#jokesontrial
I did this speechy material on the steps of Sheffield Town Hall yesterday. Well, I read it, I didn’t quite have time to learn it as I’d only just written it. It was part of an #IAmSpartacus inspired gathering protesting the conviction and denied appeal of Paul Chambers. It was organised using Twitter by @Erica_Jane_MP and @thegreatgonzo and the speakers included themselves, the leader of the UK Pirate Party, @LozKaye and my fellow stand-up, @sarahprofit1. Erica asked me to publish my material so here it is. But first a picture of us. Please take note of the awesome little girl who was holding up a placard that said “I AM SPARTAKITTY!” which she was also calling out throughout the protest (photo by my personal photographer).
Say what you like about terrorists, but they don’t blow things up because of poor customer service. ‘Crap! My bus is late again! Where did I put the brochure for that Jihadi training camp?’ We might have some of the worst public transport in the developed world but the motivation to blow stuff up is a bit more complex than that. If it weren’t there’d be no buses left in Sheffield, although fares are so high you’d have no money left to make a bomb anyway. Semtex is almost as expensive as a TravelMaster.
The IRA never called in bomb threats a week in advance. ‘There’s going to be a bomb… next Saturday. Yeah, I’m going to plant it at about half twelve. I’ve tweeted a picture of me and the bomb and the bin I’m going to put it in. You know, so you recognise me when you see me. I’ve put it on twitpic and I’ve geo-tagged the location too. If you just follow terrortweeter, that’s me, all the information you need is on my blog. Okay, see you soon! Don’t forget the tasers!’
If Paul Chambers’ tweet was written by a real terrorist it would have said: ‘Phew! Robin Hood airport is closed! Looks like I won’t be blowing myself up on that plane after all! Take as long as you like to get your shit together!!’
If it’s illegal to say bombastic things you don’t really mean, when’s Nick Clegg going to get arrested for his entire election campaign? Never mind Robin Hood Airport, what happened to the Robin Hood Tax? But if this is really about putting jokes on trial, the least they could do is use Mock the Week as a test case.
Despite Judge Jacqueline Davies saying it was menacing in the present climate of terrorist threats, Paul Chambers wasn’t charged under terrorism legislation, he was charged under legislation intended to protect “female telephonists at the Post Office” in the 1930s. So he’s being treated like a potential terrorist under a law aimed at people who breathed heavily down the phone line and said things like: ‘I’d like to lick the back of your stamp’. Well we’ve got self-adhesive stamps now and that’s not the only technology’s that’s moved on a little bit.
Judge Jacquie, Britain’s less judicious answer to Judge Judy, said that any ordinary person would find Paul Chambers’ tweet menacing and be alarmed by it. But Twitter is a new technology for ordinary people to share their thoughts, and we all experience frustrations which we relieve by thinking hyperbolic, throw-away thoughts. Sometimes I think: ‘that bloody Nick Clegg, I could kill him!’ But I couldn’t kill him, obviously. He’s got too many bodyguards. I’m not a trained assassin. But if we all clubbed together and did some fundraising we could buy our own predator drone. I call dibs on the remote control.
We can blow up as many innocent people as we like but terrorists can rest assured we’ll never make prisoners of them because we’re too busy cuffing people for flippancy. He only wanted to see his girlfriend to be, whose twitter name is crazycolours, but it’s probably a good job Paul Chambers didn’t catch a flight that day. If they’d got him in foreign airspace the only crazy colours he’d be seeing would be from oxygen deprivation after being repeatedly water-boarded.
There’s no such thing as a tweet of mass destruction. Twitter has enough down-time as it is, it doesn’t need our help. Judge Jacquie called Paul Chambers an “unimpressive witness”, which shows how impressive her judging skills are, being as he was, in fact, the defendant. If Paul Chambers is the terrorist menace of Twitter, Judge Jacqueline Davies is the Fail Whale of the Criminal Justice System.
