Rome burns whilst police chase tweets

The comments by Sheriff Cottam seem dangerously close to prescribing a view one “must” have about the pandemic and the folk heroes it has borne such as Captain Moore and healthcare workers.

This week a man who wrote on Twitter of Captain Sir Tom Moore, the day after he died, that “the only good Brit solider is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuurn” has been found guilty of sending a “grossly offensive” tweet. He will reappear in court in March for sentencing.

Sheriff Adrian Cottam of Lanark Sheriff Court called it a “gratuitous insult” and was made “with only offence in mind”. Sheriff Cottam’s comments in themselves seem unremarkable, but what is striking is that sending an offensive tweet can land you in front of him in the first place.

Apparently, the Communications Act is the legal mechanism that was employed by the prosecution, in particular the section referring to communication that is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”. A series of terms so vague and broad, their boundaries could not possibly be foreseen in advance by a potential offender.

Random individuals who found the tweet offensive appeared to offer evidence that it had upset them. Somebody who saw the tweet and found it hurtful told the court “To see someone wishing British soldiers dead, it still hurts me. It still hurts me that anybody would disrespect someone that had given their life for the country.”

Tom Moore was conscripted into the British Army in 1940 under the National Service act and was demobilised in 1946 after the end of the Second World War, having become a Captain. A better six years of work than I shall likely ever do. To associate him with wrongdoings of British military forces in Ireland, which it is speculated was the motivation of the offending tweeter, seems to stretch the boundaries of logic and reason beyond their limits. But illogic and a lack of reason are not offences. And whilst the tweet was pathetic, a military background is not a protected characteristic.

The member of the public was affronted by the disrespect being shown about a military serviceman, however that was not in fact the emphasis placed by Sheriff Cottam. He said “This is a man who had become known as a national hero, who stood for the resilience of the people of a country struggling with a pandemic and the services trying to protect them. His statute (sic) and the view of society towards him must be looked at in that light and therefore any comment likewise”.

According to the court authority, society “must” have a certain view about a “national hero” who stood for the struggle against Covid-19 and for the “services trying to protect them”, by which he presumably meant lockdowns and the NHS. The comments seem dangerously close to prescribing a view one “must” have about the pandemic and the folk heroes it has borne such as Captain Moore and healthcare workers.

As we learn from The Times newspaper that only five per cent of burglaries are being solved (or should that be recorded burglaries, given the number that we no longer bother to report and the mysterious ways in which reported crimes are then actually recorded) the Scottish justice system is spending time prosecuting people for mindless tweets.

Rome burns whilst we fiddle.