Man arrested for Glasgow crash tweet

bingefeller

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-30585301 I'm not posting a link to the tweet in question here but I have read and seen much, much worse including some comments made on this very forum.

Deijavoo

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fretmeister

I am getting more and more concerned at the recent attempts to make being offensive an actual criminal offence.

Deijavoo

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bingefeller

He made a stupid joke, which he probably got off another website, and then people start sharing his address encouraging vigilantism? That's not very smart IMO. 

 Maybe I'm desensitised to people dying on my own doorstep from having lived in N.I all my life.

Deijavoo

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bingefeller

I read somewhere else that some of the threats against the guy are also being treated as malicious communications.   It never ends.   

Deijavoo

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UnclePsychosis

Being an arsehole shouldn't be illegal.

Sharing the guys address is far worse in my opinion. Glad you took it down.

Antique_Guitars

Twitter is a load of bollocks, arrest the founders of it! :-)

Deijavoo

UnclePsychosis said:

Being an arsehole shouldn't be illegal.

Good thing it isn't really. I'd be a goner.

Bucket

fretmeister said:

I am getting more and more concerned at the recent attempts to make being offensive an actual criminal offence.

Not that I'd ever tweet something like that (whatever it is - haven't seen it), but it is a bit too Big Brother for my liking.

thomasross20

That's the way the UK is and has been for a while now, IMO.

UnclePsychosis

Having said that it shouldn't be illegal to be an arsehole, you really do have to wonder about some folk. How do these morons turn out quite so stupid and with quite so little sense of decency?

IanSavage

fretmeister said:

I am getting more and more concerned at the recent attempts to make being offensive an actual criminal offence.

Me too - not least because it's one of the few things I'm good at. 

You cluster of c*nts. 

holnrew

What if hundreds of people tweeted it in solidarity, would they arrest them all?

richardhomer

'Sick' text messages used to do the rounds seemingly within seconds of a news story breaking. The thing was that who they went to (initially) was under the sender's control.

Social media - and Twitter in particular does not allow the writer to select his or her audience. For this reason, I think you have to be very careful about what you put out there.

stickyfiddle

This guy is obviously a bit of a dick, but he has committed no crime as far as I'm concerned.

Fairly terrifying that a tweet can get you arrested. It's worse than the robin hood airport thing - at least that *could* have been construed as a threat (if only by an idiot). I won't be coming back to the UK at this rate...

chillidoggy

A clear case for me of a breach of Rule 1. But to arrest him? Fuck me, haven't the police got anything better to do than to waste valuable resources reacting to outrage? Their priorities are wrong, they should be out catching real crims like burglars. It's pathetic, they give you all this "lack of resources" shit, and then they go and waste them like this.

VimFuego

what chilli said, with police numbers being cut, I can think of things I'd rather they should be doing (think they need to remember, we have given them their powers, they haven't taken them, they're our police, we're not their subjects). However, from the police's POV it's an easy arrest, easy investigation, no SOC, no expensive processing and if it's a conviction (and god I hope it doesn't go to trial) it's an easy tick in the "win" column, so some pen pusher somewhere can say they are bringing down crime.

RobDavies

I've seen the Tweet.

Fuck me, if you can get arrested for that, this country is in big trouble.  Yet Kay Burley, or whoever it was gets away scot free after asking a witness to the incident for more details about the pram that got hit.

Truly unbelievable.