Two guilty over 'menacing' tweets to feminist campaigner A 23-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man admitted today that they had sent "menacing" messages to a feminist campaigner on Twitter. John Nimmo of Moreland Road, South Shields and Isabella Sorley of Akinside House, Akinside Hill, Newcastle-upon-Tyne both pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court this afternoon. Sorley …
Agreed. There is a definite distinction between "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!!" and directly threatening individuals with rape and murder because you do not agree with their views.
Without reading the actual tweets, including the context of other messages sent shortly before and after, I really can't say. In a world where the authorities can't tell the difference between an annoyed tweet about airport delays and a serious terrorist threat I can't take any secondhand characterization of a supposedly threatening message at face value.
Yet if he had tweeted "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm going to rape a 747" the authorities would have done absolutely nothing - illicit runway ramming still being widely regarded as a taboo subject. We've still got a long way to go till we've learned the lessons of Savile.
"Without reading the actual tweets"
So maybe you should read the tweets? They're available on other news sites. Context doesn't really pay into it either.
Worth noting that these weren't the worst ones, just the twitter accounts the CPS/police could trace.
"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!!"
Because "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!!" is the sort of thing that the Knights who up until recently said "ne" want to say...
We did want a... shrubbery. But Roger the shrubber is at Robin Hood airport. So... "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!!" is what we now want to say!!!
Sorry to burst your bubble but did the knights who say "ne" ever fly two jumbo jets into the world trade center?
I must have missed that part of the life of brain, oh that's right they DIDNT do that because the movie was BEFORE 9/11.
We live in different times now - I know it sounds like a cliche but it's true - where we have to live with the threat of terrorism with only the NSA and GCHQ to protect us, so NO that joke might have been funny back in the 60s but today it is borderline irresponsible.
@NomNomNom - I must have missed that part of the life of brain, oh that's right they DIDNT do that because the movie was BEFORE 9/11.
Sigh .Yes but it was released after the IRA, Bader Meinhof, ETA and any number of other terrorist organisations started doing their thing.
The only change after 9/11 was that America now lives in the same world as everyone else.
No, that was not the only change.
Up until 9/11 the primary difference between a terrorist and a mafia hit job was the terrorist wanted the news cameras around so he could make a political statement. The number of dead was always low usually in the single digits although sometimes in the teens. Injured for bombing incidents would be a magnitude or order larger. On 9/11 both numbers jumped two orders of magnitude. They moved from "horrendous crime that we abhor but tolerate" to "all out act of war."
Yes, like Yamamoto it also woke the sleeping dragon.
@Tom 13 - I disagree. Don't focus on numbers, they are irrelevant. Terrorism is Terrorism. You don't actually have to kill anyone. The idea is to change your opponents behaviour by creating mass fear among the civilian population.
If you call 9/11 an act of war then that makes the OP's statement even more ridiculous since 9/11 is even less exceptional.
Look, I know we like to think that 'First attack on the homeland' changed everything and to an extent, for us, it did. The point I'm making is that the rest of the world already lived with this type of shit for decades. It was only new for us.
Ps. One final word. Lockerbie
"We live in different times now"
Only because some people are dick heads and various factions prefer times to be different. Like politicians who like the idea that pretending to save us from terrorists will make us think they are a little less of a waste of space and the huge army that is being paid to fight a war against almost non-existent terror.
In terms of life lost and property damage 9/11 was equivalent to a 2 week blip in business as usual. 2 weeks after 9/11 as many Americans again had died from accidents, homicides, and suicides. The Mumbia terror attacks of 208 killed 166, during the 3 day attack around 1500 Indians were killed on their roads.
If you want to spend money to save lives fighting terror with it is piss poor value.
Probably with every incoming administration I bet there's a briefing with the head of the security services who says the danger is that someone will explode a nuclear device or other WMD in London/Washington DC and off we go again, another administration pwned by their terror, courtesy of the DAD (Department Against Democracy). I doubt if there's a politico who by virtue of actually wanting the job remains capable of telling them where to stick it. Ministers/Secretaries who's biggest fear is not being Minister/Secretary; and PMs/Presidents a little resentful at not actually being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (but one day, who knows? if they throw enough cash at the appropriate branches of the MODOD).
Well, off now to watch the most-watched show in the US that this season also advertises Windows 8 and, lately, it seems, the NSA!
> Sorry to burst your bubble but did the knights who say "ne" ever fly two jumbo jets into the world trade center?
A pedant writes: There were no jumbo jets involved in the 9/11 attacks. There were two 757s and two 767s.
I dispute the usefulness of Jane Austin. She created something that appealed to a limited subset of individuals.
So if I petitioned my government to get Commander Hadfield on a bank note, I should expect the full support of the same people, no? What he's done is make science interesting to a large chunk of the world again. This is of appeal only to a limited subset of people, but I argue is even more important than Jane Austin's contribution.
Or would they - and I deeply suspect they would - throw toys out of the pram because my suggestion for a dude on a banknote is a white male? Jane Austin as a face on the bank note seems to have nothing to do with her contributions to society but everything to do with the way she was born (with internal genitalia as opposed to external.)
I don't have an issue with anyone being put on a bank note, so long as their contribution to society at large was monumental enough to justify it. "Because the individual did something important and isn't a white male" is still, of itself, a form of sexism.
It shouldn't matter what gender, race, etc the individual is, or isn't.. Only what the individual has done. Until we can get to that point, our society is still irrecoverably sexist.
I was going to say "Quite surprised no has up-voted you yet." but then I checked the post time and it wasn't that long ago.
"Because the individual did something important and isn't a white male" is still, of itself, a form of sexism.
We, as a nation, go in one extreme to balance out our previous equally extreme but opposite position. It is a shame. We are sexist to men just because our nation was sexist to women. We are racist to whites just so non-whites can't shout racism. We can't seem to find a middle ground until it's too late.
It shouldn't matter what gender, race, etc the individual is, or isn't.. Only what the individual has done. Until we can get to that point, our society is still irrecoverably sexist.
Completely agree. We should treat each other fairly, which to a large extent means equally but it's not always the case. But I think our country is also, to an extent, racist as well as sexist. I mean racist to whites. I've never tried it but I'm sure if I, with my ethnic origin being Pakistani, played the race card I'd get much more sympathy even if I was in the wrong. That's not to say people aren't racist to non-whites, but that racism to whites wouldn't be treated equally.
@Alfred Funny, when I - as a white male - look around me I see plenty of evidence that indicates the scales are massively balanced against me.
I may have a higher than average chance of having been born in A) a first-world nation and B) into a middle-class or upper-class family. After that, however, I appear to be at a distinct disadvantage for everything.
I'll get less post-secondary funding , opportunities for bursaries, grants and so forth. My word is not "as good" as the word of a female or a non-white; if there is a dispute at school, in the legal system or what-have-you, both my gender and my race work against me. If i wish to seek a better job - especially in technology - I have to work harder for that promotion or that contract.
I'm not allowed to speak on any number of topics without being accused of racism or sexism. If I get into a custody dispute then I am overwhelmingly likely to lose, even if the mother is a drug-addled alcoholic who can't keep a job and beats the children.
There are thousands of beds in "women's shelters" in my province, but only a single one for an abused man. That one is paid for privately and by law must be preferentially given up to a woman under any number of circumstances.
My grandparents's generation may have lived in a period where the white male was dominant. My parents' generation lived in a world where the white male earned more money for the same labour.
I am subject to discrimination, told that this is both "good" and "proper", and repeatedly told that it is my "moral duty" to pay for the sins of someone else's ancestors.
Racism and sexism against other groups still exists. That sure as hell hasn't been eliminated yet...but discriminating against white males has only made our society shittier for everyone, it hasn't addressed the core issues of exclusionary thinking and social processes.
You don't make people "more equal" by discriminating against a group that used to traditionally have power. You make people more equal by treating everyone equally, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, height, weight, eye colour...
Seems, however, that it's not "okay" to think like that in today's world. More's the pity.
The (quite) simplified version of the problem is that sexism is considered as discriminating against women.
For me, sexism is when gender is used to assign value.
Under that definition, a 100% male executive board is not sexist per se, but a 'quota' for female board members most definitely is.
The current hyper-sensitivity wherever women are concerned is in some ways a good thing, as it can be an eye-opener that forces men to really look at a situation rather than simple assuming equality.
However, whatever benefits there are, there is a much bigger pitfall. That is when we blanket assume inequality. Doing that almost assures us that real problems will be paved-over.
By saying that women are excluded from the highest rungs of the company ladder by some secret old boys club* implies that there are equally many suitable female candidates as male and so, voila, a quota. That'll stop force those stuffy old white men to appreciate the talent on their doorstep. Except what happens if that's not the case? What about if the major problem is simply that there aren't enough qualified women at the top levels? The problem cold be as simple as a horrendously under-funded childcare system, leading to more women taking multiple-year stretches out of the workplace, or working part time, while their male counterparts are there, at work.
Quotas can't fix that. Not that that is the sole reason women are under represented in boardrooms, just an example of how jumping to 'sexism' risks ignoring a problem rather than fixing it
* - Sometimes true, no doubt, but I suspect that that is increasing unlikely; profit is blind.
@Alfred, what evidence?
Boys are being failed in the education system
http://www.avoiceformen-uk.com/2013/11/trouble-with-boys-in-education.html
Misandry is rife but is ignored
http://redpilluk.co.uk/
It's often repeated that women earn 80p (or whatever figure) for each £1 a man earns, but you never hear that a women works 63 hours for every 100 hours a man works or that women are more likely to take sabbaticals (eg. to raise children). Policy focuses only on pay, because that way it benefits only women.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/280795/total-weekly-hours-of-work-per-month-in-the-uk-by-gender-year-on-year/
The drive to get equal representation in boardrooms focuses on the ratios in the population as a whole, not the relative numbers of willing and capable candidates. This favours women at the expense of men and of corporate profits, whereas women were technically overrepresented in 2001 at about 6%. Last year most appointees were female, as companies anticipated new draconian legislation. Were you one who missed out?
http://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/
Saying men have it better is simply ignorant. Learn not to ignore female privilege.
First thing: good. Vile behaviour. Utterly vile.
The thing about the Jane Austen saga was that it was a campaign to have a woman, not Jane Austen. With the new series F notes coming in, Elizabeth Fry (£5) was to be replaced by Winston Churchill come 2016.
While I believe Austen's works stand their ground in English literature, the campaign was clearly for a woman foremost. You only have to look at what happened to see that clearly; one of the original moves was to threaten the Bank of England with legal action for violating the Equality Act (2010)!
You will note, also, that Criado-Perez's site, from which she launched her campaign, is a feminist blog, not a Jane Austen blog or even an English literature blog.
An except from that website reads:
"In April 2013, the Bank of England announced that they were removing the only female historical figure from our banknotes and replacing her with another white man."
Nowhere on that page do they address Sir Winston Churchill's 'credentials' or suitability, nor do they talk about Jane Austen, specifically. It's hard to believe that any English person could consider Jane Austen more important historically, and to the national identity, than Winston Churchill.
Regardless of Austen's importance to literature or English culture, the simple, inescapable fact is that she was (as one journalist put it) ". . . chosen as a woman, rather less of an accomplishment."
That accepted, however, and addressing this issue from a feminist standpoint, I would have thought Mary Shelley or her mother would have been more suitable authors to choose. Or perhaps (going outside literature,) Millicent Fawcett or Frances Buss before her, both of whom helped to increase the social standing of women and give the next generations a better footing to claim their rights as equal citizens.
Those two women were crucial to helping shape England as a fairer country and England are indebted to them.
By comparison, Jane Austen, though considered an exceptionally important writer today, was not overly influential in her own time. She also owed much of her nature to the open-mindedness of her father, who believed it important for his daughters to not be restricted to needlework or other 'female' past times but to embrace learning in all manner of subjects and discussions which might otherwise be the domain of men. Through his liberalism, Austen was able to immerse herself in any topic that took her fancy, including those which to greater society would be deemed inappropriate for a woman. He taught her to think for herself and to analyse situations from multiple points of view, including those she did not necessarily agree with herself.
So, while Austen was indeed something of a progressive in her time, she owed that to her father's liberalism, rather than going out and challenging society head-on, as Fawcett and Buss did. I would think those two rather fitting, just as Edith Cowan and Catherine Spence are excellent choices on our (Australian) $50 and $5 notes.
But that's me.
Useful is good, but I'd prefer beautiful. Mandy Rice-Davies for example. Nude and beautiful would be even better.
Naked women on banknotes! The French and Italians would leave the Eurozone to catch up to us, and the more restrictive religious countries (you know who you are) would sever relations with us to protect their repressed yoof.
>The proles. That's an interesting euphemism for Nazis
The two are inextricably linked (the Nazis were ostensibly a socialist workers' party).. The establishment was more concerned at the time about the apparent socialism of "something must be done" than aggressive nationalism. The concern about his (and, more seriously, his eventual wife's) admiration for Hitler only came seriously into play when the abdication was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
"District Judge Howard Riddle warned Sorley, whose previous convictions included being drunk and disorderly on 21 occasions, that it was "almost inevitable" she would receive a jail sentence.
The judge told Nimmo, described in court as of "previous good character", that "all options" to sentencing remained open."
Good enough explanation?
@AC
". . . I do note that the man gets bail whereas the woman is remanded into custody."
Thanks for letting us know you read the article! Were you drawing any conclusions or just repeating that fact for those of us who jumped straight to the comments?
About anybody more annoyed about the pictures on a banknote than why they're all accumulating in the same few pockets.
About anybody sufficiently annoyed about someone getting a long dead author printed on a banknote that they'll send hair raising threats rather than being angry about them all accumulating in the same few pockets.
This post has been deleted by its author
OK, I'll bite.
Rather a lot of England's mental asylums were closed, and their inmates rehomed, by my mother. She has stood as a Labour Party parliamentary candidate five times, was part of the Loony Left who supported the wrong side in the Cold War and that Kinnock tried (unsuccessfully) to purge from the party. She regards her time closing the bins (as she calls them) as the proudest and most valuable achievement of her life, even though the original report recommending their closure came from Enoch Powell, a man whose mere name gives her conniptions. The asylums were a disgusting stain on our society -- life imprisonment without trial, appeal, or parole -- and closing them was in no way right-wing or left-wing; it was just civilised.
Since this article is about sexism, I'll mention that the most common reason for women to be in the bins was "moral turpitude" -- i.e., having a child outside of wedlock. Yes, I do believe that releasing those women was progress. Don't you?
Yes, I do think that closing the places you describe was progress. I completely agree that many of the inhabitants should never have been there, and that they were used as a form of punishment for behaviour that conservative people (with a small c) disapproved of. All that is true.
But they weren't all like that. The better ones made real efforts to help people, and it is worth recalling that at the time when I was visiting a mental hospital - Fulbourn - the average duration of stay in an English mental hospital was around 6 weeks.
Currently people with behavioural problems often end up in prison (and I count low-level drug abuse and abusive, but non physically violent, behaviour directed at strangers as just such problems). Inspectors of prisons have repeatedly complained that they are unfit for their purpose, that they enable gang culture, that career criminals continue to run their empires from inside, and that vulnerable young offenders are victimised. Most governors seem uninterested in doing any better, or in the possibility of improving the outcome for offenders (as the Howard League and others will tell you.) I am sure that the percentage of prisoners who get appropriate treatment in prisons is far lower than the percentage of mental health patients who were appropriately treated in mental hospitals. The fact that both systems had serious abuses doesn't mean that we can't complain about replacing a bad system with a worse one.
Do you argue with my fundamental point, which is that people with mental health issues should be diagnosed by psychiatrists and treated by psychiatric nurses rather than diagnosed by barristers and treated by prison officers?
I've withdrawn my original post as my point seems to be being misunderstood.
(Same AC again here, whose mother closed the bins.)
> Do you argue with my fundamental point, which is that people with mental health issues should be diagnosed by psychiatrists and treated by psychiatric nurses rather than diagnosed by barristers and treated by prison officers?
The point that I was disagreeing with was your bizarre idea that the ending of the system of lifetime imprisonment without trial, oversight, appeal, or parole was in some way right-wing. That being said, I probably have less faith in psychiatrists than you.
Angela Cannings was locked up for having a mental health disorder -- Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. Had she been locked up in an asylum because of her alleged mental state by psychiatrists and doctors, she would still be there. Because she was locked up in a prison because of her alleged actions by a jury (not a barrister), she was able to appeal and get back out. Some people seem to think this point is less important than how nice a time she had while locked up. I disagree.
If you were in service and the master or mistress of the house lost some money, you would probably be accused of theft. Denying the theft was itself considered evidence of insanity, and would get you into an asylum. If the master or mistress subsequently found the money that they had merely mislaid, too late: you were in the system for being insane, not for having committed a crime, so the absence of a crime made no difference. People spent decades in the asylums for exactly this reason, because a ten-bob note was lost sixty years ago. If you're being punished for a crime, you get out after your sentence is served. If you're being treated by psychiatrists, you don't get out till you're cured, which could be never. Do you not see the problem there?
In short, I disagree that the new system is worse than the old one.
@Psyx - Have a look at the Tweets posted here: http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/threats-of-death-and-violence-after-channel-4-programme-benefits-street/comment-page-3/
Now they may not be *personally* addressing the people there, but this isn't a joke about blowing up an airport either.
"She went to the cops after being repeatedly sent threats of rape and violence."
Evidence please? I asked the same when the original story was published with a similar statement in it, but there was nothing offered. At the time of the events I was on twitter looking for any evidence of threats and finding nothing. Even in a feminist blog supposedly recording the threats for posterity there wasn't anything fitting the description.
I noticed another twitterer was also looking for the threats, and asking feminists for examples, so I sat on his profile page for a few minutes hitting repeat and reading the conversations. He DID receive threats! You'd think it would be easy for the feminists to link to a tweet or to tell him the name of an account, but they took the more difficult path of getting his account deleted. Maybe he'll think twice about questioning his superiors next time. And that is what this sorry episode is all about.
The real story is that angry women started trolling when the bank chose a man to go on the notes, but the official narrative is that men got angry and "rapey" when the bank chose a woman. Bank note policy should not be determined by angry mobs of racist sexists!
It always dismays me when real-world crimes (speeding, drink driving, theft, domestic violence) get punished less severely than speech crime. A crime has been committed here, legally and morally, but the perpetrators here were feeling very angry and were clearly not educated enough to express themselves in a more nuanced way. The threat was in no way credible. This is probably their first offense of this kind, so I hope these factors might keep the perpetrators out of jail, as I think prison should never be a response for thoughtlessness at a keyboard. A would prefer to see a fine and community service.
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