Friday 7 August 2009

Remarkable reticence.

The Sun is delighted that a gang from Manchester have had their internet privileges proscribed:

DECENT people should salute Judge Clement Goldstone, QC.

He has banned 10 gang hoodlums from posting sickening group photos of themselves on the internet.

The Manchester yobs had used a networking site to boast about their vicious activities.

Judge Goldstone told them: "The courts will not stand idly by when youths maraud menacingly like packs of wild animals."

Thank you, Judge. Other courts please take note.

The gang in question is the Fallowfield Mad Dogz, as the Sun's report makes clear. Both the Sun's editorial and article are remarkably reticent though about just what "networking" site the Mad Dogz had been using. Other reports are much more clear:

MEMBERS of a street gang have been banned from posting photos of themselves together on the web.

In a landmark ruling, 10 young men - all members of the `Fallowfield Mad Dogs' group - could be locked up if they put pictures of themselves on social networking websites.

...

An image of the youths in thuggish poses posted on MySpace was used as evidence of their gang membership.

And indeed, a Google search for the Fallowfield Mad Dogs brings up as the very first result the gang's MySpace page, untouched since late last year, where you can see over 36 photographs of the members in various "sickening" and "thuggish" poses. Doubtless the fact that MySpace is owned by the Sun's parent company News International has nothing whatsoever to do with how the paper couldn't name the most easily accessible place where "decent people" could see why they should salute Judge Goldstone.

1 comment:

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Good spot, they can't bite the hand that feeds.