Twitter

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

The moronic inferno, pt. 1,478

Is it the stupidity of Americans, or the stupidity of people who use social networking sites, that is responsible for the following letter, sent shortly after the Boston bombers had been identified? ‘As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation. As the President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman noted in his message to President Obama, the Czech Republic is an

Friday

Rod Liddle

Tweeting can seriously damage your health

Members of the World’s Most Rational and Peaceable Religion © have been going berserk in the lovely Bangladeshi town of Cox’s Bazar. Some bloke put a photo of a burned Koran on his Facebook page and the Muslims have been rioting, taking out their infantile fury on the minority Buddhist population. Setting them on fire and stuff. Usually Buddhists don’t need any help setting themselves on fire, but that’s another story. As social networking sites establish themselves in third world countries full of furious mentals, this sort of thing is going to happen more and more often, isn’t it? The end of the world will come not with a bang

Monday

Rod Liddle

It’s still you, Professor Beard

It’s time to panic. I read at the weekend that sophisticated hackers have burrowed their way into no less than 250,000 Twitter accounts. What shall we do? Henceforth, when we read that Stephen Fry has just eaten a sandwich, we cannot be absolutely certain that it is the real Stephen Fry who has eaten the sandwich or a shadowy interloper masquerading as Stephen Fry. Or Joey Barton, when he tells us that he wants to stamp on someone’s throat – well, it might not be Joey at all. Fascinating and incisive Tweets about matters of the day from non-celebrities – Camron u r a f****** joke lol #shinyfacedrichboy – will

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Suing Twitter for Libel is a Mug’s Game – Spectator Blogs

Rod Liddle asks a question of the kind one frequently sees raised by media types: [W]hy is [Lord McAlpine] not suing Twitter itself? It is not Philip Schofield who the peer is suing, but ITV. Surely, likewise, Twitter needs to take some responsibility for its output? If, unlike broadcasters, it has no legal responsibility for what is put out through its witless conduit, then surely there is less of a responsibility on the people who use it, too? On the face of it this seems a reasonable question. But it doesn’t take long to appreciate that it really isn’t and that, though doubtless well-intentioned, it doesn’t make a heap of

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why isn’t Lord McAlpine suing Twitter?

I understand entirely why Lord McAlpine would wish to sue individuals such as George Monbiot for having wrongly tweeted, or re-tweeted, his name in regard to allegations of child sex abuse. Life is too short and we need to find pleasure where we can, and the whole country has indeed enjoyed watching the Moonbat squirm. But why is he not suing Twitter itself? It is not Philip Schofield who the peer is suing, but ITV. Surely, likewise, Twitter needs to take some responsibility for its output? If, unlike broadcasters, it has no legal responsibility for what is put out through its witless conduit, then surely there is less of a

Sunday

Camilla Swift

What kind of regime imprisons people for what they tweet? Oh, hang on…

The King of Bahrain certainly doesn’t seem to like it up him. In this week’s Spectator, Kirsty Walker said her last complaint – before quitting journalism — was from the King objecting to her being rude about his regime. A Bahraini man has just been sentenced to six months in jail for ‘defaming’ the king on Twitter. Three similar Twitter users are up on similar charges next week. David Cameron should be making clear how appalled he is at this repression – except he is not in a very good position to comment. After last year’s riots, police threatened to arrest users for inciting the looters. It seemed daft: would you really arrest people for writing

Tuesday

Steerpike

Giles Coren’s Twitter Eulogy

The saying goes that the only silver lining at the end of a political career is the chance to read your own obituary without actually dying. For Giles Coren, the speculation that he had ‘quit Twitter’ was the twenty first century equivalent. It was not all good news though. After a characteristically bad tempered exchange with a rival critic, Coren’s account promptly disappeared for twenty-four hours. The obvious speculation that he had stormed off in one of his signature rages quickly brewed. His last words seemed to be: ‘F**k off Marina. It’s hurtful and bitchy and pompous. When I want career advice from you I’ll f**king ask for it.’ Not bad

Monday

Rod Liddle

The media need to stop deeming everything a hate crime

There was a news report on BBC South East last week expressing outrage that two people had not been arrested and charged for posting allegedly ‘homophobic’ comments on Twitter about the gay fans of the football club Brighton and Hove Albion. The reporter was incensed that charges had not been brought and the miscreants duly banged up. She harangued some poor copper who patiently explained that, under the circumstances, there might have been better ways of dealing with this incident than referral to the courts. I ought to point out that the miscreants were aged 15 and 16 years old; the police simply had a word with the parents. But

Sunday

Paul Ormerod

Who will rule the 21st century?

This is a nice big question to ponder on the holiday beach or in the rented villa. A vast amount has already been written on the rise of China and whether the US will be replaced as the global superpower. And where exactly does Europe fit into all this? It is easy to make a case for American weakness. The twin deficits of the balance of payments and the massive public sector gap between expenditure and income, the increasingly divided and embittered nature of policy discourse in the country, growing cultural fragmentation. The image of a divided nation appears to be supported by what has happened to the choice of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Twitter had the riot covered

The revolution may not be televised, but the riot was tweeted pretty well last night. I was up at 3am (don’t ask), and BBC News hadn’t even interrupted their normal programming. But turning to Twitter, it was all there. Specifically, via two reporters: Paul Lewis from the Guardian and Ravi Somaiya from the New York Times. They behaved like instinctive reporters: picked up (on the news or, more likely, on Twitter) that a riot was underway, then went out and reported it. And they did so with pictures and observations that were well-judged and informative, never hysterical or futile. The presence of a TV camera, with the bright lights, have

Peter Hoskin

Tottenham smoulders

London has become used to protest recently, but there was still something terrible and unexpected in the images emerging from Tottenham last night. Here we had firebombs, missiles, riot police, burning vehicles, smashed-in shops, looting and other criminality — and it has left eight policemen injured, as well as others in hospital. The cause of the rioting was, apparently, the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by police on Thursday. The effect was scenes reminiscent of Brixton or Broadwater Farm in the 1980s. There will be fresh attention paid to Tottenham — one of the poorest areas of one of London’s poorest boroughs — by politicians now, and rightly so. But

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

The court of Twitter

It is wrong to insult an Olympian who has just missed out on a medal, and worse to bring his dead father into it. But, as Melanie Philips and others have pointed out in this morning’s papers, it is hardly criminal. Yesterday, Dorset police arrested a teenager after he sent a nasty message to Tom Daley, the Englishman who finished fourth in the synchronised diving on Monday. ‘You let your dad down and I hope you know that,’ said @Rileyy_69, on Twitter. Tom Daley’s father died last year of a brain tumour, so he, his friends and his supporters were understandably angry. Even @Rileyy_69 saw that he had crossed a

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Will tweets soon paralyse the nation?

It is becoming increasingly clear that Twitter might be the greatest threat to civilised life in Britain. Take just 24 hours of news: A 17 year-old has been arrested (and is currently being detained) in Weymouth for sending unpleasant tweets to the nation’s Olympic hero Tom Daley. Rio Ferdinand has been charged by the FA with retweeting a comment which referred to another footballer as a ‘choc-ice’. The Mail reports: ‘The initial ‘choc ice’ remark about Ashley Cole came two days after the Chelsea defender gave evidence on behalf of team-mate John Terry in his race trial concerning Ferdinand’s brother Anton.’ The Prime Minister felt moved to respond to two

Sunday

Steerpike

Penny’s non-violent clash with Starkey

The self-styled enfant terrible of the new radical left, Ms Laurie Penny, has taken her one-woman revolution to the heart of the establishment. Yesterday, she caused quite the ruckus at the Sunday Times Education Festival, hosted at Wellington College on a panel with David Starkey. As well as being banned from the speakers dinner at the behest of the Sunday Times, Penny later alerted her Twitter followers to the fact that ‘violent old thug‘ David Starkey had ‘attacked‘ her ‘on stage’. ‘That’s what racists do when you call them out on their bigotry’ she Tweeted. ‘Bit shaken but I’ll be ok.’  Penny’s version of events was soon questioned, not least

Saturday

Andrew Roberts

#JustStopIt

‘You know, if becoming an MP has taught me one thing it’s respect, admiration for political opponents,’ tweeted Louise Mensch, the Tory MP for Corby, last week. ‘My Labour colleagues best people ever.’ It’s ironic that she should have vouchsafed these thoughts in a tweet, because it is Twitter that is fast destroying whatever respect or admiration one might once have felt for politicians, by revealing the sheer bathos of so many of their lives. There is a place for tweeting in politics, to make short, rapid-response — albeit usually populist — points; William Hague tweeted with some effect during the Libyan crisis, for example. Were he alive today, Winston

Friday

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Abbott’s Twitter troubles

That Diane Abbott tweet that Pete mentioned earlier (‘White people love playing divide and rule’) has made her the centre of attention this morning. She may have deleted it, and claimed that it has been ‘taken out of context’, but still the Labour Party has deemed it necessary to give her a public telling off for it. A spokesman said: ‘We disagree with Diane’s tweet. It is wrong to make sweeping generalisations about any race, creed, or culture. The Labour Party has always campaigned against such behaviour – and so has Diane Abbott.’ And Abbott herself has now apologised, although not exactly wholeheartedly: ‘I understand people have interpreted my comments

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Chris Huhne: an apology

I have apology to make. I wrote on Friday that I suspected Chris Huhne’s mistweet “fine, but I don’t want my fingerprints on the story” was the Climate Change Secretary briefing against a Cabinet colleague to a Sunday newspaper. This was a horrid allegation to make, suggesting that a member of Her Majesty’s Government would spend his time and energy trying to ridicule a colleague for the benefit of a Sunday newspaper. I now accept that he was not. It was for the Saturday edition of The Guardian. Huhne has just fessed up to Jon Sopel the Politics Show on BBC One: “In the Eastleigh News website is a recording

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Tweet of the Day

Courtesy of an Anglo-Italian historian in lovely New Hampshire. She tweets here and blogs about New England history here: [Via Oliver Burkeman]

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Facebook diplomacy

William Hague is an unlikely sort of technophile. Truth be told, for all his strengths he simply does not look like a signed-up member of the Twitterati. His history-dripping, gold-covered office in King Charles Street is about as far away from the internet-enabled Google office as you can get. But the Foreign Secretary has just opened a Facebook profile – and garnered a thousand friends or so in a few days. Ironically, none of his staff can see his family snapshots, his “likes” or who he chooses to poke – as access to Facebook is limited on the Foreign Office IT network. How this foray onto Facebook will end up