Joey Barton is a man with a long criminal record. To cite but one misdemeanour, in 2007 the hardman former Manchester City footballer assaulted his own teammate Ousmane Dabo during a training session so badly that Dabo was hospitalised with a suspected detached retina. For this, Joey got a suspended four-month prison sentence and a fine of £3,000 (10 minutes’ wages for the average Premier League footballer).
Earlier this month, meanwhile, Barton was found guilty of what you may presume to have been the far lesser ‘offence’ of – to use his own accurately dismissive description – using “hurty words” online. For this, when he receives his sentence on December 8th, Joey may potentially gain an exemplary stretch of two years not simply in Twitter-prison, but in an actual one.
A Malicious Act
Joey has been prosecuted under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 combined with its partial updated internet-era successor legislation, the Communications Act 2003, described as: “An Act to make provision for the punishment of persons who send or deliver letters or other articles for the purpose of causing distress or anxiety.” But, being originally enacted in 1988, this was initially intended to criminalise disturbed people who pushed poison-pen envelopes filled with razor-blades and excrement through their enemies’ doors. It was not designed to criminalise people like Joey mocking fellow media celebrities by calling them silly names on social media platforms which did not then exist.
Barton partly fell foul of the Act for tweets
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DEI is by definition racist.
But everyone is expected to pretend it is anti-racist.
This is really dangerous stuff. One thing is to have to be quiet about what you think. But being forced to act as if something is the opposite of what it really is a whole different level. It can only lead to insanity. And it is happening a lot in our society now. Gender, all things COVID, the wonders of multiculturalism.
Expect an ever madder society unless we stop all this nonsense.
Aluko who got the Male wimmens England Football Manager the sack cos he dropped her at 36 as she was past it ! Claimed it was waysist !
Once over the hurt and offended would be on psychiatric wards, but we closed the asylums for “care in the community”.
Joey Barton is a bit of a dick, always was, but he’s also quite amusing and in these cases spot on!
We either have freedom of speech/opinion or we don’t, it can’t be a halfway house!
No sensible person actually believes there exists freedom of consequence if you choose to express certain opinions, there is no freedom from criticism, freedom from being ostracised or freedom from losing friends or acquaintances.
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there is no statute for freedom from being offended!
No mention in this article about the other plaintiff, the easily offended and offensive Jeremy Vine, the “Bike Nonce”.
Is there anything that doesn’t offend that insufferable POS?
Barton looks a bit like Sean Penn to me. Perhaps it’s the hair..💇♂️
So, Judge Menary – White male. Peter Wright KC ( Prosecution ) – White male. Jury – presumably a hotchpotch of peeps representative of society.
I’m just wondering how the usual suspects on here are going to spin this entire farce as being the fault of women, when all I see ( for the umpteenth time now ) is yet another example of white men screwing over other white men.
“Woke and DEI nonsense were falsely manufactured and driven by white women”, they say.
Show me the evidence, because the reality all over the shop, time and again, refutes your claims.
Still waiting…🤷♀️😴
I think it’s very telling how so many men find it so difficult to concede the irrefutable fact that both sexes are responsible for creating and pushing this entire woke ideology. Only people with an axe to grind would reduce something as complex as this down to a divisive ‘men vs women’ issue, such is their innate default position to scapegoat the opposite sex.
It is easier to live in a comfortable lie than to face an uncomfortable truth.
The phrasing of the laws is so open to interpretation, that it appears to come down to how the judge sees it on the day. This judgement appears to me to be more like social commentary than justice within the law.
That suggests that the laws are poorly written but I think where before case law was created by mainly asking if the law applied to a certain situation. I worked in highway law which has some of the oldest case law around. The problem now is that these laws are seeking to govern opinion as opposed to facts.
Is 1984 now taught to Lawyers and Judges as a guide book?
Interesting first sentence of the judge’s direction to the jury –
“You must apply the standards of an open just and multi racial society which recognises equality and diversity and which values free expression”.
Sadly and palpably we are not
The judge is instructing the jury to ignore this reality.
Fwiw, I’d say his lawyers ought to be all over that for an appeal.
“You must apply the standards of an open just and multi racial society which recognises equality and diversity and which values free expression”.
The judge is free to speak for himself but a lot of people don’t recognise “equality and diversity” in the sense he intends it.
Oxymoron: a just society which values free expression would not prosecute and gaol people who freely expressed themselves about equality and diversity. Evidently toeing the line on diversity and equity is valued above freedom of expression. And that just ain’t just.
We are not a multi ethnic society just because there are a minority of people here of different ethnicities, just as we are not a multinational society because people of different Countries are here.
Why are such mediocrities made judges?
Hue?
Political reliability.