The One-Eyed Killer and the One-Finger Typists

I've always been - for reasons that are pretty obvious - pretty supportive of people with one eye: story-book pirates were suitably dashing role-models to the young Silver Fox; Lt Columbo's squinting perseverence in the face of celebrity murderers was inspiring - and for all his deficit in the charm and chumminess department, I've always been prepared to acknowledge that Gordon Brown is probably a nice enough bloke.  Clearly, though, I can't extend this to suspected cop-killer, Dale Cregan.  No; though it's an awful thing to say, I fear that if he's hoping for a wave of one-eyed supporters to cheer him on at his trial - or even to testify as to how having really bad depth-perception is stressful enough to lead anyone into a life of crime and violence ("After knocking my fifth cup off the shelf in a week, something just snapped inside me, your Honour - the next thing I knew I was dealing four keys a week and sleeping on a pile of severed heads..."), he's going to be disappointed.  We're a close-knit network, but we have our limits.
There you are: I've said it; I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not pro-murder - are you all caught up now?  Does anyone need any extra clarification?  One must be awfully careful these days, apparently, as it turns out that everybody - even those people old enough and wise enough to be secure in their own convictions and thoughts - can be distressed, offended, horrified, sickened, and generally spazzed out into a Chenobyl-grade eppy by stuff on the Internet.  Yes; I was surprised too - but in actual fact, we're all of us fourteen-year-old girls sobbing our hearts out over our keyboards because of some fucking idiot's opinion of us - or of just about anything, come to that.
The fucking idiot in question here, of course, is the 22-year-old Merseyside man (the jobless 22-year-old Merseyside man, The Daily Mail helpfully and crucially informs me) who set up a tribute page for Dale Cregan on The Facebook.  For expressing his support for a suspected killer and questioning the fact that anyone "gives a shit" about the murder of PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, Neil Swinburne could face up to six months inside under the 2003 Communications Act. I'm reminded of the furore about two similar pages set up in 2010 to laud the works of Raoul Moat - the beet-faced steroid enthusiast.  He too - some felt - was a "legend", a "folk hero" who had shown the coppers that they couldn't have it all their own way and generally acted as a guiding light to spiritual outlaws and would-be badasses of all kinds.  Of course, it was a load of immature, asinine, crap then, and it isn't a view that has improved with age. The "trolls" that celebrated Moat were reviled in the media, and roundly condemned by the majority of the social-network-using public; the pages were taken down, and that was pretty much it.  In the end, the tributes to "Moaty's" victims and the condemnations of his dreadful, cowardly acts outnumbered the shitty little posts about his "heroism" by thousands to one: it was a triumph of the decency and sense of Right that lurks somewhere within the British public - and it was a triumph that owed nothing to Police intervention.
Look; I'm in no way condoning Neil Swinburne's tribute - I think that gloating over the death of anyone is a sign that an individual might need at the very least a little nudge in the direction of the fold of civilised, compassionate humanity, after all - but I'd be very cautious about querying his right to raise his digital voice on the matter.  Yes; I'd agree that his page is offensive; I wouldn't argue that it would be distressing for relatives of the two officers to read. In fact, I'd characterise it as a stupid, tasteless, and deeply unpleasant piece of work that attempts to elevate a brutal thug to a status he in no way merits - but a criminal act?  Stroll on, eh?
The fact is that there will always be cop-haters as long as there are cops: whether these are genuine cop-haters, or merely poseurs seeking the cheap and easy cred of plastic-gangsta status, they'll be around - and while their views are extremist and anti-social, I'd prefer to be able to dismiss them as juvenile nonsense for myself than to have them silenced by the force of Law.  Though I try to avoid clichés like the plague, I'm finding it exceptionally hard not to use the phrase "the thin end of the wedge" at some point here; if some mouthy berk can be nicked for posting thoughtless drivel on Facebook, where does it end?  At what point does a perfectly rational (and responsible) desire to question or criticise the Police become a crime?  It looks like it might become harder and harder to tell - which might prove convenient, eh what?  Only a few days ago, the report on the Hillsborough tragedy gave us a very unpleasant reminder of just how fallible and flawed police officers can be, and while no rational person would suggest that justifies the slaughter (and subsequent celebration thereof) of two dedicated and brave constables, it does lend force to the notion that unthinking support and glorification of those "in blue" is both naive and potentially dangerous to the public good.
 Of course, it could be argued that it wasn't Mr Swinburne's "beef" with the Old Bill that led to him being taken in; perhaps it was the emotional distress he's caused the families and friends of the murdered PCs.  That's fair enough, but while we're at it, let's see a few more arrests, shall we?  Why not prepare a cell for the founder of the page "Hang Dale Cregan, Murdering Scum"?  This hate-filled page is probably pretty unpleasant reading for Mr Cregan's family (not all of whom, I would think, are hardened and brutal criminals), so where's their protection against distress - or doesn't that matter in the face of the overwhelming thunder of the Moral Majority?  Mind you, a "troll" is only a "troll" if you don't happen to agree with what they're saying: there's probably something enshrined in the Statute Books to that effect - with a Latin phrase and everything - otherwise, arresting one cyber-twat and not another could be seen as absurdly inconsistent...
The fact that Swinburne's arrest has been reported with approval from pretty much all quarters is pretty troubling, I think; the fact that it's prompted the Director of Public Prosecutions to state that
"the time has come for an informed debate about the boundaries of freedom of speech in an age of social media" is doubly so.  Just who will be having this debate, and who is going to be "informing" it?
Hopefully - and it's a forlorn, pallid, sort of hope - it might be somebody with the deep-down good sense to say something like "it's only the Internet: it's the dissonant cawings of a madman's aviary - get a fucking grip, for crying out loud".  As I say though: I'm not optimistic about that.  It seems that Taking The Internet Seriously is now a way of life -  and if you don't agree, "like", or post numerous links to this blog on your Twitter account, I'll have no choice but to see it as an implicit act of cyberbullying and kill myself.