Prime Minister,
I notice, today, that Ms Berger has been attacked in a rather unpleasant manner online and that the owner of a sadly inadequate personality has been sent to prison for four weeks as a result. Everybody shout “Yay for the Triumph of Justice!!”
“Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said she hoped the jail term would deter would-be trolls. ‘This sentence sends a clear message that hate crime is not tolerated in our country,” she said. “I hope this case serves as an encouragement to others to report hate crime whenever it rears its ugly head.'”
Except that it is not justice at all. Certainly not a triumph. If anything it is a complete and utter mockery, because two other people – senior people, Prime Minister – are still at large despite the fact that they, too, have caused deep and abiding offence with words that they have published. Not online, admittedly, but still “made public”, which is what “published” means.
Lord Freud has publicly stated that he considers disabled people as being of less worth than those of able body and brain. One Councillor Mellins, of your Party and who sits on the Council of Windsor and Maidenhead, has openly called for the extermination of Gypsies.
Neither of these people have been even arrested, Prime Minister, let alone charged or convicted. yet the level of offence that they have inflicted upon their targets has been every bit as distressing – if not more so because of the multiplicity of the targets – as that suffered by Ms Berger.
Trolling might be an online term, Prime Minister, but it has been around for far longer than the Internet and is no less hurtful for not being delivered or committed via a keyboard. If there is to be proper and admirable justice in this country, then those who have committed or delivered unjustified verbal abuse in any form must all face equal punishment because no wo/man is made of finer clay than any other. Hate speech is hate speech, regardless of its format.
Sincerely,
Darren Lynch
