- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
The woman accused of being first to spread the fake rumours about the Southport killer which sparked nationwide riots has been arrested.
Racist riots spread across the country after misinformation spread on social media claiming the fatal stabbing was carried out by Ali Al-Shakati, believed to be a fictitious name, a Muslim aslyum seeker who was on an MI6 watchlist.
A 55-year-old woman from Chester has now been arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred, and false communication. She remains in police custody.
While she has not been named in the police statement about the arrest, it is believed to be Bonnie Spofforth, a mother-of-three and the managing director of a clothing company.
Everyone here who’s cheering this on is missing the point.
Does this person and the other agitators, suck? Yes. Are they vile? Yes.
But putting aside the morality of the UK’s lack of free speech, the press and politicians, including the current Labour administration are you using these arrests to pretend that they had no culpability.
Don’t think this begins and ends with the Daily Mail and Farage. Starmer made his bones on being anti immigrant just the same, including giving speeches about this shit in the last few weeks.
So if you really do believe in the UK’s police state approach to speech for commoners, than at least taken to account that the very rags you’re reading while they clutch their pearls, and you all cheer, are in fact the original culprits and exponentially more guilty than any dipshits they’ve arrested, or will arrest.
It’s almost like you don’t comprehend the situation any more than you were able to understand what I actually said.
The situation has been building for a couple of decades, but it was created almost entirely by politicians and the media. The same ones who are now pearl clutching, including Starmer.
The same politicians and media outlets who are writing with indignation and feigned horror at the “violent mobs”, will suffer no consequence, especially with the attitude you just expressed.
Because, at least in my view, being part of the media class or a politician shouldn’t protect you from the legal consequences of fomenting nationwide riots. Clearly you feel differently.
So yeah, this lady and those like her are shit buckets. I genuinely don’t care what happens to them, but I do care that people like you are pretending that they are the start and the end of this problem, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Oh and P.S., it’s already a police state. Look no further than their treatment of Muslims the past two decades, including stripping citizenship and imprisoning without trial, or that they’re the most surveilled country on earth… The fact that you think this is a new, or yet to come development, speak volumes.
You say I didn’t comprehend you, but in fact what happened was that I understood you and disagreed. Disagreeing with you does not equate misunderstanding you. You should try to clear those two up in your mind.
Still trying to blame Starmer for this loses you such a lot of credibility.
There’s nothing in what I said that says politicians should be exempt. Nothing. I even said Farage next please. I didn’t say that she is the start and the end of the problem. But inciting riots should send you to prison. famous or not. Especially if famous. The bad news in this is that Farage isn’t in a cell and GB News for some inexplicable reason still has a licence to broadcast.
By police state you seem to mean state with a lot of bad police. I mean more totalitarian states like North Korea. You’re BoTh SiDESing hard there. Let me be clear that I think that there are a lot of problems with racism in the UK police force, partly because of what’s been emphasised over the last while by the Conservatives and partly because there’s a lot of old racism that’s being protected, but at least you don’t get shot in the UK by the police for being black behind the wheel of a nice car.
Over surveillance, there’s some cultural assumptions you seem to think are universal but aren’t. Americans think it’s fine to let insurance companies choose who lives and dies and take everything you ever owned if you commit the crime of having cancer, Brits think it’s fine to let the state watch you on CCTV, intercept your tweets and put you in prison if you plan terrorism. Americans sometimes act like freedom of speech is top of the human rights scale whereas British folk might well put the right to live in peace higher than the right to say absolutely anything. British people think that people should be allowed (by the state) to wear whatever they like as long as it covers what underwear normally covers whereas many Iranians think women should go to prison if you can see more than their eyes. Cultures are different. So we might be heavily surveilled but we don’t feel as oppressed by that as Americans would, and we see state intervention as genuinely good in some places, like having consumer protections against corporate nastiness and free healthcare and stuff.
Oh my God… You really have no clue what you’re talking about, which I suspected earlier, but that reply is almost cringe-worthy.
You don’t understand or have any depth of knowledge of British politics and media, which is pretty clear.
You don’t even know what a police state is…
Wait… Are you really basing all of your views and analysis off of British media coverage…?
I wonder if you’re able to disagree with me on some other level than just insulting me? You didn’t really raise any points of substance other than that I’m stupid and ill informed, and you didn’t address any of the things I said except to dismiss them all in general without any reasoning, so I’m at a bit of a loss for anything factual to discuss with you here, sorry.
They don’t “lack free speech”, they’re more “free of hate speech” and a more modern society because of it
They’ve already arrested people for making jokes, arrested a kid for insulting an Olympian, and arrested someone for tweeting “the only good soldier is a dead soldier”. The UK government continues to be tyrannical and unethical.
Yes, mistakes are made, and also many more justified and deserved convictions are made.
And the fact that those three examples are the type reported on ad nauseum by gutter tabloid newspapers gives a hint as to your preferred choice of sources
And what happens when mistakes are made? They are defended by the tyrannical government.
It’s like, “Yeah we falsely execute 10% of people, we don’t apologize to their families or anything, but it’s okay- many more people get what they deserve”
What? If I read news(not often) it’s usually, AP, Reuters, Reason, or something from Yahoo news.
Maybe it’s just that those are the most widely published cases of abuse so it’s easy when you’re looking for examples? But yeah personal attacks are good too.