Twitter Republic is blighted by bile
Freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Back in the 1940s, the American president Franklin Roosevelt's four essential freedoms probably did not envisage the mentally scattered shenanigans brought to life by Twitter.
Freedom of expression does not endorse the unjustifiable abuse of others in the name of exercising freedom of speech, but no laws govern what is out there in cyberspace. Twitter Republic does not have a constitution, nor does it seem to be governed by any level of common decency.
The tragic death of the Scottish criminal lawyer Paul McBride last weekend brings into sharp perspective the mentally unhinged who continue to loiter on places like Twitter. McBride was barely dead and there were people - anonymous sorts of course with jobs to lose if their employers found what they were up to - rejoicing in his death.
Most of the stuff was aimed at McBride's links to Celtic. It had little to do with his obvious skills as a lawyer, but more because of his slightly theatrical performances in public last year when he denounced the practices within the Scottish Football Association. McBride had apparently asked to get a Twitter account set up in his name so he could see what kind of abuse he was getting.
It was a level of invective he would not be around to see hours after his untimely death on a business trip to Pakistan last weekend, but was of a nature that makes you understand why two men are up in court charged with an attempt to blow up McBride, the Celtic manager Neil Lennon and the Scottish MSP Trish Godman by sending homemade 'devices' apparently from somewhere in the undergrowth of Ayrshire.
McBride represented all walks of life in his duties as a QC, but all walks of his life did not welcome his competence, or his background. The jokes about McBride only serves to highlight the need for some kind of regulation to be brought to a forum which appears to know no boundaries.
People need to be made aware that you must be responsible for your actions on the internet whether or not you are acting anonymously. If you can cut out the tumour before it is grown then perhaps makeshift bombs will cease to be posted by people of unsound mind. The Police have now powers to smoke out some of these anonymous keyboard warriors from their lairs.
A man appeared in Glasgow earlier this week charged with making threats toward the Celtic manager Neil Lennon on a social networking side.
A few weeks ago, the former footballer John Hartson decided he had enough of Twitter. The former Wales striker, who had a stint with Celtic a decade or so ago, suffered abuse for extending friendship towards a terminally ill child. Hartson had fought his own bout with cancer. Someone on Twitter told him to drop dead.
It seems people do not have enough ways to contact each other this weather. Phone, texts, mail and emails are not enough. A tweet is required to let someone what you are doing. Social networking can be a force for good - revolution even as we have witnessed in Egypt and Libya - but the way it is abused by too many cretins is not easily palatable.
Matt Lucas, the comic actor of Little Britain, has recently opted out of using Twitter after jokes were posted about the suicide of his former partner. Bullying of children no longer stops in the playground. Now it continues online with the aid of Twitter.
Sam Allardyce, the West Ham United manager, has recently berated its level of rancidness. "I think in the main it's a very dangerous tool, it's uncontrollable, it doesn't appear to come under anybody's law, so people can say what they want, when they want, and I think that is a very dangerous tool to be bandied around the world. "
There has always been such a sickness in society, but it was never given such oxygen to breathe without social networking. Freedom of speech is a key function, but it seems to come at a costly price on vehicles such as Twitter. The descent of man seems to know no bounds in such places.