Two tier politics and the case of Lucy Connolly.

 

"Keyboard Warrior" - Julie Sweeney

I have no time for Sir Keir Starmer-oid but he had nothing to do with the case of Lucy Connolly. He has said that he supports the police and courts in the way they treated Connolly who was convicted for inciting racial hatred and jailed for 31 months after the Southport attack.

But why are people like Jeremy Clarkson, Conservative MPs and the Daily Torygraph, talking about the case of Lucy Connolly. There were other "keyboard warriors" who were jailed for online comments after the Southport attack but nobody has spoken up for them.

Julie Sweeney, a 53-year-old carer from Church Lawton, in Cheshire, was jailed for 15 months for inflammatory language. She called for Mosques to be firebombed on social media.The Tories haven't taken up her case because her husband isn't a Conservative councillor like the husband of Lucy Connolly. That sounds like being "two tier" to me. Both Connolly and Sweeney pleaded guilty to the charges made against them.

When Essex police visited the home of the Daily Torygraph columnist Allison Pearson, after a complaint of "inciting racial hatred" on social media and alleged racism had been made against her, both Pearson and the newspaper castigated the police and said the visit to her home had been an affront to free speech. They declared that the police should "police the streets not our tweets."

Boris Johnson, the former Conservative Prime Minister, has said that up to 10,000 people a year are being arrested by the police for comments they have made on social media, but neither the press or politicians are likely to take up their cases. Are their cases not an affront to free speech?