Businessman arrested over ‘anti-gypsy’ email he did not even write
The 45-year-old IT company manager, who does not want to be named, was arrested in front of his wife and young son, was fingerprinted and had his DNA taken.
It came after staff at Rother District Council in East Sussex declared the phrase “It’s the “do as you likey” attitude that I am against” – sent in an email to their planning department – was potentially racist because “likey” rhymes with the derogatory word “pikey”. The businessman was held in a cell for four hours until officers established he had nothing to do with the email, which had been sent by one of his then workers, Paul Osmond, from a company computer….
Sussex Police said they had arrested the businessman over “suspicion of committing a racial or religious-aggravated offence”…..
A council spokesman said: “As far as we were concerned it was an offensive comment, so we got in touch with the police.”
Why do we bother? How do we manage to have obviously not very bright people working in public services? Don’t Sussex Police have better things to do than arrest people for this sort of nonsense? £12000, the investigation cost, according to the report. Madness.
Seems a lot of fuss for what could have been a typo.
But I found evidence of common sense this morning (in the Court of Appeal no less)
See the recent case of Parker v TUI (woman told by tour company not to proceed beyond red light on toboggan run but did so and sued for her consequent injury) in which Longmore LJ said this:
I cannot bring myself to hold that it is the duty of a tour operator dealing with rational adults on a winter holiday to repeat simple warnings already given with clarity or to point out obvious dangers of ice on the road and the relative safety of snow at its side. So to hold would only encourage potential claimants to believe that whenever an injury occurs someone must be to blame. That is not what the law of negligence is about.
See more on:
http://ofinteresttosomelawyers.blogspot.com
it’s only prudent to beware of using words that sound like other words lest somebody who may not even be reading should be offended. use of the words bigger, hunt and wanker (rhymes with banker – nasty!) will be imprisonable and the otherwise innocent phrase ‘how fucking stupid are these useless wastards’ is not at all recommended.