Think before you post a person’s pain
LAST week I wrote of the bullying incident at Millfield School where a parent, Mrs Charles, whose child was not involved but who recorded the proceedings, was frothing with fury because the police refused to intervene. At the time I criticised her merely for burdening the police but I then received a heartbreaking email from someone I shall call Mr X, whose son was one of the victims.
He and his wife were resolving the matter with the school quietly and appropriately when Mrs Charles, carried away on a tide of outrage and indignation, released the recording to a major national newspaper which in turn put it online. Unfortunately child X was easily identifiable by friends and family and is devastated that his pain and humiliation have been made public for all to witness. So to one trauma has been added, quite unnecessarily, another.
I have advised Mr X to complain to Ipso (the press regulator) and his MP, as no minor should ever be identified or readily identifiable without parental consent. Meanwhile there is a lesson for everyone in this day and age of the internet and social media: however strongly you feel, think before you post and ask yourself whom you may inadvertently hurt. ACCORDING to the latest daft research, this time from a Canadian university, we can’t help being lazy because we are programmed to be sedentary to conserve energy as it made our ancestors more efficient in searching for food: it took more energy to hunt a mammoth than it takes to buy a burger. Hmm. So now it’s our very genes which account for the obesity crisis? How convenient.
A real waste of police time…
THE police are so stretched that they cannot investigate burglary or shoplifting. They cannot patrol the streets. They cannot man stations or handle lost property.
Well, my sympathy runs out when Leicestershire police have both the time and the resources to run a course on acceptable banter. Officers need training apparently in how to banter without offending or upsetting anyone. Heaven spare us.
So while crime in the area has increased by 20 per cent Leicestershire Police are worried about mollycoddling snowflakes. For goodness’ sake, Chief Constable, tell the offence-takers to get a life and get back to protecting the public.