Whitesince63 wrote: Whitesince63 wrote:I don’t think we’ll have any option but to wait Sluffy as it looks like Edwards will be missing for some time, probably until he’s got his story worked out and considered who else might have stories to tell about him? That may sound extremely cynical and even heartless but I’m afraid I have little sympathy for people living a hugely privileged life who get themselves into predicaments like this. I think the country would be a far better place if we stopped just labelling everything “mental health” when it’s really just feeling sorry and in Edwards case, ashamed of himself and got back to telling people to just bloody well man up.
I suppose it depends what you mean by “wrong doing” Sluffy. Whilst nobody has proved he did anything illegal, I think you’d have to be pretty liberal minded not to think sending inappropriate texts and messages to young colleagues isn’t wrong and copies of those have been seen. Equally abusing his position as a “celebrity” to encourage young people into exchanging pornographic images would be considered wrong by many people, including me. I could accept that he’s a weak person mentally and has suffered depression and I wouldn’t even seek to consider why that could be but I suspect a feeling of self shame might have something to do with it?
Not really sure I understand what you are saying here?
What I mean by wrong doing is of course doing something wrong but obviously doing something wrong can range from putting the tea in before the milk when you have your morning cuppa to being a mass murderer!
Clearly there are perceptions of wrong too.
Some may say putting the tea in before the milk is the right way to make the drink for instance.
In normal living we are governed by the law, so obviously being a mass murderer is 'wrong doing' and social norms - and these social norms can and do change over the years.
For instance the word 'gay' was used to mean happy and bright about someone's personality, when we were younger but if you called someone gay intending the use in that way, you might well end up in being accused of homophobia.
So when there is an element of wrong doing you (the inquiring body) not only need to satisfy yourself that the incident happened (by proof/evidence) but also what was the intent (was it innocent, or was it intended as in a much more harmful/hurtful).
Let me give an example of such, when I was a boy there were no black people where I lived and when in the mid 1960's a few moved in, they were referred to as pakis (mainly because they had come from Pakistan - which seemed reasonable enough to me at the time). Some years later, when I was now in work , the term paki was deemed to be discrimatory and my employer (a large local council) sent round a memo to all staff advising us to use the word 'coloured' instead.
Roll on many years later and I was talking to my teenage daughter at the time and said something about a 'coloured' person and she pointed out that I can't say that anymore and the correct term is 'black' and had been for some years.
My point being that I was acting unknowingly and completely innocently in my mind, yet in terms of others point of view I could be seen to be being racist.
So taking that as fictional case what would my 'punishment' be for my 'wrong doing'?
I could have sent it in a text to someone quite innocently - and the receiver could have taken it to be me being racist and report it to my employer.
They rightly would need to investigate the complaint and ask me why I sent the text with the word 'coloured' in it.
Their findings, after I told them the truth would simply be to be 're-educated' shall we say, in current racial understanding probably by means of a training course. However if I had made the comment intending it to be racist, I would have received a warning which would be logged on my personal file or something even stronger than that.
Did Edwards then do something criminal that broke the law (dick pics off a minor) well no one can find any evidence of that (even Sun has backtracked away from that).
So did he use his position and/or send inappropriate messages in an intended/deliberate way, or was he simply some old bloke like me who got left behind in how some 'innocent' acts are now no longer seen as 'innocent' at all?
Obviously on the face of things sending such messages to people 20/30/40 years younger than himself is probably not the smartest thing to do anyway and it does raises suspicions.
We only have one side of the story.
Even the 'youth' involved states that nothing happened.
Two police forces haven't found any reasons to even start an investigations.
So I suggest no underaged dick pics were ever sent and any that were where done in private by consenting adults - which might not be to yours and my liking but is complete legal and none of our business.
We are now only left with the texts, so were they sent innocently 'you looked nice today' and meant that way, or where they sent in a more seedy sort of way 'you looked nice today', come up and see me sometime soon, sort of way?
Nobody can rule on that without speaking to Edwards first.
Even if he did send them that way, was that partly because he wasn't well in his head and it affected his judgement?
Who knows until they hear what Edwards side of the story is?
Whatever it is, whatever he actually has done, needs to be balanced against a punishment appropriate to that.
If the crime does turn out to be he sent some dick pics to other grown men in his private life - then that's nothing to do with anyone other than themselves.
If he sent some text innocently, then all that was needed was to be re-educated and sent on an appropriate training course.
If he sent some text as a bit of a come on, he should have been internally disciplined.
As it stands now, no one can prove him to have done anything intentionally wrong yet his life (and that of his family) is in ruins.
It's a sort of real life Franz Kafka's, The Trial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial
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