To think Katie Hopkins has gone too far this time to tweet about low life expectancy in Scotland.

[Cuddlydragon]

She's a hired gun, I get that she's paid to be provocative but tweeting about a low life expectancy in Scotland in derogatory terms yesterday of all days is a comment too far. There's a twitter storm about her comments and a petition asking tv channels to not use her services again. I hope they take notice.

I utterly despise every public utterance Katie Hopkins has ever made, but I haven't seen whatever she said on twitter.

Surely she can't have been referring to the crash of the helicopter on the Clutha Arms? She's still an adult human being.

Moreover, a celebrity. They're normally clambering over themselves to publicly express sympathy.

The Big Jessie - I don't think she referred to the accident directly...people are more at the fact her comments were made the day after. She's a thoughtless cunt. (And I hate that bloody word, think it's the first time I've ever used it on here).

She has apologised but not for the comment, just for the timing.

she's being very successful at being controversial. that's how she makes her money.

EmmaBemma really hope not. people killed for free speech. I don't agree with a single thing she says but she has a perfect right to say anything within the law.

With respect to everyone, I think that as someone who works in the media, who would have known about the Clutha, as it was international news, even if she didn't do it to be deliberately spiteful, she should have asked herself whether this was an appropriate time for such a tweet.

So she hates Scotland. She's made that clear. No bother, Scotland hates her right back. I hate Strictly Come Dancing. If there had been a terrible accident in which people involved in that show were killed or hurt, I wouldn't be tweeting 'Strictly is a pile of shit, they're all idiots' right after the fact.

She doesn't enter my mind when I think about the pros and cons of Scottish independence, because the massive majority of English people do not think like her, or publicly talk about Scots in the way she does.

I wouldn't want to make my money by trying to goad people into smacking me in the mush, tbh.

I'm still not 100% convinced that she is a real person (a but like Dame Edna Everidge, Mr Tumble, Alf Garnet or Barney the Dinosaur).

I do wish she 'd just shut up and maybe try to break America with that Piers Organ chap.

Yeah, she's a bit like a humourless Alan Partridge, nicename. With not dissimilar dress sense.

Freespeech gets undervalued by KH, we lose sight of its place in our world as a fundamental right when we say we would do whatever it took to allow fungus like KH the right to pollute the air with her activity. It is not thought, it is Media Activity, hand grenades tipped into the world at large to create as much ill feeling as possible.
I strongly agree with ignoring the stupid fuck because the outrage she creates is benefiting someone somewhere otherwise her arse shaped mouth wouldn't make it above the water line of a the mens jacks in Piccadilly. It suits those who's job it is to keep cunts like Boza JOhnson and KH swilling round the air waves because if we were all to collectively banish them from our minds.....think of what might appear once the smoke has dissipated.
I am paranoid, aren't I?

I am paranoid, aren't I?

It doesn't make you wrong

Thanks Sashh. I am rapidly arriving at a conclusion that the world at large is being kept from rational self generated thought and decisions. People like Katie Hopkins Sharon Osbourne and some others are deliberately given air time so we don't notice the real stuff we are letting slip away. So whilst everyone is up in arms about this twat...the NHS is being dismantled and our life and the facts that matter to it disappear and we don't notice

I feel so disgusted when I have read anything about her opinions.

One day her head might fall off into the gutter and she'll roll in after it. Disgusting woman. Pity her children.

www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/remove-katie-hopkins-from-all-programmes-and-interviews

This is going to sound like a back to front argument, but I have wondered if actually Hatie Hopkins has been in some ways a good thing. Hear me out.......
She gets into arguments about things like childcare, time off or working rights for mothers, basically things that TV bods don't always talk about or give much air time too. She then says ridiculous and insulting things that makes anyone who is pitted against her look like the most reasonable, rational and intelligent person. Even if people secretly wanted to agree with her (which is odd) they would be discouraged by the negative attention.

Therefore, some issues that are important but don't get talked about enough, become hot topics. Hatie takes the flack and the sensible argument becomes the more mainstream/conventional point of view.

That said, she's still at twonk which I could do without

It has nothing to do with free speech. No one is trying to stop her from saying any of these things. Most particularly the government isn't trying to stop her saying any of these things (which is where free speech comes into it).

What people are trying to do is stop her from getting paid by our license and advertising dollars to say these things. That's entirely different from free speech.

In addition to not giving her the oxygen of publicity, I think history has shown that rather than a petition asking her to be taken off, a mass campaign to write to the companies that advertise and say "I'm boycotting as long as you advertise on shows that feature her" can produce really quick results.

I agree it's not about free speech, that's why I didn't argue that it was. Katie has free speech as an automatic right and if we take that away and then we are all doomed.

My argument was that she gives air time to topics that tv big wigs don't usually give a great deal of air time to. She says offensive things and is almost the pantomime villain, allowing anyone who argues with her to look automatically better in comparison.

In some ways, if we remove her oxygen of publicity, then we remove some of the topics we could all talk about. Her timing on this Scottish tweet was offensive and spiteful, but without the helicopter crash, maybe it could have led to a discussion on health, inequality and life expectancy, something we could all do with talking about more.

Her tweets about Scotland have been awful. Angry jocks, insignificant, thistles up bums... what other nation could she be so derogatory towards unchecked?

The life expectancy jibe was disgraceful without the added element of timing. She can't even differentiate between actual life expectancy and healthy life expectancy which is what the figure she quoted reffered to.

Her tweets about everything are awful. The only discussion she promotes is about how awful she is. The positions she takes are worded in every possible offensive way, so there's no discussion to be had. Because there are no facts there.

I've seen her in Exeter as well. It's not a huge town. Her kids are getting absolutely ostracized, not because they're bad kids (no one seems to know if they are or they aren't) but because a) she is well remembered from her thankfully short stint at the Met Office and b) no one wants to deal with her hateful views and personality. She has made their lives hell, and that's going to stick long after she's off the airwaves. Poor kids.

That's so sad Revenge, who would be so mean that they would take it out on her kids?

I would guess that no one is actually being nasty to her kids but would you want them round for dinner knowing you will probably end up being the topic of her next column.

That is probably it. There was a chorus of MNers saying they wouldn't have her kids round, after KH wrote a nasty article about other people's children.

Not to mention, KH quotes her children as saying nasty things about other children at their school. Either they don't say the strangely adult-sounding crap at all, or they're just saying what dear old mumsie wants to hear, but she's doing their social life no favours, although the DM's fees may pay the nanny's salary for a week.

That's exactly it. No one is being mean to the kids that I'm aware of, but would you really want to try to make plans with this woman who you know has already judged your kids:
Based on name
Based on what their parents do
Who has big form for sleeping with married men
And is a professional a awful person as a career?

Plus the kids, I gather, get avoided by the other kids as everyone knows (since mummy announced it over and over again) that they're not allowed to play with lots of kids based on name and income alone. That's gone down even less well with the kids than it has with the parents.

I really do feel sorry for the kids. I really do. I'd be tempted to invite them over if my daughter was their age, but deal with that woman to do it? Heaven help us.

I don't think anyone should worry for her safety but her. No one is making her be vile.

I don't like KH. I think she is the pantomime baddie, brought in to wind people up and get people talking. And to be fair it works, look what we are doing!

I don't like the way she pull goonish faces when other people are putting their opinion forward. It makes her look daft. She contradicts herself all the time and doesn't actually make much sense.

Re the 'joke' to be fair I believe it was said before the crash and she was referring to stats that had come out about Scottish life expectancy and health. (Them lot will do anything to get out of work) If nearly anyone else would have said it probably be seen as banter. However on this occasion it was KH that said it so everyone is going to be up in arms and it was unfortunate timing.

I still don't like her though!