Tory councillor arrested for tweet demanding writer be "stoned to death"

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

link www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-11736154

what a total twat.

more from the Guardian here.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is Muslim and regards the comment as racially motivated, as well as scary. And sexually motivated, in the sense that he wouldn't have said the same thing to a man, because it's always Muslim women who we hear about being stoned to death.

""Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really," he tweeted from his iPhone.

Alibhai-Brown said she regarded his comments as incitement to murder.

The journalist, who writes columns for the Evening Standard and the Independent, told the Guardian: "It's really upsetting. My teenage daughter is really upset too. It's really scared us.

"You just don't do this. I have a lot of threats on my life. It's incitement. I'm going to the police ? I want them to know that a law's been broken.""

Leaving aside the extreme nastiness of the tweet, doesn't it amaze you every time that politicians can't predict the consequences of their actions, when it's so completely obvious to mere mortals?

He is just a moron. When I heard the story on the news I asusmed he was muslim (which would be more sinister). This guy needs to understand what he is actually saying. He probably thought that he was being really funny.

Yes I'm SO glad he's been arrested.

It would be such a funny joke wouldn't it? Were it not for the fact that Muslim women being stoned to death is a real thing in the world.

Look at him. It's hardly a surprise.

But he probably did intend humour. And he's a Tory. Fick. Nuff said.

Yeah he probably did. Don't care really. Still a massive twatola.

I CBA with making anti-Tory comments on here any more, but Hully I Know

it never ceases to amaze me how idiotic some people can be and how they never seem to consider what they're posting online is actually the same as saying it in a public address.

I suspect that he actually meant it as a joke - I can imagine many a stand-up commedian coming out with the same kind of thing tbh (although that doesn't make it ok obviously).

The man is a moron - quite clearly and should be held to account by the party.

But tbh I think that regarding the comments as incitement to murder is also a bit ott.

I don't think that he in all honesty was hoping someone would respond by going and murdering her, wannaBe. But I do think that he picked this out as something to say to her that was

a) intimidating
b) specially aimed at her due to her gender and religion

I googled him and found the middle part of this blog post (skip down to the the screenshots from twitter) where he is mocking the author for bemoaning lack of diversity in the govt.

Just looked up what he was arrested under and it was this:

127 Improper use of public electronic communications network

1)A person is guilty of an offence if he?

(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.

Which sounds about right to me.

Amazes me he thinks calling it a 'glib comment' is a defence rather than an aggravating factor.

People probably do say this sort of thing sotto voce to friends. Still unpleasant, but that's just venting.

However, saying it publicly, in circumstances where it is highly likely to be picked up, discussed, brought to her attention, snowball generally, is intimidating and nasty.

In fact the more i think of it, the worse it is. He obviously knows that people get stoned to death under Sharia law, especially women who are buried up to their necks and then killed for crimes like adultery, being raped, etc. He is making a joke about that?

And he is saying he wants the barbaric punishment inflicted on women under Sharia law to be inflicted on a writer - who just so happens to be a Muslim woman - for disagreeing with him.

Unbelievable.

After what happened to the guy who made the joke about the airport, you'd think this councillor would have had more sense. What a moron.

He's obviously not someone who thinks through the consequences of his actions. Not someone we need in public office!

This dickhead is a barrister. He knows the power of words and the law that protects people from harm and the fear of harm.

His Chambers should be

His chambers should be

Wow. What a loser. But maybe it's useful to have a demonstration that this kind of thing isn't just obnoxious, it's an actual crime, and he's been arrested for it. Let's hope they, uh, deal with him severely.

he's been suspended I think.

wannabe, Yasmin Alibhai Brown isn't being OTT. She would be, if she didn't regularly receive death threats. She is one of the most well known muslim women in this country and the reason she is well known, is because she proffers opinions. This makes her a really big target to masses of people who just hate her for what she is and what she does - mad muslim fundamentalists who don't think she should be writing or visible at all, others who accuse her of "washing the community's dirty linen in public", BNP supporters who hate the fact that an intelligent muslim woman has such a high profile and progressive ideas - she has loads of people who are only too willing to threaten her on a regular basis.

Given that context, it really isn't OTT of her to react to this the way she has. My first thought when I heard it was oh, it's obviously just a silly throwaway comment, but that's me speaking from a privileged position of someone who isn't living with regular death threats. In the context of the threats YAB lives with, I can really see why she's so livid about this.

Yes it's significant that he didn't suggest bumping her off mafioso style, or taking her out with an ouzi - he chose a specific method of killing someone, associated with muslims and more particularly muslim women.

Gobsmackingly unintelligent. It's amazing how many men get their jobs because of the positive discrimination system we have in place at the moment. There's no way a woman as thick as this would have been selected as a candidate.

He's ugly as well

Just saying