Fr Ted creator/writer Graham Linehan Arrested over posts on Transgender issues

Aren't all police at Heathrow airport armed?

Well he obviously wasn't being investigated by the airport police and he was scheduled to appear in court so there was no need to arrest him at Heathrow. It was total over-reach.

The question misses the point. The point being that we are all affected by totalitarian tendencies.

It wasn't debunked. There was widespread criticism of the arrest after it happened and non-crime hate incidents as a policing matter was scrapped earlier this year.

Just catching up here.

It's notable that those who are most vociferous in condemning Linehan's conduct (and I think we are all condemning it to a greater or lesser degree, though some of us acknowledge that it takes a bit of moral courage to state opinions which are deemed unacceptable in the current environment) have nothing at all to say about Sophia's conduct, which was a lot more insidious imho. And the people telling Linehan to get help don't have any advice for poor Sophia, who is very young and really needs to be taken aside by a friend or relative for a helpful chat.

I thought that Observer article was actually quite gentle on Glinner - though the journalist probably needs to toughen up a bit - he seems pretty upset about being asked a few questions.

The folks who were so exercised about tweets from JK Rowling - remember many of her tweets have been in response to personal attacks, doxxing, and death treats - who were also saying that Lenihan does nothing for women's safety, and that Rowling put a metaphorical target on Emma Watson's back which nobody actually hit, afaik, are cool with an actual target being put on Angela Carini's face, which Imane Khalif was happy to punch multiple times. I wonder, for all of you who are ok with this - and I'm using the upthread logic that if you aren't out on the street with a loudhailer protesting against it then you are in favour of it - would you prefer to be hit with a few well-worded, witty, and factually correct tweets or punched in the fact by someone with 260% of your power?

If someone on here found themselves on the receiving end of some shockingly hypocritical behaviour, where someone was trying to be friends with you in private while dissing you in public because that was the fashionable thing to do, would you keep it to yourself?

I heard the Linehan piece on Newstalk - he really is very unlikeable.

The Observer piece mentioned Venlafaxine. I've previously speculated that Linehan might be suffering adverse drug effects - I've linked an article below about how this type of drug can affect impulse control. It focuses on gambling, but there are other behavioural changes. A few extracts:

“It’s not a targeted drug, it doesn’t target depression specifically, it targets everything. It takes away all of your feelings, so you become a shell of a person. You’re still able to function, but you just don’t feel anything, you don’t feel any fear of consequences at all,” he said.

“I contacted Pfizer and I asked if they knew that Efexor could possibly cause gambling and sexual misconduct and they responded with, ‘oh yes we knew that, 0.8% of people will get that’,” he said. Pfizer informed Paul these dangers were presented as a possible side effect in the medication packaging under the umbrella term “uninhibited behaviours”.

“When Efexor is taken at high dosages it triggers a flood of dopamine and becomes what we call a ‘dopamine agonist’. This can be responsible for the types of dangerous impulsive behaviours.”

Four months since extricating himself from Efexor, Paul is still attempting pick up the pieces of a life decimated by ICDs. “You don’t fix three years of that type of behaviour in three months,” he said.

“It’s really the family side of things, its healing the wounds there that is going to be the big thing, I might not be able to keep the family together. I’ve got a wonderful wife and I’ve got to fight for that.”

I can't understand how they square it with the Hippocratic oath - first do no harm. Tens of thousands harmed, and some people think Linehan is a monster for calling attention to it.

However he is portrayed, he is still able to write coherently and convincingly as this piece in the Telegraph today shows

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/20/the-met-apologised-to-me-but-i-am-not-accepting-it/

Free link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1824c557328e0112

In 2018, I revealed that the trans activist Stephanie Hayden was a fraudster using his trans identity to escape his creditors, and a serial vexatious litigant. For posting this on Twitter, the police rang me at home and gave me a verbal warning. A later visit, prompted by a complaint from Adrian Harrop, a doctor whose licence to practise was eventually suspended for his own online conduct, brought officers to my front door. That visit, as I’ve said elsewhere, was one of the things that broke my marriage. My wife, understandably, could not live with the police arriving at the house with all the
seriousness of a murder inquiry.

In October 2024, Sophia Brooks was photographed outside the LGB Alliance conference. Inside, a group of well-connected young activists had released thousands of insects into a hall full of lesbians, gay men and bisexual people. To me, that was a terrorist-style attack on LGB people in the heart of London, and I had no doubt who was behind it. I knew exactly who Brooks was. He had a long history of pretending online to be people he wasn’t, a detransitioner at one point, a feminist at another, in order to win the confidence of women and then use what he’d extracted from them to harass and torment them. I wanted to strip away the anonymity he’d been hiding behind.

For that, the Crown Prosecution Service pursued me for harassment and criminal damage. The harassment charge collapsed. The criminal damage conviction was overturned this month at Southwark Crown Court. None of it should ever have come to court.

Whatever about some of the things he said online, none of that should have happened, and (partly) due to him, the system is being reformed.

Any of the people he's named above could have used the civil courts if they think they were defamed by him. The heavy hand of PC Plod is totally out of order for resolving (what in reality are) petty hand-bag disputes over he-said /she said.

And let's be honest here, the ideologues have tried to use the police and the state to enforce their ideology. It was an experiment that has failed (in the UK at least). It remains to be seen just how captured the state still is here.