Am I missing the point? He threatened to blow up an airport and the police wanted to speak with him, Isn’t that there job?

I think the point is that the police should be catching real “terrorists” rather than snooping on people’s twitter accounts.

Surely questioning for SEVEN hours is overkill by anyones standards?

I guess it all helps keep the anti-terror statistics up so the establishment will be happy.

I guess if, like Charlotte Denis, you can get nicked for wearing an anti-Labour T-shirt at a game fair, or, like Walter Wolfgang, for heckling at Labour Party conference, then you must be thick if you think you can get away with Twittering about blowing up airports.

Heck, the Plod take that even more seriously than handing out Christian leaflets in a Muslim area.

This is odd considering how unresponsive the police can be with other web-based evidence of, let’s say, personal harassment.

“Am I missing the point? He threatened to blow up an airport and the police wanted to speak with him, Isn’t that there job?”

Is an arrest necessary to do that?

This is odd considering how unresponsive the police can be with other web-based evidence of, let’s say, personal harassment.

Would it help if someone threatened to blow you up?

@5

“Am I missing the point? He threatened to blow up an airport and the police wanted to speak with him, Isn’t that there job?”

Is an arrest necessary to do that?

LOL clearly you’ve not read up on the so-called anti-terror laws…

He threatened to blow up an airport and the police wanted to speak with him, Isn’t that there job?

Took them a week to arrest them. Luckily the alleged terrorist had given the airport “a week and a bit”, so the police arrived in the nick of time.

@5 (again)

Full text of the Counter-Terrorism Bill http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=3535083

Cut out the waffle – you can be held for 28 days without charge. Amusingly “we” are fighting “terror” in the name of “freedom”.

That humming noise you hear is Orwell spinning in his grave… and Milan Kundera reprinting his seminal novel The Joke.

Clearly a specialist Twitter Team is needed to educate South Yorkshire Police on the concept of ‘humour’.

I shall await my personal visit to Belmarsh.

D

So for future reference I shouldn’t make jokes about rape, make racist comments on a footy website but threatening to blow an airport up is ok.

pagar:

Yes but please don’t volunteer as I don’t want you to be arrested…not yet anyway.

Why would they announce their plans in advance? (Still, if they could all be convinced to use the hashtag #islamicjihad it’d make anti-terrorism much easier…)

@11

No-one on this website has actually advocated arresting people for making jokes or thinking/saying distastful things. FWIW I’m all in favour of crass jokes (within context, ie: don’t tell a rape joke when you’re a local politician sorting out rape crisis funding) and free speech, but don’t be surprised if you’re (allegedly!) a racist fuckwit on a Millwall forum and people call you out on it.

This Twitterer could’ve been more sensible, granted. But questioned for seven hours, laptop, iPod etc confiscated, banned from the airport? Talk about using sledgehammers to crack nuts. Why don’t our brilliant authorities bother catching the real bad guys (ie: underpants bomber – they were warned, even by the guy’s own father!) rather than snooping on silly, but harmless, tweets?

Dave,

So for future reference I shouldn’t make jokes about rape, make racist comments on a footy website but threatening to blow an airport up is ok.

Do you think an arrest and interrogation for seven hours, not to mention leaving a potential charge to hang over his head until mid-Feb and indefinitely confiscating some equipment, is a necessary and proportionate response?

Sorry, don’t know why anyone got the impression that I was advocating this guys arrest, or that I was somehow not “up” on my info of what police can do under terrorism laws.

My point was simple, a quick conversation with this guy would have made it clear to them he just made a joke. Why they needed to get all uber-official on him and intrude on his life with such impact isn’t even a reasonable question.

Even if you believe the guy was wrong in making this joke, there is absolutely zero reason why, given the circumstances, an arrest was necessary.

@16

Oh, agreed entirely. Apologies for the misinterpretation!

@ Daniel

Yes but please don’t volunteer as I don’t want you to be arrested…not yet anyway.

No chance of that. I’m only 47th in the queue

Do you think an arrest and interrogation for seven hours, not to mention leaving a potential charge to hang over his head until mid-Feb and indefinitely confiscating some equipment, is a necessary and proportionate response?

The arrest yes, interrogation no I think seven hours is excessive, but I suspect some of this is actually time spent in cells alone rather than interrogation.

But other posters are right the police should have known he was a “Real terrorist” because he wasn’t muslim.

Bottom line, Twitter is not the same as having a laugh in the pub with your mates, and anything said on their has a global audience and people need to be responsible. If I went on their joking about how many old ladies I was going to violently beat and rob I would expect a call from the police.

People seem so up their own arse about the ‘right to free speech’ they seem to forget that rights come with responsibilities. I hope this sends out a strong message to other idiots and ‘Jokes’ like this are not repeated.

Dave, the Independent claims Chamber was “questioned for almost seven hours by detectives”. But I’m sure there was at least one toilet break.

Do you think people should be questioned by police for saying that MPs who fiddled their expenses should be shot or hanged from lampposts?

Do you think people should be questioned by police for saying that MPs who fiddled their expenses should be shot or hanged from lampposts?

It depends, are they saying they should be shot and hanged or are they saying they are personally going to do it?

Im sorry im just old fashioned and believe that if you publicly threaten to kill people then you need a talking to.

@21

[...] if you publicly threaten to kill people then you need a talking to.

Fair enough – but this was/is a bit more than a “talking to”. You made it sound like Gramps is upset with the local tearaways scrumping for apples. As opposed to the wholesale destruction of someone’s reputation not to mention interrogation by anti-terror police for seven hours and the confiscation of private property.

By your logic any comedian who “threatens to kill people” (and there are plenty – just watch Mock the Week or some other equally inane programme) should be subject to the full brute force of Her Majesty’s stormtroopers.

You made it sound like Gramps is upset with the local tearaways scrumping for apples.

Fair enough, now could you re-read your post and give me an amusing metaphor for what you make it sound like.

@23 touché, sir

Well as was explained over the weekend, there is NOTHING funny about joking about airports being blown up… EVEH!

So I guess he only had himself to blame. Or this is just the security state’s equivalent of political correctness gone mad.

I expect Dave at 19 is right when he says:

I hope this sends out a strong message to other idiots and ‘Jokes’ like this are not repeated.

Whether that is an appropriate way for us to be policed is another matter entirely.

“People seem so up their own arse about the ‘right to free speech’ they seem to forget that rights come with responsibilities. I hope this sends out a strong message to other idiots and ‘Jokes’ like this are not repeated.”

I hope it makes more people repeat jokes like this because under no situation or circumstance re: “terrorism” should police be arresting and charging people merely on what they bloody well say.

“He threatened to blow up an airport and the police wanted to speak with him, Isn’t that there job?

Took them a week to arrest them. Luckily the alleged terrorist had given the airport “a week and a bit”, so the police arrived in the nick of time.”

Joking about Terrorism? I laughed, I fully expect a visit. I laughed, about terrorism (or should I say the thought-police).

In all seriousness, think while you can, speak while you can, write while you can, laugh while you can, because soon, its robot-style existence for all of us. Ill be Bender.