”Most of the arsenal of NATO”?

That’s just ridiculous. Not a single NATO country has compromised their own defense for this, which can be argued to be a bad or a good thing from either side, and most everyone’s been buying up new gear and investing heavily on new tech; they are, with a few minor exceptions, basically sending the scraps that’d go to landfill if it wasn’t convenient-ish to send them to Ukraine instead….

Trick or treat

Well, I for one never said that it’s okay. And it isn’t. But there’s a long gap between “not fine, should have consequences” to “3 months in jail”.

Obviously people don’t go to work to get abused, I don’t think anyone claimed that. It’s hard to imagine anyone thinking that people should go to work to get abused. That’s just a weird thing to say.

I don’t know UK law, but I’d be surprised if that would be applied in a similar case. Maybe someone can educate me here and give examples of such rulings, but I feel like the wording is so vague and wide, that this very same law could be applied to wildly different and much more serious and alarming cases, entirely on a different level.

If getting frustrated and calling a service worker names in a single, non-recurring instance, warrants anything more than a small fine at the very worst in the UK, I will be very surprised. But I’m willing to accept that’s a thing there, just not convinced by that quote alone.

“Pretty standard really” sounds very wild a statement, but then again, maybe UK is weird like that.

Edit: At this point I’m just very surprised to learn so many are of this opinion, so I’m just trying to get my bearings and understand if this is a common sentiment and way to look at things. I’d really like to know more if something like this truly is commonplace in a western country at this day and age.

To fine an absurd amount and/or send them to jail for 3 whole months?

If one person being an ass causes one to spiral bad enough to warrant that kind of sentences, I would hazard a guess that they are extremely likely on a wrong occupational path. There’s no way interactions like that aren’t weekly for everyone working any service gig.

I get that it has an effect and nobody should behave like that, but I can’t believe anyone would deem these as proportional punishments.

You likely get same 3 months jail here where I live (a western social democracy) for manslaughter, if you are first-time offender. Depending on a lot of course, but that anyone would consider these appropriate seems insane to me.

Still, 2.7k fine for an insult, in a single instance, is already bonkers, but three months jail time?

Whatever your stance on whether or not the guy should be punished, the extent of this punishment here really shouldn’t sound fair or just in any way

As long as we have the freedom to live in peace, we ought to.

But the freedom doesn’t come free of charge.