It is illustrative of the madness of the Scottish legal system and its love affair with increasingly oppressive ‘hate speech’ laws that a woman was arrested for sharing a picture of a Suffragette ribbon. Marion Miller, a campaigner or women’s rights, was arrested by Police Scotland and put through the legal wringer because an as yet unidentified, presumably a trans individual or a ‘trans ally’, claimed that the image of the ribbon was a ‘noose’. From what I’ve seen of the ‘offending’ image this ribbon looked nothing like a noose, it was plainly a ribbon suffragette colours.

As with all those who have been arrested under Britain’s chilling and sinister ‘hate speech’ Marion Miller has been subjected to something that is often termed as ‘the process is the punishment’. I’m disgusted at what the Scottish police and legal system has subjected Ms Miller to but I’m very pleased to point out that there has been a development in this case. There has been a rare outbreak of common sense from the Scottish equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service and all charges against Ms Miller in relation to the image of the ribbon are being dropped.

Sarah Phillimore writing in The Critic magazine relayed the news about Ms Miller which came in the form of a statement from Ms Miller’s solicitor and said of this case:

This whole saga has been unedifying for a number of reasons. First, the opacity of the initial charges against Millar — which appeared to relate to a suffragette ribbon tied to a fence being perceived as a noose. It later transpired that the charges were amended shortly before or immediately at one of her court hearings. Dates for her court appearance were continually adjourned. One can only imagine the toll this takes. As many have pointed out, the punishment for gender heresy is rarely a conviction — most claims by self-appointed victims are trivial and vexatious. The punishment is the process. Marion has been through the mill, but thankfully she was able to secure top notch legal representation from Joanna Cherry QC who no doubt assisted The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to a better understanding of the operation of Article 10 ECHR. But not all litigants in her position are so lucky. 

Ms Phillimore is correct. Not only are the vast majority of these ‘offence’ cases, especially when they regard criticism of the gender cult, vexatious and trivial but that even though it is quite difficult to get convictions in these cases, the process of arrest, charging, court appearances and the inevitable delays, constitute a punishment in themselves. Using the ‘process as punishment’ means that there’s no need to get a conviction for ‘speech criminals’ or other dissidents, the alleged miscreant’s life can be screwed up even though they’ve never been convicted of the ‘crime’ that they’ve been accused of.

The freeing of Marion Miller from the threat of prosecution is a welcome outbreak of unexpected common sense by the Scottish legal system. Let us hope that not only are their more such outbreaks of common sense in Scotland but such outbreaks occur elsewhere in the United Kingdom as well.