I expect you know about the Racist Van that’s doing the rounds in London by now. Well, the Home Office’s Twitter account is causing all manner of uproar as they tweet content like this:


https://twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/status ... 6373114881

The question arises as to the legality of such tweets - especially as the people arrested are not, under UK Law, innocent until proven guilty, so the #immigrationoffenders hash tag is inaccurate.

On the other hand, they haven't named any names on the tweets. The word suspected should be in there, I will agree that it is poorly worded.

That said, the UK Government is its own worst enemy. If the police find illegal immigrants in many areas, they can't arrest them, unless they have done something wrong, they have to turn them free with a bit of paper telling them to report to Immigration in either London or Liverpool! They don't have the manpower or space to deal with them, until immigration turns up to deal with them.

Here, if you are suspected of being in the country illegally, you are handed over to the Zoll (customs and immigration) and held until you can prove your identity and that you are in the country legally.

It's anonymised, so nobody could claim they have personally been slandered by it. I can see the reason why they did it but even if you think the reasons are valid, they're making a rod for their own backs. What happens if tomorrow they only find 79 'offenders'? Are they going to tweet that as well, when it looks like they're doing worse?

"Suspected offenders" would be accurate, so "suspected #immigrationoffenders" is as well.

The truck and these tweets are both pathetic, but you are over-reaching in this instance.