Zack Polanski and the guillotine

[Everanewbie]

AIBU to be sceptical that much will be done about Zack Polanski's tweet of an image of man wearing a t-shirt depicting a guillotine and the words "making plans for Nigel"?

Now I am not in favour of prosecuting people for words, and I don't want ZP sent to prison. But I would like to see this level of hate stop.

And I am finding the left to be extremely hypocritical with the violent rhetoric while simultaneously celebrating the arrest of Lucy Connelly and Graham Linehan?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwylrnxxl77o

Does anyone remember when Graham Linehan was arrested on arrival at Heathrow for on line tweets regarding Transwomen, Polanski was the only prominent politician that demanded his prosecution.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1F8pnhaXZb/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Although I've found this interview with the Director of Public Prosecutions (August 2024) towards the end of the Southport riots;

‘Repost hateful messages about disorder online and you could end up in court’

Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson urged people to think before reposting or sharing messages online about the disorder.

“I think people need to be really aware that if they retweet or share those communications, they are potentially committing criminal offences themselves, the offences are around publication of material.

“If you retweet something, you are republishing it. We have dedicated police officers whose sole task is to scour the internet, scour social media. This is what they’re focusing on.

“So, if you retweet or you reshare those communications, you will be picked up and you may expect a visit from the police, so please don’t do it.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/director-of-public-prosecutions-police-facebook-tiktok-b2592830.html

Nice find 👍

I think the ultimate hypocrisy is British politicians supporting Israel as it is committing genocide (according to the UN, MSF, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Baroness Helena Kennedy, etc etc etc).

David Cameron as Foreign sec directly threatened to defund the ICC if they issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders due to their war crimes.

Farage has reportedly made massively anti-Semitic comments/ actions in the past and is now acting very oddly about his financing.
Boris lied to us about Brexit bringing money into the NHS and called Muslim women "letterboxes".

A leading Tory donor said Diane Abbott MP made him "want to shoot all Black women" - zero investigation, zero consequences.

So no, Polanski accidentally reposting a guillotine pic does not rank in even the top 15 of unacceptable British politician actions. And you being so bothered by it suggests either you've been deeply misinformed or your moral compass is way off base.
Refresher: deliberately killing babies and children (as there is plenty evidence of Israeli soldiers doing) or supporting those who commit such war crimes (as Farage does) is much, much worse than some sarky internet meme.

Thanks.

Funnily enough I was just thinking about the tweet by Sally Bercow re: Lord McAlpine a few years back. He threatened to sue the retweeters as well as Bercow. I think in the end he accepted modest payments to charity instead for accounts with a small number of followers.

Bless, we've now got the anti-semitism come out the woodwork.

This a million times!

My kids were/are Green supporters...but I can't relate the party they youthfully and idealistically supported a decade ago to the show ZP is running. It's meant to be about the environment, isn't it, and policies relating to that???

What has the Israel/Gaza situation got to do with it? What have trans women got to do with it?

He should stop claiming to be a Green and come clean about what his party is actually about. He's such a divisive, controversy-seeking, extreme and unpleasant man. Me and my allotment-tending, veggie, cycling and non-flying friends have been totally alienated by him.

@ThisNattyTurtle Do you need a reminder of what Diane Abbott said about Jews?

Give over, by the same token a guillotine is a fairly routine French colloquialism and Making Plans for Nigel a classic British song.

Everyone in politics should be lowering the temperature - left right and centre.

None of this will improve if everyone throws stones while ignoring their own glass houses.

He refuses to apologise.

He's an idiot who is killing off the Green party. What does any of this have to do with the environment?

Yes, and Bercow herself thought she was being very clever in her plausible deniability. It didn’t work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAlpine_v_Bercow

Like I said, they are both as bad as each other.

The thread is littered with examples of what both have done/ supported/ endorsed which is equally abhorrent so I won’t repeat examples and get dragged into your whataboutery.

Both extremes are the same. Both are vicious, threatening, aggressive, violent and dehumanising to anybody who doesn’t agree with them, as extremists always are.

Both sets of their supporters are so deluded that they can’t seem to see the obvious fact that to everyone else they are indistinguishable: unpleasant, irrational people looking for scapegoats rather than solutions and ranting their hatred constantly, outraged at the actions of the other and apparently oblivious to the hypocrisy of it given they behave in exactly the same manner.

Of course you don’t.

It is disgusting that both Reform and the Greens and their various affiliates do this.

That’s my point.

Had a Reform or Tory politician done what Polanski had, the left would be absolutely foaming at the mouth now, threatening all sorts.

The hypocrisy is breath-taking.

I agree with both as bad as each other

those listing what other fMP’s have done fair enough but these two men are leaders of political parties we should have higher expectations not for them to follow in Trumps footsteps in how to do politics

i sincerely hope the sensible true Green Party members start to push back on the idiots that have recently infiltrated their party

You really don't want to know what he's all about. Your party has been infiltrated with a political plan, that doesn't accord with western politics.

I voted Green in the past, but they are no longer about green politics or environmental issues and haven't been for a long time. They have been completely parasitised, probably beyond rescue. The only hope is to start a new Green Mark II party to carry an actual Green agenda, and guard it this time.

Polanski would join the Binface party and dance on Nelson's Column wearing a gingham nightdress if he thought it would give him a sniff of power. He's absolutely nothing.

In happier news.

Allison Pearson, the Telegraph journalist, has received an apology and five-figure payout from Essex’s police and crime commissioner (PCC), after suing him for defamation.

Roger Hirst, the elected official who oversees policing in Essex, has issued a public apology for comments he made after police officers visited Pearson over a post on X that the police alleged incited racial hatred.

The investigation was subsequently dropped, with no further action taken by the force.

Mr Hirst said he was “very sorry” for the “damage and hurt” he had caused and agreed to pay her “substantial” damages, understood to be a five-figure sum.

His apology comes after Mr Justice Chamberlain, a High Court judge, found that Mr Hirst’s comments were capable of being seen as defamatory.

ThisNattyTurtle
A leading Tory donor said Diane Abbott MP made him "want to shoot all Black women" - zero investigation

There was a police investigation into Frank Hester's remarks, even though the remarks were 4/5 years old at the time. 'Operation Brassminster'- I don't know the outcome though;

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24380652.enquiries-ongoing-frank-hesters-alleged-racist-remarks/

Exactly. There’s definitely a gap for a sensible environmental party, for people who care about the environment but aren’t extremists.

There is ... the old Green party did well to bring environmental issues into the mainstream, though they were never really electable as a main political party.

The new Green party ... is a misnomer. It's an inaccurate name for what they care about these days and it would be more honest if they changed their name to the Gaza party.