Harsh sentences for rioters is stupid? I know people who live and work in those areas.
I'd argue for the tweeting conviction too. It sent a valuable message about personal responsibility. With the advent of cyber-bullying (awful term) it's a lesson people need to learn.
Harsh sentences for rioters is stupid? I know people who live and work in those areas.
• 4 years conviction for (while drunk) creating a Facebook group calling for a riot in your home town, and then no-body turning up and no riot happening ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/16/facebook-riot-calls... ) is stupid (2 different people were convicted of this).
I'm talking about the Twitter Joke Trial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Paul_Chambers ) where Paul Chambers tweeted "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 has a criminal conviction and had to pay £1,000. That's silly.
I'm not saying it's all bad, but neither is it all good. As I said, "You can always find cases of stupid judicial decisions in the UK"
An alternative view on sentence stupidity (non riots). Compare to above...
A chapter from my family's life:
£300 fine (no custodial sentence) for a piece of shit punching the shit out of my 25 week pregnant wife and leaving her in hospital for a month, all for a £30 Nokia phone...
It's not sentencing that's the problem with the response to the riots. It's people being punished (e.g. losing council houses) who were not convicted of anything.
Some of the sentencing was also a problem, like the guy who was jailed for the crime of stealing Argos catalogues. (for those who are unaware, like the judge apparently was in that case, Argos catalogues are freely given away)
Disagree wholeheartedly. Anyone who is bothered by a tweet has the option of blocking that person and never hearing from them on that medium ever again.
That right there is why I'm mostly convinced that the entire concept of "cyber bullying" is silly. When you have complete control over who you do and don't have interaction with, if someone says something untoward and disturbing to you, and you just continue to let it happen, the blame is at least partially on you.
In the Twitter case, there's nothing stopping the bully starting a new account and tweeting from that instead, post block. You might have complete control, but a lot of the time it's only after the fact.
There's no way for someone to know if they're blocked or not, though. It's not like Facebook where if you block someone, you are prohibited from interacting with them in any way. You can still send @messages, but the target won't see them. DMs can't be sent unless you're friends.
I'd argue for the tweeting conviction too. It sent a valuable message about personal responsibility. With the advent of cyber-bullying (awful term) it's a lesson people need to learn.