{"id":11677,"date":"2011-10-19T08:54:17","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T12:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11677"},"modified":"2011-10-19T08:54:17","modified_gmt":"2011-10-19T12:54:17","slug":"four-year-sentence-for-posting-an-idiotic-suggestion-to-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/19\/four-year-sentence-for-posting-an-idiotic-suggestion-to-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Four year sentence for . . . posting an idiotic suggestion to Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Hayes<\/a> attempts to point out that the sentence imposed on Facebook idiot Jordan Blackshaw is both disproportional and a clear and present danger to free speech rights in Britain:<\/p>\n

\n

Did you know that all it took for people to trash their own neighbourhoods this summer, such was the \u2018collective insanity\u2019 then gripping the UK, was for someone to suggest they do so on Facebook? A few words saying something like \u2018let\u2019s have a riot\u2019 and, hey presto, off people went to have a riot.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t happen, of course. But it is a view of last August\u2019s riots that seems to provide the rationale behind the sentencing of 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw. This was the man, lest we forget, who on 9 August set up a Facebook \u2018event\u2019 entitled \u2018Smash Down in Northwich town\u2019. This hardly inspiring suggestion involved would-be rioters meeting up for said \u2018smash down\u2019 outside a local McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In explaining why Blackshaw was to receive a four-year jail sentence for doing nothing more than publishing words online, the judge claimed that \u2018this happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation\u2019. Blackshaw\u2019s conduct, he continued, \u2018was quite disgraceful and the title of the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood\u2019. Yesterday, Blackshaw\u2019s appeal against the harsh sentencing, alongside that of another \u2018Facebook rioter\u2019, was rejected by the Crown Court.<\/p>\n

So, how many people responded to Blackshaw\u2019s online suggestion during this period of \u2018collective insanity\u2019? The answer is one: Blackshaw himself. (He was immediately arrested). In fact, only nine of his 147 Facebook friends even responded online. Yet the reason for this collective no-show, at least as far as the judge was concerned, was \u2018the prompt and efficient actions of police\u2019 who eventually took Blackshaw\u2019s Facebook page offline.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick Hayes attempts to point out that the sentence imposed on Facebook idiot Jordan Blackshaw is both disproportional and a clear and present danger to free speech rights in Britain: Did you know that all it took for people to trash their own neighbourhoods this summer, such was the \u2018collective insanity\u2019 then gripping the UK, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,10],"tags":[52,343,391,186,98,742],"class_list":["post-11677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-liberty","tag-absurd","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-facebook","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-police","tag-rioting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-32l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11678,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11677\/revisions\/11678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}