Brickbat: Old Boys Club

Five former members of London's Metropolitan Police Service face up to six months in prison after pleading guilty to sharing racist jokes on a WhatsApp chat group called "Old Boys Beer Meet." None of the men were serving with the police department at the time they shared the jokes. The men made fun of, among others, Princess Catherine, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as well as black people, Chinese people, Muslims, and Romanians. While they face prison time, an attorney representing some of the men says he hopes they will only receive a fine. A sixth former officer who was a member of the chat group has denied the charges against him and will go to trial in November.

Comments

[Jerryskids]

A little black boy was helping his grandmother make a pie and, as a joke, dumped a bag of flour over his head and said,"Hey, Granny, look at me! I'm a little white boy!" His grandmother slapped the shit out of him and told him to go tell his dad what he'd said. The little boy trots off and tells his dad, his dad slaps the shit out of him and tells him to go tell his mother what he'd said. So the little boy trots off and tells his mother what he'd said, his mother slaps the shit out of him and tells him to go back and see his granny. So the little boy trots back to see his granny and granny asks him, "Well, did you learn anything?" And the little boy says,"Yeah, I've only been white for five minutes and I already hate all you fucking niggers."

[Olivahunter]

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[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Oh god, that's terrible, STOP MAKING ME LAUGH!

[mad.casual]

The real crime of America's ethnic homogeneity? Lack of racist joke diversity.

[Don't look at me!]

You’ll do time for that terrible word crime!

[Dillinger]

lolz.

[Adans smith]

And to think, Don Rickles once met and entertained the Queen .

[Minadin]

" . . . and Romanians"

Really. What an oddly specific part of SE Europe to mention. Or, perhaps you meant 'Gypsies', aka the Roma people.

[mad.casual]

A German, a gypsy and a Romanian are on a plane
Suddenly, the German throws a silver spoon out the window.
The others ask him why he did that, to which the German replies:

'Where I come from, that's what we have the most of.'

After that, the gypsy throws a gold spoon out the window. The others asks him why he did that, to which he replies:

'Where I come from, that's what we have the most of.'

Soon after, the Romanian shoves the gypsy out the window and shouts:

'Where I come from, that's what we have the most of!'

[markm23]

Roma is NOT short for Romanian. The Rom are nomads from India, speaking an amalgam of north Indian languages. The Romanians are descendants of Europeans on the northeast fringe of the Roman Empire, mostly still live near where their ancestors lived 1500 years ago, and speak a language descended from Latin. Aside from deliberate attempts by the Rom to obfuscate their origins, the only connection between the two groups is that wagons moving northwest and then west from India would often find the easiest route lay through Romania - and some of the Rom stopped there.

[R Mac]

Pretty sure his comment indicates he knows they’re not the same.

[Dillinger]

specifically.

[SQRLSY One]

Thanks much! Now how about the Romulans? Is it true that they often orbit around Uranus, looking for Klingons?

If your native language is Klingon rather than English, then here you go...

Qu'vatlh! romuluSngan veH bIH joH. tlhIngan SuvwI' poH'a'?

Or do you prefer Romulan?

Hann'yyo aigrev! Valhthealh (adv relat) taome ulleinvs'hhwiemn ehdhihss rihannsu? 'hh ta'hwswai factual mniurr ujudhueiusmm'ukssdh hwia raeler raiter adv) hræfva Uranus, looking e Klingons?

(Translator sites are out there but they won't post here for some reason.)

[Fist of Etiquette]

How are the yanks still the incarceration capital of the world?

[NOYB2]

Putting criminals in jail is something that happens in free societies.

You don’t need jails in totalitarian societies because the society is the jail; you simply do what you do in jails: you revoke privileges, because in such societies, your entirely life consists of privileges granted and revocable by the government.

That’s what China is doing for punishment, and what the UK is going to do to these guys.

[Mickey Rat]

The UK is lost as bastion of liberty. Whatever you think of the quality of person who would share racist jokes, that sharing jokes should be a crime is unacceptable, much less one punishable by jail time.

[SQRLSY One]

Sticks and stones may break my bones, butt jokes in England will get you Limey Bones up yer ass in a slimy-Limey hoosegow!

[Longtobefree]

Well, you see, there are laws to protect public safety and then there are laws to demonstrate the power of the state to control your every thought.
One type gets ignored a lot, but not the other.

[John F. Carr]

From the Evening Standard story:

Elsom, who admitted three charges, posted a picture to WhatsApp with mocked-up speech bubbles suggesting Princess Catherine had made monkey noises at black children.
Booth pleaded guilty to four charges, including a picture of the late Queen and Prince Philip with a golliwog doll and a joke about Pakistani flood victims. Lewton admitted one count, while Hall pleaded guilty to three counts including a slur aimed at the Duchess of Sussex’s race.

[Inigo Montoya]

I guess I’m uninformed about the royal family, because I have no idea who Princess Catherine is. I’m guessing she’s a baby daughter born to one of the younger ones, like Kate Middleton or Megan Markle.

But I don’t see how exchanging jokes, even ones ridiculing someone’s ethnicity or status as an infant, is a crime. They must have zero actual crime over there if they’re prosecuting people exchanging jokes privately.

[Roberta]

I assumed it was about Catherine the Great.

[AT]

What's "Kate" short for?

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Katherine the Lesser.

[Will Nonya]

This is the power people seek when they attack the 1st ammendment. The power to punish wrong think, especially when it is wrong think about your betters.

[Don't look at me!]

Words and ideas are dangerous l

[Dillinger]

what's the fucking problem with Romanians?

[mad.casual]

Fun Story: When we first met, Mrs. Casual's friends and kin heckled me for my "Hoosier" heritage. The Irish half gave no more of a heckle than would be expected of cultural drunk potato farmers heckling drunk corn farmers, but the Romanian half was rather self-righteous about it. A couple decades later and the off-the-boat matriarch of the Romanian side dies and her personal effects trickle down to the heirs. Turns out Grammy/Bunica's origin story of "fleeing Romania as a kid before the war" was really more like "carried out of parts of Austria-Hungary unknown as an infant before the *other* war" and the families' known-Romanian heritage was more virtual than their actual, documented-and-known Hoosier lineage.

[Dillinger]

love it.

>>drunk potato farmers heckling drunk corn farmers

throw some bootleggers in and you're looking at the last 200 years of my tree lol.

[NOYB2]

posted a picture to WhatsApp with mocked-up speech bubbles suggesting Princess Catherine had made monkey noises at black children.

How is it racist to accuse (rightly or wrongly) Princess Catherine of racism?