Public Drunkenness Can Never Be a Social Norm

Sounds like the professional offense industry has been cranked into top gear, if you'll forgive the Clarkson crossover.

I should imagine the left have managed to work themselves up into a frothing frenzied little circle-jerk. Imagine all those chubby little semi-little unemployed fingers mashing those grubby little keyboards. Like a thousand impotent monkeys at a thousand worn typewriters.

There's a rise in anti-Semitism, there are attacks on free speech, there are attacks on gays and women from radical Islam - 3 just this last week in London alone. Nothing to worry about, eh brothers? What's REALLY sickening is being forced, yes, forced to read a 140 character tweet from someone's encounter with an unsavoury drunk. Free speech be damned, burn the wizard!

While Ian Dale might have been unwise to Tweet what he did the reaction to it was a bit unecessary ,although I admit I did contribute in a small way myself . Picking up from when I left off ( on Twitter) last night there are a couple of things I would like to say ,having read the latest Tweets .
Someone on Twitter kept referring to the "offense taken by so many". Where is/was the evidence that "so many" were offended cos I saw none..all I read was one person claiming this and I am in agreement with Ian Dale about the overuse of the word "offended" It seems to be switched on immediately anyone says anything even slightly controversial ...are people really offended so easily or is this just something that is said when it is not really meant . It happens in so many situations nowadays from comments made by footballers to each other to comedians on stage cracking jokes.

This week on Twitter, we've seen the most abhorrent abuse hurled at Floella Benjamin whilst others urge us not to bully Gary Glitter. It's an ugly place at times, much like any city centre on a Friday or Saturday night.

The lowlifes who were in uproar about ID's tweets have no problem with anti-social behaviour, unless that is they're confronted with it themselves.

The idea of taking offence on behalf of someone else leaves me baffled.

I saw your tweet pop up and instantly thought - Oh Dear. And so it came to pass...

Slapper is a term for loose morals in my neck of the woods, and I don't really mind when someone is harmlessly drunk on the way home. If they develop an overwhelming desire to talk to me, then I'd move.

So would I have tweeted that in your shoes - no, but was the reaction appropriate - absolutely not.

I didn't really understand why you engaged with any of them TBH - it just encourages those want a pop about anything.

Re Gary Glitter - that was weird and creepy. An interesting window on what people will do from the anonymity of their phone or PC. I'd expect maybe a couple of hundred odd balls/fellow travellers to follow it, not thousands within 24hrs.

Iain Dale sober is a better man than a disgusting slapper drunk.

I was fairly young when I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four, and couldn't quite get my head around the Three Minutes' Hate. How, I wondered, could human beings, even ones reared under totalitarianism, find anything edifying in a communal outpouring of hatred for others? I missed this latest 'Twitter storm', but have seen the like before and tend to think it demonstrates the answer. Like the good brothers and sisters in Ingsoc, its participants are fallen men and women who every so often suffer an irrepressible urge to vent their darker sides against an external target. Having rightly reasoned themselves out of the conventional bigotries, in directing it towards a target they regard as having violated one of their communal norms they feel not corrupted, but vindicated. Their loud, public outpourings give a heightened sense of their own moral rectitude, being directed against something they've become convinced, through a combination of their social environment and personal convictions, is the right sort of thing to hate.

I totally agree with your sentiments regarding people being drunk in public. Indeed, I feel intimidated enough to avoid cities during the "normal" drinking hours. The threat of being drenched in sick is abhorrent and yet it pales into insignificance against the increased possibility of physical violence.
However, your reaction to this drunken woman was wrong if a little understandable. She was stupid to get herself in such a state (if indeed she did it without help from someone with sinister motives) but having been rendered incapable, her condition and image was posted on Twitter.
You have in excess of 26,000 followers and I think it's unlikely that you know each one of those individuals, their whereabouts or their characters. It would be unlikely that some evil so and so would a) be on the lookout for prey on the same train and b) be one of your followers but it is possible. You know only too well how quickly Twitter lowlife can crawl from the woodwork to take advantage of a situation.
I hate people getting drunk but once they are there, I would do my best to ensure that they are less likely to come to any more harm. I certainly would not advertise their inability to look after themselves.

I too hate being anywhere near anyone who is the worse for drink. They make me uncomfortable and they are often unpredictable and can get aggressive so I can certainly feel for your predicament. Would I have taken this womans' photo and tweeted it, no probably not and I certainly would not have tweeted foul comments back but people seem to think that behind the anonymity of a computer or phone that they can say what they want. You only have to read the trolls' comments on an internet site, particularly the Guardian to know that some people get their kicks out of this. I wouldn't stoop to their level.

Well done ! It's needed saying for long time.

"Where I come from in Essex it's not a word which by definition means a woman of loose sexual morals."

Really? Where I come from in Essex that's _exactly_ what it means.

I have to echo Dave - I live in Essex and "a woman of loose morals" is exactly what it means here.

I hate drunk people on the train, and living in Essex, I get a lot of it. I am known to regularly moan about it on Twitter. Do I publish their photos and call them "disgusting slappers" on a public feed? No, because that would make me just as anti social as then.

You crossed a line. Just accept it.

Iain,

All during my time as a UK police officer, it was made very clear to me that a "drunk" is a sick person. Just a vomit away from being dead.

In your indignation, where was your humanity for a sick person on the road with you?

Rather than concerning yourself with the integrity of your suit trousers, you should have been thinking of what you would do if that woman started to die in front of you.

What would you do? Could you have helped her, would you know what to do? Or would it, heaven forfend, get your hands mucky?

Your comments as to the woman's supposed morality tell a great deal more about your own character than they do hers.

You have no idea what sort of day/life she had, none whatsoever. The reasons she got to where she was at.

You really need to go back to humanity school, and pop that ego balloon of yours.

Do it, before life itself does it for you.

brendan

I am sorry Iain but, particularly for such a talented communicator, you are playing this badly. Cavilling about the meaning of 'slapper' is just silly and you are coming over as pompous to say the least.

It's true, and we all know it, that many of our streets are, and much of our public transport is, ugly and unpleasant at night because of people who can't handle their drink. For those of a certain age, a difficult aspect of such encounters is to see young women in a vulnerable, drunken mess as they rarely were (at least not without someone to look after them) in our young days.

This is a price of social changes that were mostly good. We wanted our daughters to be independent and to socialise on equal terms with men, not only to emerge when invited and safely escorted. This is a transitional time and social mores have not yet adapted as they should. If we worry about these young women we are going to have to stand ready (as Brendan Stallard says) to take care of them if necessary, not call them names.

You need to come off your high horse and apologise or you will continue to play into the hands of those faking outrage.

Tom Said:

"You need to come off your high horse and apologise or you will continue to play into the hands of those faking outrage."

So, anyone who has fake outrage needs to be apologised to?

I'm staying on my high horse and riding to the hills as fast as I can to escape this nonsense.

I'll address the central point. "But none of them want to address the real point - is being blind drunk in public, on public transport an acceptable way to behave? It isn't and I won't hesitate to keep pointing it out."

No it's not. Well done for pointing it out.

Now, a secondary point, which you haven't considered seriously. Is posting other people's photos on Twitter, including insulting comments, without their permission an acceptable way to behave? It isn't and I won't hesitate to keep pointing it out.

Point out bad behaviour by all means but don't do it with bad behaviour by yourself. That just makes you a hypocrite.

To Richard W

I agree about the picture being posted ..I think the comments would not have caused such a stir without that ..

You started your piece by (proudly?) stating that you trended worldwide on Twitter on Friday evening because of your Tweet regarding the drunk girl who was unlucky enough to be on your train, Surely she was also trended worldwide as you unwisely posted her picture her picture in you Tweet, at least you had the choice, I follow you on twitter and watched with dismay and interest on Friday as this unfolded, I did tweet a response but 140 doesn’t do it so..

My biggest problem is that she hadn’t done anything wrong, it isn’t against the law to be drunk on a train in this Country.

I suspect her biggest crime was to ask you to move your bag maybe your too precious to be asked to move but she wouldn’t have known that.

You go on to say that she wasn’t identifiable in the picture ,she wouldn’t be to you as you don’t know her, I’m sure her friends, relatives and colleges would recognise her but you’re probably not worried too much about that as by posting her you denied her rights to privacy.

Your rather amusingly attempt to defer the “slapper” remark to the definition by the Oxford English dictionary, that’s straight from the Diane Abbott school of “Misunderstandings” it’s an insult to all who follow you to expect us to believe you meant anything other than the normal use of the word.

You can try and justify what your actions but you shouldn’t have tweeted what you did and your attempted explanation proves you know you were wrong, being wrong isn’t a crime unfortunately you were also cruel and that’s the saddest part about all this, her hangover has subsided I suspect yours may last a bit longer.

I see that Brenda Stallard is peddling AA 's stance that alcoholism is an illness. As someone who has been affected by alcoholism in my family, I don''t buy it. It's a choice. If it kills them, so be it.

A number of thoughts having read your piece and the comments thus far.

You are quite right that anti-social behaviour caused by drink or drugs is disgraceful and it says a lot about people who focus on the drunk/stoned person's rights and ignore their initial bad behaviour. What it says is that they will excuse away and thereby condone anti-social behaviour -this is a mistake. it's a 'take the side of the underdog whatever the situation' way of thinking and that is ridiculous. Sometimes people's bahaviour makes them deserving of a public dressing-down.

I also don't believe alcohol abuse or drug abuse to be an illness. If you are addicted to these things then it is something that you have done to yourself. Self-control and personal pride would stop most people getting to that point. To get to this stage and then claim to be a victim seems a bit rich.

All of the above said - I would not have taken her picture and tweeted it. That was unnecessarily unkind - and I think you know that. She made you feel uncomfortable but your re-action was OTT. It is a shame that you don't feel able to say sorry for that action.
It's a shame because you are basically correct in your views on the matter and this un-wise action has overshadowed that fact.

Major problem with Twitter - it is instant, so we don't always have thinking time before we tweet stuff.

I was unaware of this before Iain, I just looked back at the twitter and the 'offending' photo and I have to say I am a little shocked. You get TABLES on your train?!! We are lucky if we even get seats on the Dartford line!!

The photo/slapper 'outrage' is a bit of a fuss about nothing really isn't it? Would all the people who are defending the rights to a drunken idiot on a train feel the same away about public figures in the tabloids (or even on twitter actually) being caught on camera doing something stupid or are they fair game?

A case of competing rights I think. I disagree with what Iain says, but will defend to the death his right to say it. I disagree with what the 'drunken slapper' did, but I will defend to the death her right to do it.