This guy comes across as an obnoxious shit. However…
A primary school teacher has been banned from the classroom after a sick WhatApp chat, in which he shared sexist and homophobic messages about female staff with other male colleagues, was unmasked by police.
Matthew Clare, 36, was part of the ‘barbaric’ ‘Nip Clockers’ group chat at Engayne Primary School in Upminster, east London, alongside ‘three other colleagues’.
In a slew of grossly offensive messages, female colleagues were branded as ‘kinky sluts’, ‘pure filth’ and ‘f***buddy material’, the Teaching Regulation Authority (TRA) said.
Did any of this affect his work? Did he behave in a manner in work that was anything other than professional? If not, then this really shouldn’t be a disciplinary matter, nor should it be a matter for the police, no matter how offensive the discussions – and it is highly likely such discussions have been going on forever in situations where men are together and their female colleagues are not in earshot – see also, the female locker rooms. This is people being people. Yet now a private conversation that was never meant to be seen outside of a small group is being used to discipline them and cost them their jobs.
Teaching watchdogs heard that Clare’s messages were found on a colleague’s phone seized in March 2021 the Metropolitan Police who raised the matter as a safeguarding concern.
We don’t know why this phone was seized, however, the conversation is not evidence of a safeguarding concern. People say stuff in private. It happens. It does not follow that they behave inappropriately when in work. Yet here we are hounding people out of their jobs because they engaged in banter in what they thought was a private forum.
Lesson – WhatsApp may be encrypted, but if plod seizes your phone, it ceases to be private. A part of me despises these creeps and they deserved what they got. But the other part recognises that there is a difference between what people say in private and how they behave in the wider world. A part of me – a big part – finds this all insidious. Clare may be a creep and I may dislike him for it, but I despise the authorities who crawled though his phone messages even more.
Edited to add: Mr Clare has been in contact. I respond to that, here.
The authoritarian search for ‘wrongthink’ proceeds apace. First they came for jokes about mother-in-laws. Then they came for jokes about other communities/nationalities. And now they are coming for private communications which are (surprise!) no longer private.
I am troubled by this trend.
It never ceases to amaze me that people put such vast amounts of personal and private information on a portable electronic device.It can be so easily lost, stolen or in this case seized by the authorities and your whole life is exposed to the vulgar gaze. That said, the police have no right or cause if no further laws were broken ,in passing on the information to anyone else. The fact that you consider your work colleague a right slag or a real goer is no concern of theirs.
Given that phones seem to be pretty much ubiquitous in most “prisons” is demonstration enough of how utterly corrupt and targeted “policing” is.
What is said is totally irrelevant, it’s obviously who’s saying it.
I see a white man, and I very strongly suspect the others are too. They may be obnoxious morons, but in this particular context they are white first – which makes whatever they say criminal pretty much by definition.
That said, for fucks sake just leave all this soshul meeja and say what you like face to face over a few drinks.
Don’t play their game.
And yet Gordon Broon can describe “that woman” as “bigoted” in a private exchange. Sexist, misogynistic and insulting. Consequences? A nice pension.
This “online harms” business is just another moral panic like horror comics or video nasties. If these blokes had been talking like this down the pub (and, let’s face it, they probably were), nobody would have been any the wiser. But because it was online, on a forum that’s actually more private than the Public Bar, it magically becomes dangerous and evil.
For centuries, our mail was carried by a government department. Postmaster General was a Cabinet position. Yet there was a principle that the authorities didn’t open it and read it. Certainly not routinely, without a warrant from the courts. Yet now they demand access to our every online utterance. This is not British, it’s not normal, and it’s deeply authoritarian.
Better unlearn all those rugby songs double quick.
It’s deeply concerning – especially when Labour is pushing for any comments critical of Climate Change policy, Trans Conversion, Islam and DEI to be classed as ‘hate speech’. This government is proving to be arguably among the most authoritarian in the world. And they have five, maybe 10 more years to intensify that oppression
The more disturbing issue is that if/when the other lot get in (whatever ‘other lot’ that is), they won’t repeal any of it, because they like it too, so it becomes permanent.
Look up Pavlik Morosov. You Dobbing their mates is how the police get promotion and is a contributory reason forare not safe talking in the pub either. If you are overheard or one of your own circle dobs you in, you’ll be punished without due process and thhe traitor will be rewarded.
Yhis is allegedly what happens in the pokice, dobbing in your mates gets you promoted, keading to the selective policing we see.