Comments on: Police receive complaint over Jan Moir’s Daily Mail column on Stephen Gately

By: Paul Calvert

Paul Calvert — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:07:44 +0000

I can express my own opinion, it is my opinion, I also love to hear other’s opinions too, I may not agree with their opinion but I respect it.
It seems that today the Gay and lesbian rights movement want to steal my right to my opinion.
If I say anything negative on the subject of Homosexuality then I will be described a homophobic, not someone who has a different opinion.
This is quite intolerant on the gay and lesbian community to jump on someone and brand them homophobic just because they have a valid different opinion.
Perhaps the gay and Lesbian community have a phobia of homophobic.
This word homophobic, what does it mean???
I don’t like spiders , If I saw one I would be scared , You could say I have arachnophobia. If I see a homosexual , I would have no problem talking to him , Many have great and loving personalities , I would even give a gay a hug if we were friends, But I still disagree with the lifestyle, Am I a homophobic.?
We all have a right to our opinion and the gay rights are abusing our rights.
If i am a homophobic then i can’t help it as it is a phobia like the fear of spiders, I should be shown love because i can’t help my fears, Perhaps i can get help on the national health

By: Russ Lines

Russ Lines — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:24:13 +0000

Did the Spanish authorities not conclude death by natural causes -Does Jan Moir think she is more qualified than the coroner. Ignorance and contempt – Her comments are typical of the right wing trash printed in that newspaper. The only shame is that the Police belong to the same right wing part of our society so there will be no justice for the unnecesary hurt caused to Stephens family and the injustice of reinforcing biggoted views to those who have such a narrow view of the LGBT community in the UK.

By: theotherone

theotherone — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:02:20 +0000

no not hiding, just busy.

By: Brian Burton

Brian Burton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:18:01 +0000

theotherone, where have you been hiding? Pillip J has it right.

By: theotherone

theotherone — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:12:45 +0000

complaining to the police? Talk about a psychotic over reaction…

By: Brian Burton

Brian Burton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:36:57 +0000

Anon,
You doged my question you, ‘How do you know Jan Moir has not commited an offence?’

By: Anon

Anon — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:44:51 +0000

If it were my local homophobic police force doing the so called investigation of the complaint against the Daily Mail & the Moir women…the police are more likely to simply ask for a signed autographed copy of the Moir article!

By: Simon Murphy

Simon Murphy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:23:25 +0000

The PCC is in a major bind. It cannot ignore the outrage Moir’s article has caused (apparently the 1000 complaints was the figure at about 4pm on Friday. Apparently it’s up to 21,000 complaints now). That is more complaints than every other complaint they have received in their existence.

If the PCC does nothing it will expose itself for what it in – a puny, toothless, irrelevant PR exercise by the media to ‘self-regulate’ ie it exists so they can claim that no outside regulation of the media should occur ever.

The trouble is that the PCC charter is not designed to deal with public outrage over a clearly bigotted article.

Moir’s sacking would solve all this for the Mail. If they don’t sack her and if the PCC do nothing people will question the integrity of having the PCC chaired by the editor of the Daily Mail.

By: Simon Murphy

Simon Murphy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:29:27 +0000

RobN says: “The Press Complaints Commission can’t seem to find anything that breaches their code of conduct”

Just to point out that Paul Dacre – the editor of the Daily Mail is also chairman of the PCC’s Editors’ Code of Practice Committee.

The PCC is the press’s self-regulatory body. They can hardly be deemed impartial seeing as the Daily Mail editor is in charge of it.

By: Dougie

Dougie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:12:35 +0000

@J Carter. If only.

Unfortunately, Jan Moir’s ugly mug is Britain’s future staring us in the face.

By: Riondo

Riondo — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:52:26 +0000

Involving the Police simply martyrs bigots (and how they love it) and makes things worse. In any case I am deeply uneasy about hate-speech as a crime. It is a vague and emotive notion, and basing criminal law on it threatens free speech and debate without actually challenging prejudice. I think it simply makes liberal pluralism look totalitarian and repressive, which is surely not the idea. Laws against incitement did need strengthening – in the old days it was only a crime to incite violence against a named individual and plainly this needed to be extended to cover social groups. But ‘incitement to hatred’? Just seeing Mary Whitehouse’s face on the tv in the old days did it for me re. religious busy-bodies. Ideas as wide as a barn door make very bad law.

By: Robert, ex-pat Brit

Robert, ex-pat Brit — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:22:30 +0000

Moir a journalist? Since when does a restaurant reviewer, which is what she really is, become a medical expert as to what this young man died of, totally dismissing the coroner’s report? Stone the bitch!

By: flapjack

flapjack — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:46:42 +0000

I agree with RobN on this occasion, turning it into a police matter is overkill.
And the Janet Street Porter article, while somewhat overdue goes someway towards a Daily Mail retraction… it’s just a shame Jan Moir still appears to believe she did nothing wrong and publishes an apology that’s almost as offensive as the original article. In any ordinary newspaper she’d be on borrowed time, but in the Mail bigotry gets you a leader column, a payrise and that coveted corner office!

By: J Carter

J Carter — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:55:13 +0000

She should be arrested and given life for being in possession of such an offensive face.

By: Philip J

Philip J — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:58:27 +0000

Can we just nail this assertion that reporting the article to the police is a case of ‘wasting police time’.

There is no suggestion here that the police have been misled or misinformed or misdirected. The existence of the material being complained about is not being challenged, it was nationally published in line with a defined editorial policy, and the content is not being disputed – but the underlying motives are being disputed.

The police and their back-room advisers in the CPS are quite capable of deciding whether there is a criminal case to answer here. My guess is that when the CPS review it, they will conclude quite quickly that there is no winnable case and no police action will be taken. But the initial referral to the police was perfectly proper so that the possibility of there being a criminal act arising from a claim of incitement could be explored.

By: Will

Will — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:14:17 +0000

Actually, for once, agree with some of what RobN says. The article by Janet Street-Porter is quite good… for a Daily Mail article anyway.

And while its true that while the death of Stephen is very sad (as is anyone’s untimely demise), and this heinous Mr Moir is nothing more than an ill-informed bigot, the recent homophobic murder of Ian Baynham is more tragic and more sinister, but got less coverage.

By: Brian Burton

Brian Burton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:36:42 +0000

RobN,
People get killed for all sorts of different reasons, one bloke killed another bloke on a London bus because he looked at the other fellow the wrong way (whatever way that was)I bet some on here would want to kill you for having such a loud mouth. And you can arrest someone for expressing a belief, if that belief incites violence. Trouble with you Rob is you know the price of everything and the value of nothing!

By: RobN

RobN — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:06:42 +0000

amn14: Just because I dislike someone, (for whatever reason), and I voice my opinion merely states just that. How you react to that fact is out of my control and not my responsibility. Just because I say “I don’t like you” does not give others reading this Carte Blanche justification to then go out and kick the sh!t out of you.

This moronic government can issue all the edicts it likes, but if I think you are a no-good f_ckwit faggot, no law in the world is going to prevent that. Until George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the ‘Thought Police’ becomes reality, you can’t arrest anyone for simply holding a belief, or for that matter, stating it, as long as it is not actively inciting it. You are merely splitting hairs, spouting semantics and fundamentally sh!t-stirring.

Incidentally, for all those anti-Mail peasants with torches, the lovely Janet Street-Porter has written an article I think certainly redresses the odious Ms. Moir’s earlier rant:

“Being gay killed a man last week – but he wasn’t Stephen Gately”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1221296/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Being-gay-killed-man-week–wasnt-Stephen-Gately.html

By: amn14

amn14 — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:08:15 +0000

tsuchan – I think you’re asking me where the Moir article incites to violence. The point I was making was that it did not. By contrast the homophobic lyrics did explicitly. Moir’s article is malicious and prejudiced, and validates homophobic behaviour, but does not incite to violence.

There is a new crime of “incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation”. ( There’s an interesting research paper on this and the notorious Waddington amendment at: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snha-04983.pdf )

That is in addition to the offence under Section 4 of the Public Order Act under which “A person is guilty of an offence if he [...] distributes or displays to another person [...] any writing [...] which is [...] threatening, abusive or insulting [...] whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked.”

By: AdrianT

AdrianT — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:57:58 +0000

This tiresome story about this third rate journalist is turning into hysteria now. The police? oh come on, grow a thicker skin. The person bringing this to the attention of the police should be done for wasting police time.