Grenfell effigy

That's fine. However, yesterday this was top of the news on BBC Radio 2 at 8pm. A story about the deaths of youths in London came second. People have rounded on this quicker & with more unity than the actual Grenfell tragedy & to be frank, that has more of an impact on my life & conscience than a few idiots posting disgusting stuff on the internet which happens hour in, hour out.

Disproportionate in the extreme IMHO

 

Got to agree mate.

In addition to what's already been said we can use the "free speech" banner but the truth is we don't really have freedom of speech and I personally have no problem with that. Have we ever truly had it??

If it means people are held accountable for racist comments etc. then so be it.

 

The media is nuts, agree completely with that in terms of priorities.

The Leicester heli crash was a prime example- found it distasteful at times how little the other 4 victims were mentioned, and if they were it was an afterthought. Appreciate one was a prominent person but all life is precious and shouldn't be prioritised by wealth.

 

I do agree that it isn't something that needed massive coverage & the Sun's approach is totally wrong. That is the Tommy Robinson "raise a lynch mob" approach. The point of the thread was about this incident & I think most comments have been fairly balanced.

Generally there are a lot of things that hit the news like this. Like the religious people that refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.
Whilst I don't agree with their standpoint, if I was the couple I'd have put two fingers up at them & gone to another bakery, not taken it to court.
I'm not in favour of censorship either, other than when there is incitement / hatred involved.

 

Very true. I felt the same to be honest. The pilot was clearly a hero, by saving further loss of life, by getting clear of a crowded / built up area.

 

And I'd just like to add I'm certainly not one of the easily offended brigade... one of my fave comedians is Frankie Boyle.

There is a big difference between using comedy and black humour as a means to point out absurdities or collectively recover from traumatic events etc. (as @Tekkytyke pointed out) and something overtly racist such as this.

 

I've got to say. its distasteful, the people involved are idiots and need a clip round their ear'oles. Why anyone would do such a thing is beyond me. To then go and broadcast it. They sully the good name of morons.

Having said that, as Dyson says... why is this the top story? There have been 4 people die from knife injuries in around 72 hrs. The daily unfurling and escalation of Arron Banks'.... *chooses word carefully*…. activities and various other stories that i'd be more inclined to commit resource to prosecution to rather than this.

Idiots, don't condone it, but at a time where the police are becoming more and more stretched... I really wouldn't be using those resources on this.

 

Was it the perpetrators who uploaded it to social media and spread it around? If so then I can maybe see an argument for some sort of criminal consequences.

If it was someone else who was present/a neighbour who filmed and uploaded it then I don't think there should be any criminal consequences. It shouldn't be an offence to be offensive if there is no intent or reasonable expectation of it coming into the public domain. Fair enough if their employers decide to sack them etc but I don't think it should be a criminal matter.

 

It should not be a criminal matter. The police should not be there to prevent somebody being offended. I have heard jokes about the holocaust, Jimmy Saville and Madeleine McCann. There are websites devoted to dead baby jokes.

If you want to take exception then fine, be outraged. It is not for the state to tell us what is acceptable. The Americans understand this, and have the first amendment to protect them. We need something similar.

 

It is a tricky subject and I'm not sure what the solution is.

I think the media makes stuff like this ten times worse, though. If you don't want to be offended by sick jokes then naturally you don't seek them out on sickipedia etc... however with this and the nature of 24hr news it is hard to avoid.

I think the biggest thing to consider is intent- if it is someone's intention to cause harassment, alarm or distress then I have a problem with people escaping any action for that. If like Mansfield said it was behind closed doors and potentially uploaded by someone without their permission then it's different.

That's my take on stuff like this anyway

 

The UK does not have "Free Speech" codified in the constitution in the same way the USA does. One of the faults of not actually having a written constitution...

 

Presumably the person who uploaded it will be one of the five charged. If it had not been uploaded in public then there would have been no harm done.

 

Don't we burn an effigy of a human being every November. (I don't agree with what they did by the way)

 

As for the one about the Leicester City helicopter simulator... am I going to be arrested for daring to go there?

 

Its in very poor taste and borderline on a number of topics but as Dyson has said we've all been there at some point and been those people.

Some of us more than once.

This entire shithouse of a situation shows again how mob mentality on social media can cause a storm of self righteous and of who can be offended the most.

The irony being a vast number of those suddenly decrying this effergy will be the same onces championing the ones of Thatcher, Trump, May etc depending on your leanings.

All of which can be deemed as offensive/insensitive and so forth.

As a final grenfell note.

The number of arrests for subletting 0
The number of arrests for the failiure of the building 0
The number of arrests for an attempt at a bad taste joke 6.

 

Some people should be kept away from the internet, for both their own and everyone else's sake. They are sharing things online that once upon a time would only be aired among their mates at the pub. It has to be said though that we now live in a very neurotic, over-sensational and easily offended world.

 

You make a very good point on modern society. What you say to 10 mates and one person who isn't your mate, you do need to be more guarded about. I don't think this is a good thing, but the way the internet is going mind control is not that many decades away. Papers & broadcasts take us to war. I support free speech, but not hate speech & Newspeak.

 

They may be racist, we can all reach our own conclusions on that but the burning of the effigy is not racist in my opinion.

 

I have to agree. It's extremely poor taste and not something that 99% of people would find remotely funny but if these dimwits want to act like morons on their own property then I think we're crossing a dangerous line by making it a criminal offence. I just can't see what law has been broken.

 

The only part of that I'd argue with is where you say people are quicker and more unified with this than with the actual disaster. The entire country reacted to the disaster, it dominated the newspapers, the TV, the radio, workplace chatter, conversation on here. It was everywhere and everyone was united and angry
This reaction is nowhere near that scale, nowhere near.