It appears that on a daily basis we are hearing about people being arrested for making a comment on a social media site such as twitter but has an offence really been committed?

The most recent cases involve Tom Daley in two separate incidents where he was sent “abusive” messages on Twitter after he failed to win a medal at the Olympics.

In one of the cases someone sent a homophobic message to the diver, while another said,

“You let your dad down i hope you know that.”

In reference to the fact Tom had said he wanted to win for his dad who had past away last year from brain cancer.

Now in both cases the messages were clearly stupid but does causing offence warrant an arrest or even an investigation?

What ever happened that the old saying we teach our kids “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” why do we not take our own advice.

Surly the right to cause offence goes hand in hand with the right to free speech or else what are we free to speak about… the weather?

Have we really become that sensitive to words that we must have people arrested for saying something stupid or insensitive?

Another example which has came up recently was a Facebook page about dead baby jokes which is causing so much offence people are campaigning to have it taken down.

As a father i find it disgusting that someone would find those kind of jokes funny however they cause no harm and are only available to like minded people (unless you go looking for it).

I have seen people getting angry and upset over a page with words on it which they are offended by when the same site has been found to host paedophile groups http://www.abc17news.com/news.php?id=6157.

Anyone could take offence to anything but why not allow people to live their lives and you live yours so long as they are not harming you.

I like to take the same approach as Stephen Fry when it comes to taking offence and i think it would serve many people well.

Craig

Scottish Libertarian Party Member