Hello and

welcome to the spike podcast I'm Fraser Myers and with me this week as ever we have spikes editor Tom Slater

Hello and spike columnist Ella Whelan

Hi coming up on the show the rise of state censorship, the Rwanda migration plan, and Wimbledon's ban on Russian tennis players.

Britain seems to be coming a more censorious country every day.

Increasingly we're seeing people being arrested and even imprisoned for expressing offensive opinions. So this week a man called Paul Busetti

was sent down for 10 weeks for sharing an offensive video of the Grandfell Tower.

Tom, what have you made of this case?

It's a bit of a blast from the past this one because it relates to a video that was circulated in 2018

where, as you say, this gentleman and his friends a fireworks party were burning

an effigy of Grenfell Tower in the video itself you can always hear people

making racist comments and it was distributed in private

what's that groups it ended up going up on YouTube went viral and as a consequence

of this he was charged under the Communications Act with essentially distributing, sending a grossly offensive video.

Originally he was acquitted, but so this is a kind of overturning of that original ruling.

But it's interesting because these sorts of stories aren't new.

We've been talking about them for a very long time. They've been piling up, but I just don't think we

should let any of them get away from us. I mean, I think it's fair to say that this gentleman and probably

his friends are prized dickheads but it shouldn't be illegal to be a prized dickhead in my view and these stories are just

mounting up and we've talked to a fair bit about them on the show

in recent years, but particularly under this piece of legislation,

the Communications Act.

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