Tag Archives: Paul Chambers

A question of taste: the treatment of Louise Mensch and Roy Hodgson

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Two high profile names were in the headlines today as victims of poor taste.

Tory MP Louise Mensch hit out at the abuse she received on Twitter after she refused to support fellow MPs’ condemnation of Rupert Murdoch as unfit to run a major international company.

Mensch told BBC Radio’s Today programme that critics were immoral and misogynistic for describing her as a slut and a whore. Cumbria’s chief constable Stuart Hyde (responsible for e-crime at the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO) described the comments as sexual bigotry at its worse.

Meanwhile, The Sun mocked new England football manager Roy Hodgson. Its headline ‘Bwing on the Euwos’ made fun of the way Roy pronounces ‘r’ as ‘w’. The headline has provoked a debate about the way we treat people with speech impediments. (Topical, with the recent film The King’s Speech about King George VI’s stammer.)

Mensch’s case shows once again how base online reaction can be. Obscenities once mouthed in pubs and clubs now go viral on social media and online forums. It’s deeply unpleasant for anyone affected, but hard to combat. Legal action is one possible approach, but as we saw with the Paul Chambers Twitter joke trial innocent but foolish people can suffer when the law is involved. (Chambers was regarded as a terrorist for making a silly joke on Twitter to blow up Doncaster airport after he was delayed.)

The Sun’s treatment of Roy Hodgson is rather different. In some ways it is worse – a national newspaper, rather than a loutish tweeter, mocks Roy’s speech in its front page lead story. Yet the line between humour and cruelty is a very fine one. Thirty years ago broadsheets routinely made fun of SDP leader Roy Jenkins’ identical affliction. (Anyone remember the song about Jenkins and fellow SDP leader Shirley Williams: ‘If you were the only Shirl, and I were the only Woy’?) More recently, supporters of Roy Hodgson’s firmer club Fulham wore shirts with the slogan ‘In Woy we Twust’.

Hodgson is a fine manager who speaks a string of foreign languages. (Not a skill I imagine the Sun headline writer could match.) He’ll shrug off the ‘joke’. Yet an unconfident teenager may not feel so happy about being mocked for a stammer or other speech trait. We should be sensitive to other people’s feelings.

 

 

Britain makes joking a crime – official

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Can you imagine a country in which telling a joke could give you a criminal record? Welcome to Britain, 2011. 

I've always been sceptical about warnings from civil liberties campaigners that Britain is fast becoming a police state. But I was wrong. We're fast losing our sense of humour and our love of essential freedoms. Government and the criminal justice system seem hell bent on using the terrorist threat to sweep away the freedoms and tolerance that once set us apart. 

So it should have come as no surprise that a foolish joke by a 27 year old man should have resulted in his conviction, and the failure of his subsequent appeal. Paul Chambers, frustrated by the closure of an airport near Doncaster, sent the following message on Twitter "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!" He was held in custody for seven hours in a police cell, which should have been plenty of time for the authorities to realise this was a stupid joke not a terrorist threat. Yet mindless prosecutors still decided to waste public money taking him to court. Worse still, a judge called Jacqueline Davies upheld the conviction, as The Guardian reports, bizarrely claiming "Any ordinary person reading [the tweet] would … be alarmed." Any ordinary, out-of-touch, foolish judge maybe, but few other people. More sinister still, the Crown Prosecution Service deliberately prosecuted Chambers under legislation against nuisance calls rather than laws against hoax bomb threats because they required less evidence of intent. 

Any sensible person would have recognised that joking about blowing up an airport was foolish and in bad taste. I suspect Chambers quietly wishes he'd acted more wisely. But that's no reason why he should end up with a criminal record, a £1,000 fine and lose his job. Stephen Fry has offered to pay the fine. Let's hope the backlash against this stupidity makes us more vigilant in the defence of traditional British freedoms.  

Isn't it ironic that the airport at the centre of the storm is named after an outlaw? Looks like the authorities were determined to create another folk hero…

Why Britain’s new coalition is good news for civil liberties

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One of the greatest disappointments of the 1997 – 2010 Labour government was its appalling record on civil liberties. It seemed to seek every opportunity to extend the power of the state over the individual. Photographers were arrested for taking photos of public buildings. Hecklers were dragged out of the Labour party conference. And successive home secretaries sought to extend dramatically the time suspects could be detailed without being charged.

Much of this was justified under the catch all justification of fighting terrorism. There’s no doubt Britain faced a significant threat from terrorists. But the erosion of civil liberties could not be justified.

So the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s promise to scrap ID cards, change the DNA database regulations and reform the libel laws is very welcome. Just this week we had another example of the tyranny of the state, when Paul Chambers was charged and fined under the Communications ACt for making a joke on Twitter about blowing up an airport. Paul was foolish, but anyone with a braincell would have recognised that he was no threat to anyone. But the apparatus of the state was deployed to punish him for a silly joke. Let’s hope a new culture of sanity develops. And the new government lives up to its promises. 

Siân Sargant’s blogpost on the Paul Chambers case, and what it says about Britain’s civil liberties record, is well worth reading.