Saturday, November 13, 2010

Ordinary People Are Easily Alarmed

On the subject of risible twats who hype jocular comments on Twitter into "death threats", the man who joked about blowing up an airport, Paul Chambers, had his appeal rejected. The judge who ruled against him claimed that "any ordinary person" would be alarmed by the comment.

That's right, a sitting judge has such a low opinion of the general public that she seriously argues that a random post on Twitter threatening to blow up an airport by someone who is frustrated at missing a flight is likely to be taken as being a literal threat to do just that, despite the fact that he clearly had neither the means or inclination to do either.

My belief in the abilities of the general public is not vast but even I don't think they're that stupid. As with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's claim to find the quote by Gareth Compton calling for her to be stoned to death to be a death threat- it is clearly untrue.

Incidentally in the case of Yaz, her gall is even more breathtaking than usual, she is accusing her victim of calling for her stoning because he mocked her actual apologetics for a real upcoming stoning of an Iranian woman!

Rather extraordinarily, Mr Compton has been suspended from the Conservative Party on the grounds that what he said was "not acceptable". Seeing as he was defending David Cameron against Yaz's insistence that he had no moral authority to criticise Iran for stoning women to death, then I can only assume that it is now official Tory policy that Dave has no moral authority.

3 comments:

Mark said...

The Tories should have responded to this 'controversy' with a shrug of the shoulders, instead of playing up to YAB's much vaunted victim status.

When Prescott landed a real (as opposed to metaphorical) blow on an elector in the 2001 election campaign Blair laughed the incident off.Cameron (or whoever is in charge while he is out East) should have done the same in this instance. Taking YAB at her own estimation in this episode has been a big mistake by the Tories.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Agreed.

Maybe I'll set up a Twitter account and ever single Tweet will be who or what I intend to blow up or kill. I could work my way through the alphabet or do it at random.

But with the occasional recipe or limerick or something to lighten the mood.

Ross said...

Mark- Exactly, it tells their supporters that YAB's opinions are more trusted than theirs.

Mark W- would the limericks be along the lines of:

There was a woman called Brown,
Who seemed to be seriously down,
When she wailed about murder,
Everyone heard her,
Even though she's a bit of a clown.