Twitter mob turns on a real idol

ANOTHER of my feminist idols — Rosa Monckton — has found herself at the mercy of the Twitter mob. Monckton, who runs Team Domenica, a charity for young people with learning disabilities, tried to explain the disadvantages of the minimum wage for people like her own daughter, who has Down’s syndrome.

She said it stops the disabled from getting work and wants an exemption for them. Inevitably, she found herself in the internet stocks. There are plenty of people, famous or otherwise, on Twitter who actively seek out controversy to big themselves up on social media.

But Monckton doesn’t belong to that self-serving tribe. She is an inspirational, accomplished woman who deserves our respect.

But Twitter — and the internet in general — doesn’t work that way. In cyberspace all that matters is who can shout the loudest and foulest. It favours the mean and the mediocre at the expense of the kind and the considered.

It is paralysing our national debate, debasing our politics and encouraging amoral behaviour — pornography, violence, child abuse — that should find no outlet in a civilised society.

Increasingly, it seems too high a price to pay for watching a few cat videos and doing the online grocery shop.