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

[David Johnson]

I suspect Mr Slater is correct. There must be a lot more to this arrest of the Daley tweeter than the 24/7 media were initially reporting.

If a bloke can get off from a conviction for stupidly tweeting that he would blow up a provincial airport if they didn't sort out the delays, it is somewhat unlikely that someone would be arrested for tweeting Tom Daley had let his dead father down.

[Porn Baron]

I haven't seen that but I did see this at the telegraph.

When news of the insensitive tweet spread, Rileyy69 attempted to apologise.

He tweeted: "@TomDaley1994 I'm sorry mate i just wanted you to win cause its the olympics I'm just annoyed we didn't win I'm sorry tom accept my apology."

He later added: "please i don't want to be hated I'm just sorry you didn't win i was rooting for you pal to do britain all proud just so upset."

The apologetic messages were interspersed with a stream of expletives and further abuse to other users.

Just sounds like a stupid immature teenager to me.

[max_tranmere]

Lots of interesting comments there. I agree that freedom of speech is being threatened when you have to watch yourself so much on sites like Twitter that you could get arrested for saying anything heavy. I think there is a distinction between negative comment and abuse/libellous comment though. For example, newspapers have been, and will be, sued for anything very derogatory or nasty, but a comment where someone just gives their opinion (even if it is very negative) will not result in a libel action. A reviewer of a film or an album could say a person is the worst actor/singer/songwriter of all time and score the thing 0/10 and it won't end up in court - because they are giving their opinion. Call someone unnecessary bad names, threaten them or whatever, in an article/Twitter message and you could be sued or arrested. They seem to get very heavy with people on Twitter, yet sites like YouTube no one cares about. The slaggings people get on YouTube are very strong indeed, but the possible reason little happens as a result of you being nasty on there is that it's very hard to establish who the person doing it really is.

[Flat_Eric]

Having looked into it further since my previous post, it would now appear that this "tweeter" had posted other comments of a more threatening nature.

Nevertheless, I still think we're getting into VERY dangerous territory once the police and /or the courts start getting involved in response to people simply calling each other names like "negrito", "paki bastard", "choc ice" or whatever (as opposed to advocating or threatening actual violence against another person or group).

Where does it end and what will be deemed "offensive" next? "Fat bastard"? "Thick cunt"? Where do we draw the line? After all, an overweight person could be every bit as much hurt/offended about being called a "fat cunt" as a black person could be by being called a "black bastard".

It smacks of heavy-handed though-policing and "Big Brother".

- Eric

[Peter]

Flat_Eric wrote:


> It smacks of heavy-handed though-policing and "Big Brother".
>

It's 'easy nicks' for plod though, they'll be having a focus on hate crime, finding a few offences that tick the appropriate boxes and boost their figures.

They'll be having a seatbelt special soon, then back to anti-social behaviour, then something else easy to get a few people for.

[Robches]

I am starting to think Sepp Blatter had a point, leave what is said on the pitch on the pitch. None of this nonsense has helped Anton Ferdinand, Rio Ferdinand or John Terry.

[Arginald Valleywater]

The Ginger will be next!! Redhead will be seen as a slight on humanity rather than a perfectly normal description of a persons hair colouring. Blonde jokes will be banned and the word tall will be heightist (is that a new word?) as will lanky. Where can I emigrate to before this country is totally buttfucked?

[Sam Slater]

[quote]Where can I emigrate to before this country is totally buttfucked?[/quote]

I dunno. Seriously, where do you think you'd fit in better?

[David Johnson]

Running a housing association in Baghdad?

That would allow your people skills to come to the fore.

[max_tranmere]

I do find the over-zealousness from the Police over negative Twitter comments a bit much. I've covered this more in my last comment. I mean, no one even knows for sure whether the person claiming to be that person is really them. Facebook is the same. Every celebrity has dozens of Facebook pages, all claiming to be them. In reality, one or even none, actually are, but are instead created by imposters. Many celebrity Twitter accounts probably don't even belong to the person who it's supposed to be. I haven't investigated but I am sure, for example, Mick Jagger would have a dozen claiming to be him - where in reality one or none of them are. So if someone sent "Mick" a tweet, slagging him off, the real Mick Jagger is unlikely to see it as it probably isn't his real account. The Twitter account of Tom Daley the diver (or whatever his name is) appears to be the real Tom Daley, but it just as easily could have been someone else holding the account - so the kid who has been busted for slating him on the account could just as easily have sent the message to an imposter pretending to be him and Tom Daley would not have read it. Is there some way of authenticating yourself on Twitter or Facebook?