You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato.
(Note: [remove before publishing] Should be safe enough Ed: they must have run out of vegetable puns after yesterday….)
Hurling abuse is a time honoured occupation. The earliest reference I can find is to an early Tunisian uprising, (AD63 or thereabouts) when the hoi polloi hurled turnips at Vespasian Caesar in disgust. We have been chucking fruit and veg at those who displeased us ever since. The most recent is the ‘spaghetti harvest’ left, chucked at the Russian consulate in Odessa by recalcitrant Ukrainians. Apparently, ‘noodles between the ears’ is the best translation of Ukrainian views of Russian politicians. Whether Vespasian’s turnips had a similarly obtuse meaning or was merely the only fodder to hand is debatable.
Eggs as missiles put in an appearance when an 18th century Liverpudlian Missionary took a boat to the Isle of Manx and tried to convince the population that they would never walk alone if they just took the hand of Jesus – and found himself pelted with a few precious eggs in amongst the stones and mud….eggs put in another appearance in the Ukraine when one thrown at Victor Yanukovych put him in hospital; hard boiling them first is really not in the spirit of the tradition.
Soft fruit, preferably rotten, is the modern weapon of choice – the object is not to put your victim in hospital or do any lasting harm, merely to make your feelings known. The era of the ‘rotten tomato’ started in the theatre, but has emerged as one of the more unlikely annual festivals. I give you ‘La Tomatina‘, held every year in Buñol, Spain. It used to be such a popular way of letting off steam that every year between 40 and 50,000 people would cram into the streets to hurl rotten tomatoes at each other – now it is restricted to the first 20,000 applicants who get to pay €10 each for the privilege of chucking a hundred metric tons of rotten tomatoes at each other. Go enjoy!
I’m telling you this because it is becoming harder and harder to vent your feelings. One could understand if sticks, stones and rotten tomatoes were being banned as a method of expressing yourself – but words?
‘Words can never hurt you’ so it is said.
Angie Bray, Conservative MP for Ealing Central and Acton, has put forward an amendment to the forthcoming Criminal Justice bill, which would see you in jail for two years for ‘offences’ such as that which saw Jake Newsome jailed for a ‘mere’ six weeks. The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, is backing the amendment.
Jake’s offence was to tweet something deemed offensive by some of the 2,000 people who ‘retweeted’ his comment in respect of the teacher Ann Maguire, recently murdered.
“Personally im glad that teacher got stabbed up, feel sorry for the kid… he shoulda pissed on her too”.
Hardly the most sensitive of sentiments – but it wasn’t addressed to Ann Maguire – who was sadly deceased. Nor her family. It was on his Facebook page, shared amongst his school friends. A few days later, after his post had been shared more than 2,000 times, West Yorkshire police arrested and charged Jake under the 2003 Communications Act with having sent “by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature”.
Robert Riley said he would have killed ‘not only Maguire but all her school colleagues’ on Twitter; that got him eight weeks in jail. The chairwoman of the bench, Georgina Scannell, said the court had ‘no choice’ but to send the defendant to jail – his Tweet ‘outraged the public’ (Robert had all of 500 followers).
Isabella Sorley, 23, used Twitter to tell feminist Criado-Perez to ‘f*** off and die you worthless piece of crap’ and ‘go kill yourself’. John Nimmo, 25, told Criado-Perez to ‘shut up bitch’ and ‘Ya not that gd looking to rape u be fine’, followed by: ‘I will find you [smiley face]’ and then the message ‘rape her nice ass’. Sorley was jailed for 12 weeks, and Nimmo for 8.
I’m not particularly defending the opinions of those jailed – but I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of similar and worse, and it’s never crossed my mind that the speaker should be jailed for what they’ve said.
For the best part of 2,000 years, we’ve been able to express our opinion of people and events by lobbing rotten eggs and fruit at them – surely more harmful than words? Leila Deen only got a caution for lobbing green custard at Peter Mandelson; can anyone explain to me why we have started jailing people for their words?
- Nigel Sedgwick
June 20, 2014 at 1:26 pm -
Anna asks: “can anyone explain to me why we have started jailing people for their words?”
Well, is it not obvious? The pen is mightier than the sword!
And one has to start somewhere, if one is to eventually be able to justify suppression of political dissent. First they came for the rude and obnoxious, …
Best regards
- Ed P
June 20, 2014 at 4:05 pm -
Oh, I always thought it was,”The penis, mightier than the sword”.
- Engineer
June 20, 2014 at 5:31 pm -
For most of us, that’s just wishful thinking….
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 8:43 pm -
Not where the Vagina Monologues are the dominant dialogue
- Curmudgeon
June 20, 2014 at 10:44 pm -
On the subject of ‘vagina’, it has long struck me as odd that the anglo-saxon word ‘c**t’ cannot be said as it is considered too crude, despite being a straight forward word for female genitalia, while ‘vagina’ is ok, despite being a filthy joke put forward by medicos. For those of you whose latin is a bit rusty: ‘Vagina’ is not latin for female genitalia but is latin for a ‘scabbard’ – the place a Roman gentleman might wish to stow his gladius.
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 11:36 pm -
- Peter
June 21, 2014 at 2:02 am -
God bless YouTube, doing more to preserve “culture” than a thousand Ministries.
- Peter
- Ed P
June 21, 2014 at 9:42 am -
Funny old world – no problems if I walk down the street with an empty scabbard in full view, but if my sword’s in it I’d be arrested!
- Ho Hum
- Curmudgeon
- Engineer
- Ed P
- rabbitaway
June 20, 2014 at 2:06 pm -
Thought we had a verdict just now but no, the jury asked 3 Questions (Rolf) !
- Joe Public
June 20, 2014 at 2:12 pm -
“…….. can anyone explain to me why we have started jailing people for their words?”
But Tony Blair’s still cruising around the Med ………….
- Cascadian
June 20, 2014 at 9:20 pm -
Sure…..the rules only apply to the plebs.
When the political class denigrate people, do you think they will be arrested?
- Cascadian
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 2:19 pm -
The Tyranny of the Puritan Left, as well as all sorts of other Puritanical Opportunism
The only way they can ever hope to triumph in the battle for hearts and minds is to silence those that disagree. So you start by persuading a gullible nation that some people, who are beyond the pale, should be punished for being so. From there on its a slippery slope, as more and more is added to the list of what is generally unacceptable to say, biased, of course, to what they wish to preclude people from saying. Every instance of some misdemeanour is seized upon, and extrapolated and magnified to present the problem as ‘huge’, ‘dangerous’ and, yea verily, a malevolent threat to even the ongoing stability of civilisation itself
It’s the same tactics as have been used, for over a decade now, by the RadFem Sexually Puritanical Oppressives, and latterly, by special interest groups to try to silence the oh so evil people who might wish to argue about causes of Climate Change. Just as various pressure groups have salivated over the opportunities presented to them by Savilification
And in an era when politicians can be praised or vilified instantly by a mass media, whose credulity seems to extend no further than the start and end of a press release, most of which they seem to have been conditioned to accept as a ‘good thing’ in any event, none of our political masters are going to stand up and say ‘Bollocks’, or even ‘Enough is enough’, are they
Democracy is a funny business, however or wherever practised, but particularly in a setting such as we have currently in the UK, where there is no fixed constitution or other form of fixed set of principles setting out the rights of citizens – and please, please, don’t anyone start to go on about the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, FOTL, and other such guff, as none of those amount to a tin of beans. (Got the veg in!). I can’t really think on any other form of process where the British people will actually actively appoint a bunch of losers to tell them that they can’t do what they want to and then accept that as if it were ‘normal’.
- Ancient+Tattered Airman
June 20, 2014 at 3:18 pm -
There was a saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”. See where progress, technology and political correctness has brought us……………….
- Darth Weevil the Eternally Crazed
June 20, 2014 at 4:15 pm -
The absurd thing being that you could actually get a lighter sentence if you beat the shit out of someone than if you called them a bad name.
- Darth Weevil the Eternally Crazed
- Wigner’s Friend
June 20, 2014 at 3:52 pm -
Brings to mind the old verse:
To market, to market went my brother Jim,
When someone threw a tomato at him.
Now tomatoes are soft and don’t hurt the skin,
But this one did, it was wrapped in a tin! - Ed P
June 20, 2014 at 4:24 pm -
1984-style thought crimes are now with us and the sheeple don’t seen to care.
Protest fruit & veg. missiles:
Bananas, indicating you think someone is bonkers.
Watermelons for Leftards masquerading as Greens.
Apples for Microsoft – they’re not soft which makes the point. - Jonathan Mason
June 20, 2014 at 4:40 pm -
In Thailand you can go to prison for saying anything rude about the King. Perhaps the law in the UK can be expanded a bit to make it illegal to say anything rude about HRH or any of her family, or even about an MP or a judge. Or for children to talk back to adults or teachers. There really is no limit to the good use the law can be put to in making the UK a more polite place.
When I was young people used to do such dreadful things that you cannot imagine today such as loudly suggesting that football referees were of dubious parentage or in need of optometry. The world is so much better now.
But another improvement might be to give UK passports to trafficked footballers. Had a certain Mr. Suarez who was originally trafficked from his Urguayan pueblo to the red light district of Amsterdam, and from there to the modern slavery port of Liverpool, been given a UK passport, the terrible massacre over which millions of Britons are currently grieving might never have occurred. Britannia waives the rules!
- Michael J. McFadden
June 20, 2014 at 4:43 pm -
I’ve always been staunchly against censorship, although I fully acknowledge the right of any media outlet or internet blog etc to lay down the rules of what it will publish…. as long as they are laid down openly and applied fairly.
The Topix news boards angered me enough by their behavior a few years ago that I wrote about them in my “TobakkoNacht — The Antismoking Endgame.” Topix engages (or at least engaged… although I believe they still do it) in something called “Shadow Banning” in which they render one’s postings invisible to all but the poster. So Johnny writes his stuff, sees it out there, and then grows despondent when no one replies. Johnny doesn’t know, unless he signs on from a computer with a different name and IP address, that his postings are invisible to everyone else. Shadow-banning was originated as a defense against commercial spam, but it has descended into the more general realm of censorship.
In terms of jailing folks for hate speech, that seems to be more of a Brit thing than a US practice. Although it seems that it’s fine to be hateful toward smokers. Take a look at my “Wall Of Hate” poster at http://bit.ly/WallOfHate which was developed from four crowded, small-font pages in TobakkoNacht where I tried to convey the “feeling” of what the Antismokers have developed. Take a look at that page and enlarge it enough or download it for enlarging, and read the sentiments of 130 or so different internet posters that I gathered together. It could just as easily been 500, or possibly a thousand if I’d wanted to take the time, but I felt the 130 made the point sufficiently.
It’s important that people see the sort of hate that’s aimed at groups by other groups so that, hopefully, something will be done to improve the situation before it moves beyond words. On the other hand, the hate shouldn’t simply be allowed to stand without comment: allowing it to flourish unchallenged can simply breed more of it since people then come to think that such feelings are both acceptable and widespread. It’s a bit of a balancing act, but I’d always prefer the teeter-totter to lean more toward the side of freedom than suppression.
– MJM
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 5:02 pm -
I’d rather see, and therefor know, who hated me than have them hidden by a sham veneer of respectability or, as we seem to be heading to, fear. Prohibition never changes a single thing. Trying to legislate out the behaviours you disapprove of in others merely drives them beneath the surface. It doesn’t eradicate them.
At the end of the day, socialism and other forms of left leaning activity merely result in other attempts, by those suffering from ‘fond hope’ syndrome, to try to rationalise or, when that fails, legislate ‘love’ into people. The latter doesn’t really change anyone, and hence its continuing fundamental failure, hotly pursued by endless rafts of more and more finely grained rules and laws as it’s proponents try desperately to control people in their image of perceived perfection. They make for great latter day Pharisees
The greatest irony is that when they themselves then get caught up in the net they have created, they seem to be incapable of understanding why
- Edgar
June 20, 2014 at 10:34 pm -
The Wall of Hate looks very like the Dawkins’ collection of ‘Christian’ comments directed at him in particular and atheists in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZuowNcuGsc&feature=kp . Such vitriol suggest that these people are psychopathic bullies who don’t have the courage to launch their bilious attacks on flesh-and-blood smokers/atheists. It’s as if their cowardice tortures them so much that they must channel their hatred into psychotic hysteria. A high proportion seem also to be infected by the paranoid delusion of New World Order fanaticism and other Grand Conspiracy memes. These people are damaged: the ’cause’ they adopt is just a hatpeg on which to hang, and pitifully attempt to justify, their inner turmoil.
- never60
June 21, 2014 at 7:53 am -
have you ever tried to comment adversely about israel? you just have to say that maybe their achievement of sovereignty was not fair to the previously resident palestinians, and you are immediately condemned as an anti-semitic nazi.
it’s another situation where only one opinion is allowed. to be true, it’s not illegal – yet – but who knows how it will be in the future.- Mudplugger
June 21, 2014 at 8:31 am -
Never underestimate the power of the ‘Holocaust Guilt Card’, an international ‘Joker’, available to be played whenever anyone has the temerity to criticise Israel for anything, whether that is legitimate criticism or not.
- Ho Hum
June 21, 2014 at 8:41 am -
If he were to say something like that on The Guardian’s CiF, people would round on him for his moderation.
But, as one with Jewish close relatives, please don’t underestimate the general level of anti-Jewish antagonism that still resides out there, even in modern, liberal, Britain
- never60
June 21, 2014 at 12:19 pm -
perhaps the speed and vehemence of the jewish response helps to stoke the fires of resentment. after all, a considered reply by me that is NOT intended to be in any way unpleasant but that results in severe condemnation and unwarranted abuse, does not help in fostering a friendly attitude of mind.
- Ho Hum
June 21, 2014 at 1:13 pm -
Yes. I wouldn’t deny that there may well be some truth in that. And that’s true anywhere – as alluded to elsewhere on the comments here, I’m sure the landlady gets similar abuse from those she is reasonably questioning.
But some responses go further than others and, while not alone at being at the receiving end of the more extreme sort, unfortunately our Jewish friends do seem to attract a more actively direct targeting than might seem to be their fair share, so to speak
- Ho Hum
- never60
- Ho Hum
- Mudplugger
- never60
- Ian B
June 21, 2014 at 7:16 am -
THe USA is somewhat restrained by their Constitution. But the modern formulation of “hate” speech and crime was predominantly developed by academics and activists in the USA.
- Ho Hum
- Engineer
June 20, 2014 at 5:32 pm -
“….they’ve run out of vegetable puns.”
Oh no they haven’t. It’s still a runner; been fun, it has!
- binao
June 20, 2014 at 6:54 pm -
That was a Little Gem.
- Mudplugger
June 21, 2014 at 8:31 am -
Toodle-pip.
- binao
- Matt
June 20, 2014 at 6:23 pm -
So can anyone trace an online comment or viewpoint to the precise location and individual or just the thought police? Spooky.
- mike fowle
June 20, 2014 at 6:49 pm -
I thought these sentences were absolutely outrageous. This really isn’t funny.
- Fat Steve
June 20, 2014 at 6:53 pm -
Well Anna if you quote the 2003 correctly viz sent “by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature” it really is a Trojan horse
Just sending eh ? Not publishing just sending—- wow —so no privilege under ant circumstances
But what about grossly offensive (obscene is reserved separately)—that is issues of taste at the wire —I can buy into menacing if it was publishing something menacing –but sending something of ‘menacing NATURE ?
And the sentences handed down are by no means light —what custodial for a first offence before Magistrates?
Arguably Nimmo committed the ugliest offence coz I am not sure anyone likes the idea of rape but he got 8 weeks.
Sorley poor girl got 12 weeks for little more than voicing an opinion and few would take the exhortation to kill oneself seriously if they were proselytising a cause
Newsonne’s remarks were in poor taste but who on earth would take them with any degree of seriousness
As I said yesterday but you thought I was joking I despair when I read your blog —not at the blog but the information it contains.
I am off to the kitchen now for a few hours spiritual enlightenment and then I have got two hours homework writing lines about who are my betters in Society that under no circumstances I can send an e mail offending—- even to my wife - Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 7:01 pm -
And Anna, how long do you think it’s going to be before it becomes an offence to just look at some of the stuff on Liveleak? Probably not too far distant, I would suggest.
There’s a report on the Beeb Tech Section tonight that the UK is trying to get a particular ISIS video taken offline. Not checked to see if it’s on Liveleak, but there is lots of pro Assad/pro ISIS/general anti snackbar material there, in amongst all the lunatic Eastern European lunatic drivers, the Far Eastern suicidal maniacs and the fluffy kittens.
Realistically, one might see it as being difficult to get all that taken off a site based in the US. They don’t cater to Turkey or other places so do you think they’ll change it for us, a friendly ‘liberal’ democracy? Look round the comments on the techie aspects of the free speech debate and peod from there can’t understand why we all of a sudden seem to have turned into insipid pinko Commies.
So what’s the next alternative but to make it ‘illegal’, or maybe to try to bar such sites entirely? And if you do that for one, you can bet every special interest charidee/feminist/religious/leftist group will be piling in afterwards for their own special bans. If an educated woman can force an apology out of an MP and his party for making a joke, in the barbed tradition that has been a fundamental part of British humour for centuries, one complaint to OFCOM can affect the whole viewing experience for every other person in the entire country, just imagine what that sort of onslaught will bring. In the best interests of everybody, you understand /less than muted sarcasm
We may well be on the edge of a very slippery slope. And it won’t be just the juice from a million rotten tomatoes that will be preventing us keeping our feet.
- Engineer
June 20, 2014 at 7:02 pm -
I wonder where the line is between ‘free speach’ and ‘publishing’.
Far worse things are said every day in pubs, workplaces and homes up and down the land, and always have been. The potential audience is limited, so the effect of the slander (and a lot of ‘pub talk’ is VERY slanderous!) is limited.
However, if it’s committed to social media (Facebook, Twitter etc.) does it count as publishing, because the POTENTIAL audience is far wider? (c.f. Sally Bercow – “Why is Lord McAlpine trending *innocent face*” – which the court decided was, in the context of the twitter ‘conversation’ ongoing at the time, libellous.)
It’s perfectly possible to call a politician you don’t like incompetent, illegitimate, a pervert or worse in the pub, but not in a newspaper article or book. Is social media nearer to pub talk or publishing?
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 8:15 pm -
Don’t count on being able to say anything you like in a pub!
Try this…
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_Kingdom
In particular look at the xrefs to S4A and S5 of the 1986 Act, as amended by later acts
Were you being intentionally abusive? Did you expect there to be anyone around within hearing and sight who might be caused harassment, alarm or distress
As a purely hypothetical example, did you really not see Y A-B at the next table or think you might thus be overheard?
I’d button that lip, if I were you
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 8:18 pm -
Alternatively, as ‘Just saying’ has implied below, learn some Russian LOL
- Ho Hum
- Ho Hum
- Just Saying
June 20, 2014 at 8:00 pm -
I seem to recall the great and the good getting uppity about the Pussy Riot women being jailed for 2 years for their sweary “performance” in a Moscow cathedral?
- Ho Hum
June 20, 2014 at 8:16 pm -
But they were Russian swear words, you know, the good kind
- Ho Hum
- Machiii
June 21, 2014 at 6:48 am -
James Delingpole
there’s nothing wrong with wanting to punch Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. It’s healthy, normal, natural and a sign of intelligence and discernment.
Actually punching Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, on the other hand: now that would be illegal and wrong and punishable by imprisonment – and rightly so.
But if our culture is entering a phase when it is incapable of making a distinction between committing a crime and fantasising about a scenario in which you might be tempted to commit a crime, then maybe it’s about time some of us had our heads examined.- Talwin
June 21, 2014 at 8:27 am -
Delingpole was, of course, putting in a word in’ support’ of Michael Fabricant, MP, who had tweeted something to the effect that had he (like the unfortunate Rod Liddle) been forced appear in a TV interview with the unspeakable Alibai-Brown, he might have wanted to punch her in the throat.
But I wonder if Fabricant will end up inside. Hmmm, don’t think so.
- Mudplugger
June 21, 2014 at 8:33 am -
He won’t end up inside Yasmin’s ‘scabbard’, that’s for sure.
- Ho Hum
June 21, 2014 at 8:56 am -
It would maybe end a lot of the relational confusion, and later historical prosecutions, if it were made clear which of those were only for ceremonial purposes, and which were on active duty, wouldn’t it?
- Ho Hum
- Mudplugger
- Talwin
- Ian B
June 21, 2014 at 7:13 am -
The answer goes back to William Wilberforce, who is one of those secular saints who are supposed to be above criticism, but bollocks to that. Wilberforce and his Proclamation Society, and the Clapham Sect, and Hannah More, and their ilk, who invented Victorianism. And the idea that the State, via the Law, should regulate by whatever extreme force necessary, something called “decency”. And here we are.
After a (relatively, mildly) liberal period in the last century (which is currently being repudiated via the show trials) we are now into a second wave of this. Because of the liberal period- in which most of us grew up- many people are under the illusion that this is some kind of new phenomenon. It isn’t. Laws like this, of various types and intensities of enforcement, have been around since the 19th century, all through the years we have variously boasted of being a free country, beacon of liberty to the world, blah de blah. For most of that period the cohort of corseted Establishment matrons that we currently call Feminists have been the spearhead of it, with their halo of wet lettuce males offering eager support.
Until we eradicate the Puritan scourge from our polity, this kind of nonsense will continue.
- stephen lewis
June 21, 2014 at 8:06 am -
Traditionally people would have to have private subversive meetings in kitchens and cellars. Now they can rally more troops through the use of the internet. This has not escaped the top of the tree, they intend to ensure that the proles are fearful of advertising their intentions openly and stick to their cellars and kitchens where they will fail to mass together.
A Bugs Life
If those ants ever realise there are but just a few of us … and millions of them, we are in big trouble.Steve
- Ms Mildred
June 21, 2014 at 8:29 am -
I may use the internet a lot, but not Twitter. We have had computers since they first were sold to the public. My take on the ‘words you choose to use ‘ is that published words can be very damaging and upsetting. They split up families and cause serious rows and fights. Twitter is a recent introduction. Badly handled by some nut balls out there. Those who are aggressively opinionated, pissed, drugged, deranged, immature may say any old thing that trips off their foul insulting tongues and onto the keyboard and PUBLISHED to the WWW. I have always said you should not repeat words that are said about a mutual associate. Those who creep around repeating the crap that that gets said behind a persons back are the real mischief makers, if they publish those words, they are the wrongdoers, not the speaker of the words. Therefore you should be free to speak an adverse opinion about another person, as long as it is not spread about to a wider network. I can quite understand that Anna must receive some truly disgusting emails but they can be junked /blocked/ignored. If you read them, they will bother you. Suddenly there are endless arguments about a sound bite that is alleged to be dangerous or insulting. Why can’t humans grow up. If you to say something to someone, say it to their face, or keep silent. Twitter should be renamed TWISTER.
- Ho Hum
June 21, 2014 at 8:49 am -
Yes, but no matter how I might agree with you in principle, with people being as they are, that’s never going to happen, is it?
Better to do as Solomon suggested in saying that a wise man will overlook an insult. Even if intended, it’s better not to sink into the trough with the one who cast it. Or, as I saw elsewhere the other day, put alternatively, ‘if you have trouble with anything I say, grow a thicker skin’
- Ho Hum
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