Southport, riots and classism on MN - middle class woman started the rumours

[twodowntwotogo]

One aspect of MN that I find tiresome and upsetting is the classism, for example describing someone's taste as 'chavvy', and then the multiple posts characterising the riots as not happening in 'nice' places, and the rioters as uneducated, oiks, etc.

Today the Times is carrying an article about the instigator of the unrest:
'The woman accused of being first to post a false Muslim name for the suspect is the managing director of a clothing company. The mother of three in her mid-fifties enjoys walking, is married to an artist and counts an actor among her children. The family live in a £1.5 million farmhouse in the rural north.'

Non-paywall version here: <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2024.08.07-184043/www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/mother-of-three-sparked-havoc-with-false-claim-about-southport-suspect-bd6kkzgpn#selection-2207.0-2207.307" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2024.08.07-184043/www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/mother-of-three-sparked-havoc-with-false-claim-about-southport-suspect-bd6kkzgpn#selection-2207.0-2207.307

So AIBU to want MN posters to dial down the classism and stop jumping to conclusions and understand that Farage and BoJo and countless other middle/upper class people may not be out on the streets setting bins on fire, but often provide the spark through inflammatory speech?

Agreed. The Mitfords and many of the Royals are/were astonishingly racist.

Yes indeed, Jessica Mitford used the N word in one of her letters.
However, there are plenty of other upper class people apart from the Mitfords (was the Duchess of Devonshire racist? Not sure) and the Royal family. Can you name some more?

I stand by the opinion that ‘protestors’ who throw bricks at police and loot shoe zone are uneducated oiks, even if there are middle class racists who post shit on the internet. I don’t think anyone’s ever claimed that racism doesn’t affect people who earn a decent wage.

It was the other way round. She saw it on channel 3, put it out there without checking. Channel 3 aren't saying where they've got it but I think they've all taken it down now. They seem to have a bunch of "reporters" all over the world supplying them with stories.

Everyone already understands that, surely?

Still doesn't change the fact that it is the working classes who are Farage's far-right puppets smashing up Gregg's and libraries, and they're not doing it in market towns, for the most part!

What posseses people to just lie, lie lie, in order to enforce their own twisted beliefs.
That woman claims someone from Southport told her the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker. Such a person doesn't seem to exist.

It’s interesting that she hadn’t been publicly named but the other guy in the article and others have. Expensive lawyers keeping her name out the papers for now I guess.

Making it up puts her into a whole different league of criminal law. Reckon it will take a while before we know what happens to her; but I think it won’t be quick.

The Mail have named her as Bernadette Spofforth and have her photo in this article.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13719449/british-businesswoman-accused-false-information-southport-stabbing-suspect-mortified.html

The great thing about this is all the vile people who chat shit on the internet and think they’ve gotten away with it will be shitting bricks.

Apparently the women deleted her comments and info and used a pseudonym, but they still found her. It shows when they are minded to find you and have the resources they will do so. The internet never forgets regardless of what you delete. The security forces have the technology to find you.

Hope more internet warriors are tossing and turning in bed tonight.

They don't need to have the resources as other people can and will help out.

When you post crap online you don't know who is watching you.

Tbf the police gaslighted everyone by saying he was Welsh. There was a profile, possibly before her's that said his daughter was part of the dance class and it was an asylum seeker who carried out the attack. His profile checked out. In Southport, two daughters of the right age.
Are we now going to apply this level of responsibility towards every issue? If so FB needs to take a lot of the negative posts about Meghan and Harry's supposed behaviour down. Surely all journalists will be held to the same standards?

True. A couple of the rioters were arrested after people who knew them contacted the police. You never know who’s watching or secretly doesn’t like you.

I don’t think it’s just the middle classes stoking this. There are plenty of working class spreading all sorts of incorrect “information” about what immigrants get.🙄

Or, if you are rioting in your own area, who doesn't like you smashing your fence up to make kindling/looting their shop/smashing up your car/burning down the library they need as a foodbank.
But really, they should have figured it out!

Oooo dodgy. Shouldn’t you be taking your info to the police

I read it. She’s trying to play innocent ‘who little old me?, I didn’t know what I was doing’ Using words like ‘mortified’ to make her seem benign. Nobody will fall for it. she knew what she was doing. Rile up thickos to commit terror and chaos. She was the original source and deliberately deleted soon after to try and cover her tracks.

She’ll look good in a grey tracksuit in jail though to be fair.

I bet she was an MN member? Be interesting to see if any of the more ‘right wing’ posters have disappeared recently.

Nope. She posted it first.

Responding to the mass rioting that took place in response to the incorrect information spread on social media, Mrs Spofforth told MailOnline: 'I'm mortified that I'm being accused of this. I did not make it up. I first received this information from somebody in Southport.'

She added: 'My post had nothing to do with the violence we've seen across the country. But I acknowledge that it may have been the source for the information used by a Russian news website.'

If she made it up she is in huge trouble. Tell lies with the clear knowledge “all hell could break loose”? Good luck if “true”.

I was never one of these people. I'm of the opinion that the educated and intelligent MC should know better. I despise them, equally if not more so, than the shower who believe the half truths, disinformation and downright lies through their own ignorance and lack of ability to see further than the end of their noses.

They should be completely ashamed of themselves.

Wow, it's finally caught up with her. She was a very active 'libertarian' on Twitter during COVID with a massive online following. COVID-denier, anti-vax, anti-lockdown, yet also ran a business selling face masks. Mixed with a lot of WEF conspiracy theorists too.

The 'mortified' is an act.

I imagine her internet use will be most useful evidence

She hasn't been charged yet, that's why they are not naming her. Standard practice. It will be a much more difficult case to prove then some coked-up wally lobbing a brick at the old bill who was caught on video. I'm sure a charging decision will be along shortly, at which point she will be named.

The irony is that she is an immigrant herself: South African. Just like that other racebaiter, Musk...

She's not been arrested for posting false information, she was arrested because her posting false information had serious consequences. If she had three followers and no-one had re-posted her tweet then the police wouldn't care.

Posting made up crap about Meghan and Harry doesn't result in riots and civil disorder, so no-one cares.

Maybe it's changed in the last day or so but the first reports said she posted it first and then they picked it up. They could see from the time the various tweets were posted I believe

Tbf the police gaslighted everyone by saying he was Welsh

Eh? What else do you call British citizens born in Wales?