You can’t say that

Someone on the radio, discussing Twitter abuse cases like this one, seemed to think that the thing that made a message illegal was being “menacing”. But the law is broader than that; from the Malicious Communications Act 1988:

(1) Any person who sends to another person—

(a) a letter, electronic communication or article of any description which conveys—

(i) a message which is indecent or grossly offensive;

(ii) a threat; or

(iii) information which is false and known or believed to be false by the sender; or

(b) any article or electronic communication which is, in whole or part, of an indecent or grossly offensive nature,

is guilty of an offence if his purpose, or one of his purposes, in sending it is that it should, so far as falling within paragraph (a) or (b) above, cause distress or anxiety to the recipient or to any other person to whom he intends that it or its contents or nature should be communicated.

I think that makes quite a lot of online unpleasantness illegal, although you wouldn’t know it from the scanty levels of enforcement.

Olympics

The opening ceremony was enormously impressive.

• Apparently the chimneys were inflatable and supported from the top.
• Some of the twitter commentariat didn’t seem to find the parade of athletes very interesting but we found it an excellent opportunity to try to remember capital cities and to look up the grades of the flags.
• The German team’s color-coding was stood out as rather bizarre.
• I was amused by the commentator’s dancing around his (presumably IOC-mandated) inability to accurately name one of the competing countries: “Chinese Tapei… formerly known as Formosa…”
• Of all the demographics which I might have expected to unpatriotically attack the show, Conservative MP had not been very high on the list.

I’ve been intermittently watching the sport since then.

• The rowing this morning was impressive stuff, especially the men’s double. The exhaustion and disappointment of the British team was palpable.
• The tennis makes good background watching - much of the table tennis on the other hand is blink-and-you-miss-it stuff. The badminton seems to be somewhere inbetween.
• The post-race interviews, especially with gold medalists, are priceless stuff. Ditto audience members when they spot a camera is pointing at them.
• The huge number of newly created Olympic TV channels are a welcome innovation.