UK gone mad?

[Andiferous]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/23/facebook_sentence/

What the hell is this shit? A guy posts a one line facebook comment as a bad joke, takes it down 20 mins later, and ends up in jail for 4 months?

Fuck me, if the police ever read my posts on this forum I'm sure they can find worse than that. A bad joke in bad taste, but jail?

Have you heard some of the shit that football supporters shout at players? The world has gone mad.

This happened ages ago. It is old news.

The story first emerged during the riot crack-down that saw thousands of folks arrested for their various involvements within the English riots. As Welsh has pointed out, it is heavy-handed. Although I must say, perhaps people ought to be more accountable, especially given the damage unleashed by this frivolity.

 

[Welshidiot]

@ Andiferous

I'm not sure what you mean by old news, the BBC article is dated 23rd Aug, and the riots themselves started on 6th Aug, and Mark Duggan the man whose shooting by the police seems to have provoked the riots was killed on 4th Aug.

Is that old?



Anyway, I saw the following on Youtube, and I honestly think it's about the most balanced comment I've seen on the topic of this summer's riots:

​

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Like I told you i get over suchthings quickly and don't plan to argue about details for too long.

But the earlier quotes were meant to show why your argumentation appeared arrogant to me, i did have a feeling that you are mocking me as i told you in the PM and all i wanted is to defend my position and explain why i reacted as i did.

My point was more that you could simply ignore things if you don't see need for them to be mentioned, nobody asked us to strictly stick to the topic and the country, and i do see a connection, no matter how the laws or mentality of people are (though national mentality is not something you can really define precisely or test in my opinion) the point was about interpreting laws and "lawful stupidity" and unnecessary punishment, engagement of law enforcement and legislative, and the resulting waste of money and eventual fear of authorities, for what i think i did give an example, in my country as well as the example of allegedly excessive controls of young citizens, maybe even preferably black ones or other minorities, not that i am claiming it is like that.

Anyhow, i do not really wish to get into this too deep, i would rather like to hear more about the "madness in the UK", i don't really get the picture about the current situation.
Anybody there to explain how it looks like at the moment and if there are mentionable things that we maybe missed?

 

[Prolescum]

Anybody there to explain how it looks like at the moment...

No one seems able to be able to park correctly.

 

[Squawk]

More accountable Andi? Please tell me specifically, do you feel a 4 month jail term is justified for a person posting a one line bad taste joke on facebook, for 20 mins?

 

[Prolescum]

From last year's Twitter joke trial where Paul Chambers made a joke on Twitter about blowing up Robin Hood airport. He was convicted under a different law, but the joke stands.

[centre]

[/centre]

 

[australopithecus]

What is the solution to the problem, and what is the actual problem itself?

There is no singular problem and no singular solution. There's a myriad of reasons. Actually, tell a lie, there is a reason; people suck.

 

[MRaverz]

He was encouraging the riots? Punishments in regards to these riots have been notoriously heavy.

 

[Welshidiot]

Birmingham looter hands himself in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-14680998

I found this part of the report particularly interesting, reason being that a lot of people seem intent on characterising either the rioters as disenfranchised youth, or the law as draconian:

Judge Davis said many parts of Birmingham were attacked, including the crown court and a police station.

Cars were overturned and set on fire and petrol bombs were thrown, he said.

"No ordinary person could walk the streets of the centre of Birmingham in safety," he said.

"Thus far, 530 people have been arrested".

He said it could not wholly be blamed on "disaffected youth" and more than half of those arrested were aged 21 or above, and a "significant percentage" were in their 30s and 40s.

Sentencing would not be disproportionate and would be in line with official guidelines, he said.

I must be reading all the wrong reports, because instead of the black and white view of the hard right-wingers and left-wingers, or the wishy-washy ramblings of the liberals,....the picture I'm forming of the rioting is much more complex, and refuses to fit into the socio-political frame that people seem intent on forcing.

As I said in a previous post: "Let's make our theory fit the facts, and not the other way round."

 

[australopithecus]

"No ordinary person could walk the streets of the centre of Birmingham in safety,"

No change then.

 

[Andiferous]

@ Andiferous

I'm not sure what you mean by old news, the BBC article is dated 23rd Aug, and the riots themselves started on 6th Aug, and Mark Duggan the man whose shooting by the police seems to have provoked the riots was killed on 4th Aug.

Is that old?



Anyway, I saw the following on Youtube, and I honestly think it's about the most balanced comment I've seen on the topic of this summer's riots:

​

Well, old in that I saw a Guardian article a few weeks ago, and posting after this amount of time seems like old news to me.

More accountable Andi? Please tell me specifically, do you feel a 4 month jail term is justified for a person posting a one line bad taste joke on facebook, for 20 mins?

You have to admit it is a pretty muddy case. Many things on the internet still generally lack legal routine and accountability, which could very much lead to the appearance of injustice either way. Accountability? You tell me - I was a few seconds short of seeing the original pages posted - but yelling "riot" openly on the internet during a period of national emergency seems about tantamount to yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater or yelling "bomb" at an American airport. It's pretty stupid. Should people receive justice for idiocy? Well, maybe they should - the jury is still open.

There was a police shooting, in which an officer believed the target had firearms, but in retrospect, he didn't. At a "peaceful" protest, rumours started abound that a sixteen year old girl tossed a stone at a police officer and was ("beaten" was on one description) to the ground because of it. Can we verify all of this? Not yet it seems. However, it became a very inflamatory topic on the internet via facebook, twitter, and even hints of blackberry, almost immediately (whether accurate or not). Then there were silly suggestions in parliament as toward shutting down "social media" In G.B. in periods of emergency, which also raised a lot of eyebrows (but never got through).

There's been a lot of economic pressure on the UK as a whole in recent years and Tottenham is one of the worst affected areas of London, with some of the largest ratios of visible minorities. They've also seen studies that show that London police officers stop as much as 30x more blacks than whites. There's definitely some racial tension somewhere, but who knows what figures are beneath that.

What I have been able to see is that in the second and third 'copycat' days, rioting seemed to devolve into opportunism. Minorities snuffing out minority businesses, and taking advantage of the weak. Large numbers of rioters arrested were actually advantaged middle-classed citizens in the end, from what I understand. People with wii's rioting for PC3s.

Of course this is all rumour, because that's all the information we have at this point - or at least at the point I got jaded and stopped reading the news, which was a couple weeks ago.

Feel free to correct me though. I'm just sharing me memory of news stuff at the time.

 

[Welshidiot]

You have to admit it is a pretty muddy case. Many things on the internet still generally lack legal routine and accountability, which could very much lead to the appearance of injustice either way. Accountability? You tell me - I was a few seconds short of seeing the original pages posted - but yelling "riot" openly on the internet during a period of national emergency seems about tantamount to yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater or yelling "bomb" at an American airport. It's pretty stupid. Should people receive justice for idiocy? Well, maybe they should - the jury is still open.

My objection is on purely legal grounds. Personally I don't believe that the message was visible for long enough to be truly considered incitement. I believe the defendant's legal representation didn't argue that point, or didn't argue it well enough.

There was a police shooting, in which an officer believed the target had firearms, but in retrospect, he didn't. At a "peaceful" protest, rumours started abound that a sixteen year old girl tossed a stone at a police officer and was ("beaten" was on one description) to the ground because of it. Can we verify all of this? Not yet it seems. However, it became a very inflamatory topic on the internet via facebook, twitter, and even hints of blackberry, almost immediately (whether accurate or not). Then there were silly suggestions in parliament as toward shutting down "social media" In G.B. in periods of emergency, which also raised a lot of eyebrows (but never got through).

There's been a lot of economic pressure on the UK as a whole in recent years and Tottenham is one of the worst affected areas of London, with some of the largest ratios of visible minorities.

What do the UK's recent economic pressures have to do with Tottenham having a higher than average percentage of Afro-Caribbean inhabitants? I don't understand what you're saying here.

They've also seen studies that show that London police officers stop as much as 30x more blacks than whites. There's definitely some racial tension somewhere, but who knows what figures are beneath that.

Hmmm, well the phrase "London police" implies a degree of consistency in policing that doesn't really exist. The police in different boroughs do operate with a certain amount of local autonomy, and display different working cultures and methods. Some areas of London have bad race relations, some areas have good ones, and some are neutral. There are even a few areas where white people are more likely to be stopped and searched, than black people.

It is definitely true that there has been a history of racial tension in Tottenham, and the bungled arrest of Mark Duggan shows that the arresting officers definitely made serious errors,.....after all one of the armed officers managed to shoot one of the other armed officers, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't part of the plan.

What I have been able to see is that in the second and third 'copycat' days, rioting seemed to devolve into opportunism. Minorities snuffing out minority businesses, and taking advantage of the weak. Large numbers of rioters arrested were actually advantaged middle-classed citizens in the end, from what I understand. People with wii's rioting for PC3s.

I think your phrase "people with Wiis rioting for PS3s" does sum up a large amount of the rioting.
The only quibble I have with what you said is that from what I've read it would appear that even the rioting that happened on day 1 had a fair amount of opportunism wrapped up in it.

Of course this is all rumour, because that's all the information we have at this point - or at least at the point I got jaded and stopped reading the news, which was a couple weeks ago.

Feel free to correct me though. I'm just sharing me memory of news stuff at the time.

Tbh, I think your assessment is pretty much accurate. There is actually more information available about this situation than people seem to think, and the vast majority of it is inexplicable in the context of racial or social tension.

There is one small point that you touched on that I'd like to bring up:

...rumours started abound that a sixteen year old girl tossed a stone at a police officer and was ("beaten" was on one description) to the ground because of it.

I've heard this story before......but that time it was a different riot altogether, and it was several years ago, and I've heard the same rumour before that too.

When the Bradford race riots kicked off in 2001, there was a rumour that a white teenage girl or girls, had been "kidnapped" by local Anglo-Pakistani youths, and then beaten and raped, and that was the cause of the riots.
Simultaneously there was a rumour that it was an Anglo-Pakistani girl or girls that were "kidnapped" by white youths, etc, etc, etc......

The one thing that seemed to be conspicuous by it's absence in both cases was the names of the girls in question, or indeed any other details about them. Ultimately it would appear that those girls did not exist.

There is a historical precedent for this kind of fictional account in the form of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonypandy_Riots

You'll need to read the whole thing for context, but the part I'm specifically referring to is this:

Reaction to the riots

Purported eyewitness accounts of alleged shootings persisted and were relayed by word of mouth, though there are no records of any shots being fired by troops, and the only recorded death was that of Samuel Rhys (WI note: if you read the preceding account you will see that Rhys died from head injuries sustained from a truncheon blow). In the autobiographical 'documentary novel' Cwmardy, a contemporary communist trade union organiser Lewis Jones presents a stylistically romantic but closely detailed account of the riots and their agonising domestic and social consequences. In a chapter Soldiers are sent to the Valley, he narrates a fictional incident in which eleven strikers are killed by two volleys of rifle fire in the town square, after which the miners adopt a grimly retaliatory stance. In this account, the end of the strike is hastened by organised terror directed at mine managers, leading to introduction of a minimum-wage act by the government,hailed as a victory by the strikers.
A more official version states that "The strike finally ended in August 1911, with the workers forced to accept the 2s 3d per ton negotiated by William Abraham MP prior to the strike . . . the workers actually returning to work on the first Monday in September", being ten months after the strike began and twelve months after the lockout which started the confrontation.

I was born in Wales, but raised in England (just to clarify), but some of my "more Welsh" relatives still refer to "the Tonypandy Massacre", as though the shootings/killings actually happened. But similarly to the Bradford riots, and the recent riots, the accounts of "the Massacre" show a conspicuous absence of any details of the alleged victims.




EDIT: Edited to correct tags.

 

[kenandkids]

The two main issues are :
1) Did he deserve his punishment or did the punishment fit the crime
2) The content and intent of the rioters

Had there been a riot shortly after he posted that, whether or not anyone had ever read it, I have a strong feeling that many of you would be in favour of the sentence. The law is regarding incitement, not riot starting. The fact that it was unsuccessful and taken down does not change the fact that it was incitement. Joke or not, one may not scream fire in a crowded theatre, even if one does so at a moment of loudness and no one actually hears.


I don't think that there was any one clear cause or group of people in the riots. Mob mentality took over and everyone from criminals to bored people to those with political grievances to people that wanted loot all joined in.

 

[Andiferous]

There's been a lot of economic pressure on the UK as a whole in recent years and Tottenham is one of the worst affected areas of London, with some of the largest ratios of visible minorities.

What do the UK's recent economic pressures have to do with Tottenham having a higher than average percentage of Afro-Caribbean inhabitants? I don't understand what you're saying here.

I've honestly never been to Tottenham, so most of my information here was gleaned through youtube, the guardian, and bbc.

Sources sympathetic to the Tottenham riots often seemed to cite racial tension in conjunction with poverty as stressors that may have catalysed the initial unrest. Also, the cutting of government funding to programs designed to keep kids off the streets and that sort of thing.

They've also seen studies that show that London police officers stop as much as 30x more blacks than whites. There's definitely some racial tension somewhere, but who knows what figures are beneath that.

Hmmm, well the phrase "London police" implies a degree of consistency in policing that doesn't really exist. The police in different boroughs do operate with a certain amount of local autonomy, and display different working cultures and methods. Some areas of London have bad race relations, some areas have good ones, and some are neutral. There are even a few areas where white people are more likely to be stopped and searched, than black people.

It is definitely true that there has been a history of racial tension in Tottenham, and the bungled arrest of Mark Duggan shows that the arresting officers definitely made serious errors,.....after all one of the armed officers managed to shoot one of the other armed officers, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't part of the plan.

I'm not really up on police action in London, and thanks for the quick tutorial. I'm just citing a study I've seen a couple times over on two different news sources (Guardian & BBC), but I'm not aware of the logistics.

What I have been able to see is that in the second and third 'copycat' days, rioting seemed to devolve into opportunism. Minorities snuffing out minority businesses, and taking advantage of the weak. Large numbers of rioters arrested were actually advantaged middle-classed citizens in the end, from what I understand. People with wii's rioting for PC3s.

I think your phrase "people with Wiis rioting for PS3s" does sum up a large amount of the rioting.
The only quibble I have with what you said is that from what I've read it would appear that even the rioting that happened on day 1 had a fair amount of opportunism wrapped up in it.

That's the way it came off in the news over here; although I'm pretty embarassed for misspelling an acronym like PS3.

I do agree there must have been some horrible amount of greed and criminality driving these riots. And not to be prejudiced, but a huge majority of those charged were in their twenties, and many were young teens.

Of course this is all rumour, because that's all the information we have at this point - or at least at the point I got jaded and stopped reading the news, which was a couple weeks ago.

Feel free to correct me though. I'm just sharing me memory of news stuff at the time.

Tbh, I think your assessment is pretty much accurate. There is actually more information available about this situation than people seem to think, and the vast majority of it is inexplicable in the context of racial or social tension.

There is one small point that you touched on that I'd like to bring up:

...rumours started abound that a sixteen year old girl tossed a stone at a police officer and was ("beaten" was on one description) to the ground because of it.

I've heard this story before......but that time it was a different riot altogether, and it was several years ago, and I've heard the same rumour before that too.

When the Bradford race riots kicked off in 2001, there was a rumour that a white teenage girl or girls, had been "kidnapped" by local Anglo-Pakistani youths, and then beaten and raped, and that was the cause of the riots.
Simultaneously there was a rumour that it was an Anglo-Pakistani girl or girls that were "kidnapped" by white youths, etc, etc, etc......

The one thing that seemed to be conspicuous by it's absence in both cases was the names of the girls in question, or indeed any other details about them. Ultimately it would appear that those girls did not exist.

There is a historical precedent for this kind of fictional account in the form of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonypandy_Riots

You'll need to read the whole thing for context, but the part I'm specifically referring to is this:

Reaction to the riots

Purported eyewitness accounts of alleged shootings persisted and were relayed by word of mouth, though there are no records of any shots being fired by troops, and the only recorded death was that of Samuel Rhys (WI note: if you read the preceding account you will see that Rhys died from head injuries sustained from a truncheon blow). In the autobiographical 'documentary novel' Cwmardy, a contemporary communist trade union organiser Lewis Jones presents a stylistically romantic but closely detailed account of the riots and their agonising domestic and social consequences. In a chapter Soldiers are sent to the Valley, he narrates a fictional incident in which eleven strikers are killed by two volleys of rifle fire in the town square, after which the miners adopt a grimly retaliatory stance. In this account, the end of the strike is hastened by organised terror directed at mine managers, leading to introduction of a minimum-wage act by the government,hailed as a victory by the strikers.
A more official version states that "The strike finally ended in August 1911, with the workers forced to accept the 2s 3d per ton negotiated by William Abraham MP prior to the strike . . . the workers actually returning to work on the first Monday in September", being ten months after the strike began and twelve months after the lockout which started the confrontation.

I was born in Wales, but raised in England (just to clarify), but some of my "more Welsh" relatives still refer to "the Tonypandy Massacre", as though the shootings/killings actually happened. But similarly to the Bradford riots, and the recent riots, the accounts of "the Massacre" show a conspicuous absence of any details of the alleged victims.

That's an interesting find. I don't know what to believe at this point. Although, there was an official report stating that the matter was "under investigation."


I've been over there a few times in the last few years, but I doubt I can cover it like someone who lives on the island. I just read a lot of news sometimes - maybe because I don't always trust one reference at a time.

More accountable Andi? Please tell me specifically, do you feel a 4 month jail term is justified for a person posting a one line bad taste joke on facebook, for 20 mins?

You'll have to repeat the joke for me.

Is this the same one who defended himself initially by saying he had been out at the pub that night and deleted the page in the morning?

Nice post, Ken&Kids.

Edit: Corrected "misspelling"

 

[Dean]

Under the new conservative government, it would appear that the United Kingdom is quickly headed in the direction of a Police State, and as I recently discovered to my horror, our Prime Minister advocating the idea that people who have as-of-yet done nothing, i.e. writing on facebook, as Squawk articulated, ought to be slammed with Jail time. The stupidity is absolutely mind-boggling. It's quite a frightening level of stupidity.

And more recently, owing to general acquiescence, sizable support, political disarray, and summary detentions of untold numbers of people, it appears that our Prime Minister is going to introduce televised court cases in Britain, as America did ("Judge Judy", et al.)

Whilst I was sure there would be political unrest following the riots in Britain, It had never occurred to me that my country could become an official banana republic so easily as the state subjugates citizens' constitutional rights for some semblance of security/authority. A sad precedence that can surely embolden future (if not further) dictatorial overtures.

 

[Prolescum]

Under the new conservative government, it would appear that the United Kingdom is quickly headed in the direction of a Police State, and as I recently discovered to my horror, our Prime Minister advocating the idea that people who have as-of-yet done nothing, i.e. writing on facebook, as Squawk articulated, ought to be slammed with Jail time. The stupidity is absolutely mind-boggling. It's quite a frightening level of stupidity.

And as is often the case, it will be ridiculed and silently be dropped. This government has already suffered two or three of these embarrassing climb-downs. You're making mountains out of molehills. A bit like you were here, yet another thread you allowed to die because the conversation didn't follow the direction you wanted it to...

And more recently, owing to general acquiescence, sizable support, political disarray, and summary detentions of untold numbers of people, it appears that our Prime Minister is going to introduce televised court cases in Britain, as America did ("Judge Judy", et al.)

Allowing the filming of court cases deals with an anachronism of our system. I'd rather hear the words spoken in court than a description of events and a hand-drawn sketch. To object on the grounds that it might produce a Judge Judy-type show is just daft. IIRC, one of the terrestrial channels attempted a similar show some years ago, which failed due to lack of interest.

Whilst I was sure there would be political unrest following the riots in Britain, It had never occurred to me that my country could become an official banana republic

Hyperbole.

so easily as the state subjugates citizens' constitutional rights for some semblance of security/authority. A sad precedence that can surely embolden future (if not further) dictatorial overtures.

Oh please.

 

[Dean]

Under the new conservative government, it would appear that the United Kingdom is quickly headed in the direction of a Police State, and as I recently discovered to my horror, our Prime Minister advocating the idea that people who have as-of-yet done nothing, i.e. writing on facebook, as Squawk articulated, ought to be slammed with Jail time. The stupidity is absolutely mind-boggling. It's quite a frightening level of stupidity.

And as is often the case, it will be ridiculed and silently be dropped. This government has already suffered two or three of these embarrassing climb-downs. [. . .]

Embarrassing indeed. Is it me or is it that Conservatives (when they are in power in the UK) seem to behave in an especially reactionary manner in situations like this. And BTW, the reason David Cameron suggested that we televise court proceedings is not, as would perhaps be desirable, for stronger clarity (in this case video footage) of the proceedings, that would help in news headlines and such.

According to David Cameron, this action would be done to, for want of a better term "show-off" our justice system in Britain, and show how "tough" we were on teenagers involved in these Riots. Etcetera. At times, at almost seemed as though he was suggesting that these events should be filmed for entertainment purposes, or at least, that's the impression I've got. Proceedings of this kind should NOT be there for entertainment.

And one wonders..... What would the teenagers involved in these riots do, after having been filmed in court. "Did ya see me on TV last night, 'mate'?", lol. :|

 

[Prolescum]

Embarrassing indeed. Is it me or is it that Conservatives (when they are in power in the UK) seem to behave in an especially reactionary manner in situations like this.

No, it's just you. Most politicians must be seen to be doing something, as that retarded maxim goes: being seen to do something is better than being seen doing nothing.

And BTW, the reason David Cameron suggested that we televise court proceedings is not, as would perhaps be desirable, for stronger clarity (in this case video footage) of the proceedings, that would help in news headlines and such.

Whatever David Cameron's reasons are, it's been discussed many times over the past few years, and with certain exceptions, there's no really compelling reason to not allow it that I'm familiar with. There is little chance of any of the commercial TV networks creating programming based around non-important cases, (with the exception of civil cases a la Judge Judy, but as noted already tried and failed once), and it's unlikely that the Conservatives would entrust it to the BBC. Although it's possible they could use that as a tactical weapon against the BBC, as all governments within my life time have done, most recently with Jeremy Cunt the Hulture secretary's local TV networks plans.

And one wonders..... What would the teenagers involved in these riots do, after having been filmed in court. "Did ya see me on TV last night, 'mate'?", lol.

And one wonders why you've decided to highlight "mate" in the manner you have above. It seems to me to be condescending in the extreme, and premised on the assumption that these "teenagers" (because there were no adults involved, obviously) were all working class. Bigotry comes in many shapes, you know.
You may correct me if I'm mistaken in that evaluation, but I expect a valid reason.

I also notice you've yet to answer the questions from the other thread linked in the post to which your response above applies.