politics activists when it comes to prosecution decisions? The CPS already has an appalling reputation as being overly enthusiastic when it comes to prosecuting ‘hate speech’ crimes where certain groups or individuals are criticised in public, this case further tarnishes the reputation of the CPS.

For the CPS to not disclose to the defence vital evidence like the second video is an act of massive incompetence. There are clear procedures about Crown evidence disclosure so as to ensure fair trials of defendants. The CPS quite obviously did not follow these procedures in this case and it is right that the public ask why that should have happened. Did for example the media furore over this bonfire effigy that was started and run by various social justice warrior types and identity politics grievance mongers cause the CPS to leave out evidence that would harm the CPS’s case? Was political pressure applied to the CPS to push this case despite it being harmful to the concept of freedom of speech and if so by whom?

Another question that needs to be asked, and because of the nature of this issue, asked often, is have the various ‘diversity’ advisors that steer this area of the CPS’s work having too much of an influence? I tend to believe that the CPS, far from being independent scrutineers of the prosecution process have indeed become captives of loud and often unrepresentative grievance groups covering the areas of race, religion, disability and gender and this influence, which has been going on for some time and is likely to get much more influential if their CPS 2020 equality document is to be believed.

There are people involved in advising the CPS who should have nothing at all to do with the administration of a fair and just legal system. Groups like the pro-paediatric gender transition group Mermaids, Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of a well known bunch of Islamic grievance mongers and censorship fans Tell Mama, are but two of the most concerning advisors of the CPS who should be kept well away from the CPS. In addition, Stonewall the LGBT organisation and, along with various race hustlers, Muslim groups and representatives of Gypsy and Roma people. have at one time or another over the last few years been brought in to advise the CPS on ‘hate crimes’. Because of this focus on diversity that the CPS has had over the last decade, I find it inconceivable that prosecution decisions have not been influenced by the presence of these types of advisors, many of whom are probably primarily interested in gaining advantage for their own constituencies instead of the equitable and efficient prosecution of crime. None of these ‘advisors’ would have had anything to do with working with the CPS if there was not something in it for them or their causes.

The failure to disclose evidence in the Bussetti case may well be down to the usual sort of incompetence that Britons have come to expect from their public services. It may also be the case that the diversity obsession that the CPS is currently suffering from may have caused the organisation to put the foot down on the accelerator pedal because of the claims made that this joke was ‘racist’. In any event it is an appalling example of how bad the CPS has become.

I recall how the CPS came into being in the mid 1980’s because of a desire to separate the police and the prosecuting authorities and bring England and Wales into line with Scotland which has for a long time had an independent prosecution service. There were also, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s a string of failures and allegations of malpractice in how the police, who were the prosecuting authority at that time, were handling cases. Back then people could quite easily get fitted up for a crime they did not commit by a corrupt police officer and there was no proper oversight of a force’s prosecution process and no independent review of cases. However today’s prosecution authorities seem to have merely exchanged one form of administrative corruption, an over closeness to the police, with another, which is an over closeness with various diversity causes. It is this unwarranted and dangerous cleaving to groups that have agendas that may not be in accordance with things such as freedom of speech for example, that is the cause of a number of injustices in the area of ‘hate speech’ over the last few years.

The Bussetti case, like the vast majority of other ‘hate speech’ cases should never have come before the courts, or even had any involvement in by the police. People should be allowed to make any joke about any subject under the sun and not risk having their collar felt over doing so. You may not like some jokes or find them offensive, as I also find some jokes not to my taste, however that should not give me or anybody else the right to criminalise those who do make such jokes. This case is important, as not only has justice been served and Mr Bussetti acquitted but the outrageous incompetence or bias of the CPS has been exposed to the public. There needs to be legal reform in this country and reform that gives back to Britons our right to speak freely. The ‘hate speech’ laws need to go as there is plenty of other legislation that can be used to cope with genuine and credible threats to life, and all the diversity wallahs that have embedded themselves like leeches into the CPS need to be swept out of the door never to be seen again in our legal or prosecution systems. We need honest and efficient prosecutors, not mere followers of third rate diversity fads.