Twitter Bomb Joke Case Rolls Back Into UK Courts 174
judgecorp writes "Paul Chambers, the Briton whose joke on Twitter backfired, will be back in court following a legal stalemate, after more than two years. Chambers joked about blowing up South Yorkshire's Robin Hood airport in January 2010, and was arrested and fined for 'sending a public electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.' His resultant criminal record lost him his job as an accountant. Now his appeal has been heard, but the two judges disagreed with each other, so Chambers will be back in court again."
Re:Seriously though... (Score:5, Informative)
If you make a stupid joke (Score:5, Informative)
If you make a stupid joke in public about killing the president, blowing up an airport, etc., I think you can reasonably expect to have some polite men in black suits show up at your door to ask you some very serious questions. Maybe you might even have to go with them for a while to answer some questions in a secure location.
But I don't think it is reasonable to expect that you will be arrested, charged with a crime, and lose your job over what is clearly and obviously a joke to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together. It was a stupid joke, and a very badly-thought-out one, and I have no problem with someone facing reasonable consequences for doing something like that. But what happened to this guy has gone way beyond reasonable.
Re:Even free speech has its limit (Score:5, Informative)
CONTEXT. I don't know the context of this guy's post on Twitter, but I think it might be safe to say that this particular case could have used a little more fucken intelligent analysis...
His exact words were "Robin Hood airport is closed, you’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!".
Re:Even free speech has its limit (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the tweet was:
Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!
The version you've quoted is a recent misquote which lazy reporters in various media outlets propagated - the original tweet is even more clearly not a serious threat.
Re:Even free speech has its limit (Score:2, Informative)
> I don't see why a criminal record necessarily has to result in loss of your job, or harm your chances of getting a new one
It depends on the hiring policies of the place for which you're working.
> I never got asked whether or not I have a criminal record, and I consider that private (if you do have one you served your time, right?).
Again, it depends. Rehabilitation of Offenders act (1974) has guidelines over when a conviction can be regarded as 'spent' (typically seven years for a custodial sentence, less for fines). Some jobs can require CRB and eCRB checks, which may result in spent convictions being disclosed, although only certain jobs can require these to be taken (although this number seems, sadly, to be heavily increasing).
IANAL. Was a bit of a scrote in my youth though, and so have needed to be aware of the above.