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UK Man Arrested Over "Offensive" Tweet
mooterSkooter writes A 19-year-old Uk man has been arrested over an "offensive" tweet about an accident in which six people died. From the article: "The tweet, which has since been deleted along with the account that posted it, joked about the tragedy, in which the driver lost control of the vehicle and drove on the pavement, hitting Christmas shoppers 'like pinballs.' The tweet said: 'So a bin lorry has apparently driven in 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash it's picked up in one day.'"
It's like the damn island hasn't heard of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. "Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,"
Mario Balotelli, a black football player with a Jewish mother is suspended a game and fined 25k pounds for posting an anti-racist picture about a multicultural Super Mario.
Luis Suarez was essentially forced out of England for using the word negrito while speaking Spanish because it happened to sound like nigger. (While John Terry was given a sentence of half the time for using the word nigger in English.)
Crazy arse porn rules.
A man is threatened with life in jail for swearing too much.
And what the fuck is an Anti-Social Behavior Order?
How can the nation that brought us Locke also be bringing us this?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Was the tweet offensive? Yes.
Did it warrant an arrest? If it did, then every late-night TV host and stand-up comic would be in jail.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Well, as they say, the tree of liberty needs to occasionally be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. It appears that their tree is in need of some watering.
Besides that, top gear's Stephen Fry:
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."
And from Salman Rushdie:
“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.
If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.
I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.
To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”
I don't read AC A human right
The UK is really reigning in on the content of speech. That's worrying enough for their citizens, but also troubling for how they may impact the rest of the world. What caught my eye is he turned himself in. Was he getting death threats? Or does it say something a bit scary about the UK that someone would tweet an offensive joke, erase it, and then turn themselves into the police?
Does that mean that you should be arrested for saying something unpleasant? What if you don't consider what you're saying to be worthy of arrest but society (whatever that is) does and the costume-wearing class comes a-knocking? I suspect you'd change your tune.
No. Like real life, the internet should be a place where people can speak their minds without a bunch of pantywaists shutting down their free speech rights out of insecurity. Of course, in the west, we have a growing problem where these people are gaining political power and using it to censor speech they don't like. No one should be arrested for a fucking internet post...at least not in a free country.
It's not like the police have anything else to investigate, like, perhaps anything from institutionalized paedophilia to common burglaries, is it?
This is all about taking people's attention away from the documented failings of the police.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If England is ever going to be accepted as a state they'll have to learn to respect the first amendment rights of citizens. Oh, and while we're at it, they should be citizens not subjects. Drop the monarch.
So you think you have the right to say anything you like, even if you intend it to be harmful? Or do you have the right to do anything harmful, so long as the harm isn't both physical and permanent?
Learn to love Alaska
I was going through security once, and the TSA agent made a bomb joke to me. I said back "I have a witty retort to that, but if I said it, you might arrest me." He looked very confused, then was a but apologetic about making a joke that I was barred by law from making.
Learn to love Alaska
Same as the US. Obscene is illegal. Obscene is illegal because it's offensive. So "rude" is illegal in the US, same as the UK. But it's funny to see all the Americans assert they have more rights than those in the UK, when the rights are roughly equal, but exercised slightly differently.
Learn to love Alaska
No one has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a collective, or a group, or a society, or a community; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (collective, society, community) may not offend another; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another. And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not. Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. Law that bans something based upon the idea that some group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.
Conversely, when people are truly harmed (not just offended) without their informed consent (and legitimate defense is not the cause), then the matter is one that should arguably be considered for law. Otherwise, no.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Is Glasgow filled with some sort of protected class? Lot of Africans, or Muslims? Was the joke meant to be racist?
No more than any other major city. Anecdotally I'd say far less so than the south of the UK, but I don't have numbers to hand, so take that as opinion rather than fact.
Or just anti-life?
Basically, this. It could be construed as "classist", as Glasgow's primary reputation is being something of a rough city (or a tough/hard city from a local's point of view). - however the irony isn't lost on me that Sunderland (where the 'tweeter' resides) isn't exactly god's kingdom either. An argument could also be made that Scots themselves are a minority, having only ~10% of England's population. (Easy to miss, the accident occurred in Scotland but the accused is in the north of England).
But mostly, he just seems to be a dick. And that's much less protected here than it is in the US.
This is one of the biggest differences between the US & UK legal cultures. While basically similar systems (they share the same "common law" roots), they're exercised entirely differently. The US deals very much with absolutes, and the letter of the law. Most of your primary rights are the right to dissent - and understandably so, since it's what your nation was built upon. To this end you have free speech, press, assembly, firearms, etc. That is, the right to have a dissenting opinion, to share/publish this opinion, to vote on it, to protest, etc. All the way up to having enough guns around that the govt should be wary of the people - although personally I'd argue this one's now a futile effort given the govt clearly won that arms race ...
But I digress; In the UK the law is very much more intent based. So we don't have free speech as an absolute - we judge each on its merits. So political speech, satire, etc are essentially protected speech - very much in line with the intent of your first amendment - but public disorder, breech of the peace, hate speech, etc, very much less so - which runs contrary to the letter of your first amendment.
This one falls into an odd gray area though. We have no obligation to provide a platform for free speech. So while this wouldn't have been seen has malicious if shared as a joke between friends, it falls foul of the Malicious Communications Act, which allows for something like;
Section 1 of the Act covers the sending to another of any letters, electronic communications, photographs and recordings that are indecent, grossly offensive or which convey a threat (which may be false), provided there is an intention on the part of the sender to cause distress or anxiety to the person who receives them.
The offence refers to the sending, delivering or transmitting, there is no requirement for the communication to reach (or be read by) the person who is intended to read it.
( http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/c... )
So this is where we end up with situations which can appear absurd. Someone makes a complaint to the police. The police satisfy themselves that there's reasonable grounds that such a communication has been sent. But it's not up to the police to judge the intent ("provided there is an intention on the part of the sender ..."). This ends up in essentially a three-step process, where the police may find sufficient rounds to make an arrest, then the CPS ("Crown Prosecution Service", roughly a public prosecutor or attorney general) may find sufficient grounds to press charges, and then a judge/court may find an actual offence.
So far, only the first of these steps has happened.