Rio charged over 'Ashley is a choc ice'...

[max_tranmere]

Rio Ferdinand has been charged by the FA over his comment where he called Ashley Cole a 'choc ice'. The term, which appears to be the successor to the term 'coconut', means black on the outside and white on the inside. I find this a very odd term as we are largely one race and culture now. Many people have partners outside their own ethnic group and I think half of all black men are with white women. So I'm not sure what Rio Ferdinand meant exactly. Anyway, he is now in trouble. I wonder when this John Terry business, and all the follow-on things (like this), will come to an end.

[Arginald Valleywater]

Do gooders sticking their nose in on 2 grown men acting like kids. Pathetic.

[Porn Baron]

I am not surprised he has been charged if it's true. Although I thought he was laughing at someone elses tweet??? He didn't make the tweet?

The football clubs have got to get their players off twitter. They are just getting themselves into trouble.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]Rio Ferdinand has been charged by the FA over his comment where he called Ashley Cole a 'choc ice'.[/quote]

He didn't call Ashley Cole a 'choc-ice'. He said it was 'classic' when somebody else called said it. Not right but slightly different.

[Arginald Valleywater]

Yes but remember the do gooders can find neo nazi messages in an episode of Trumpton.

And I agree on Twitter, it has to be the saddest thing ever. One of my colleagues follows all the TOWIE low life and half the pop charts all bloody day, her obsession with celebrity knows no bounds!

[David Johnson]

"The football clubs have got to get their players off twitter. They are just getting themselves into trouble."

Agreed. I really don't see the point of Twitter for "celebrities". Okay it gives your "followers" access to your every banal thought, but this is clearly a double-edged sword. On the one hand there have been innumerable examples of "celebrities" tweeting before their brain gets in gear e.g. Olympians banned before the competition starts for making offensive tweets. On the other hand, they provide access to every fruitcake in the world to get in touch.

So the likes of Louise Mensch has involved the police re. some of her "followers"; one of Tom Daley's followers has been arrested today for sending offensive tweets; Rebecca Adlington, the swimmer, who has been on the receiving end of loads of offensive tweets was even going on about how she has had 50,000 extra followers as a result of the home Olympics. And she talked about that immediately after her bronze medal performance.

All publicity mad bonkers!!

[Porn Baron]

A spokeswoman for Dorset police said: "A 17-year-old man was arrested by Dorset police officers in the early hours this morning at a guesthouse in the Weymouth area on suspicion of malicious communications. A 17-year-old boy held in Weymouth, Dorset, after telling Team GB diver that he had let down his dead father.

The Police were really quick off the mark. I know this was insensitive and stupid thing to say but is it really an arrestable offence?

[Flat_Eric]

Porn Baron wrote:

[quote]A spokeswoman for Dorset police said: "A 17-year-old man was arrested by Dorset police officers in the early hours this morning at a guesthouse in the Weymouth area on suspicion of malicious communications. A 17-year-old boy held in Weymouth, Dorset, after telling Team GB diver that he had let down his dead father.

The Police were really quick off the mark. I know this was insensitive and stupid thing to say but is it really an arrestable offence?[/quote]


I haven't seen precisely what this "tweeter" (or whatever they're called) is supposed to have said to Tom Daley, but I find all this heavy-handed reacting to Twitter comments very disturbing in that it could have serious implications for freedom of speech if the police are now going to start getting involved whenever someone makes a bad-taste, juvenile or stupid comment that someone else finds "offensive".

How do you define "offensive" anyway? And who gets to define it? When does a comment stop being stupid or tastless and start being "offensive"? Is "offending" just one person now going to be enough to land you in court? Or do you need to "offend" a hundred people or some other arbitrary number?

Quite aside from the brain-dead banality of it all, this is one reason why I have nothing to do with Twitter and never will have anything to do with it.

- Eric

[Sam Slater]

What's more likely is that he's been arrested for a combination of tweets to other people who pulled him up over his insensitive tweets about Tom Daley. For instance, he called one Asian tweeter a 'fucking paki', told one girl he'd 'rape her mother', told another he'd 'rape her just to ruin her life', and threatened to kill someone else with a shotgun (who he implied knew where he lived).

But these people aren't famous so the papers have concentrated on the Tom Daley tweet, which doesn't tell the whole story or put it in any context.

[Porn Baron]

I agree. I am uneasy about it. Many jokes are offensive to certain people. Where do you draw the line? It's all getting silly now.


Maybe people will stop using twitter.