Brenda Leyland has died (Sweepyface) RIP Brenda

Surely the Police have to investigate all this.

One could assume that it wasn't a suicide at all.

I would hope so, Andrew, that there will be an investigation into the vile comments made about Brenda.

I need to know the cause of death before I start wondering if this was anything other than suicide.

We don't know what else may have been going on in her life - perhaps the abuse and being ambushed by Sky News was the final straw for her and she couldn't cope.

Yes agreed. There are a lot of questions that need answers.

All very suspicious.

Syn0nymph ‏@Syn0nymph 3 mins3 minutes ago
@cliffsull Her twts within S33 of CPS guidelines. Police were not investigating her & #mccann never saw her postings

http://greptweet.com/u/dirndllass/dirndllass.txt


Absolutely shocking stuff.

Just to say I haven't clicked on this link so it is down to you..


Lady Andrea ‏@_AndreaUrbanFoX 54 secs54 seconds ago
Online trolls: who’s hounding who? http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/online-trolls-whos-hounding-who/15966#.VDJ7OtFA3E7.twitter … … #sweepyface 's death suggests trollhunters are far worse than trolls. #mccann

Link from Admin copied and pasted.

Brenda Leyland's death suggests trollhunters are far worse than trolls.
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6 OCTOBER 2014
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What is the greatest menace to the liberty and liveliness of the internet? Is it, as we’re forever being told, ‘trolls’, those mostly anonymous saddos who live on Twitter and lurk in discussion threads, hurling offensive and sometimes abusive comments at people? Or is it the trollhunters, the self-styled cleansers of internet culture who have marshalled the media, the police, the courts, the prison system and the political class to their mission of exposing trolls and mopping up the online world?
It’s the latter. Trollhunters are the scourge of the internet. Yes, trolls can be annoying, and even scary sometimes. I’ve had my fair share of emailed death threats, discussion threads devoted to telling me what a cock I am, and even a bag of shit with one of my articles in it hand-delivered to my office (old-school trolling). But the trollhunters, from misogyny-policing feminists to the papers that splash photos of trolls across their front pages to the police who arrest them in dawn raids, do something far worse than any vocab-challenged bloke with a grudge and an internet connection could ever hope to achieve. They chill and sanitise the internet, and invite the criminalisation of more and more forms of online speech.
This morning it is reported that Brenda Leyland, a 63-year-old who was suspected of trolling the parents of murdered schoolgirl Madeleine McCann, has been ‘found dead’ in a hotel room. It is thought she committed suicide. If this is true, we may never discover why: as the Samaritans never tire of telling us, there is rarely one single cause to a suicide. But we do know that Ms Leyland’s death followed her exposure as a ‘troll’ by Sky News. A Sky reporter doorstepped her and informed her she was one of ‘dozens’ of trolls whose anonymous online behaviour had been reported to the police by supporters of the McCanns and was now being investigated.
What happened next was blackly ironic: Ms Leyland was trolled. She was, as Anorak magazine described it, ‘monstered’ by the media and by tweeters sympathetic to the McCanns. Images of her made to look like a blood-stained monster spread through Twitter. She was branded old and ugly and a bitch. A Mirror columnist called her a ‘twisted, fucked-up bitch’. The rest of the media was more polite but nonetheless had a field day at the expense of this ‘churchgoing mother-of-two’ and ‘well-spoken middle-class woman’ who was secretly writing ‘vile’ tweets about the McCanns. Her photo appeared everywhere. And so was the troll trolled, the monster monstered, the woman suspected of writing disgusting tweets subjected to disgusting tweets, the witch burnt. A few hours after this tsunami of anti-troll trolling came her way, Ms Leyland was found dead.
The online mob, the giddy, foul-mouthed organisers of the darkly ironic trolling of this alleged troll, are not responsible for Ms Leyland’s death. If she took her own life, it was her decision, her action. But her treatment over the past 48 hours nonetheless shines a harsh light on the new national bloodsport of hunt-the-troll.


Firstly, it exposes how presumptive and intolerant trollhunting can be. It is not yet known if Ms Leyland wrote any tweets about the McCanns that would count as being actually illegal, whether libelling them or threatening them with violence; all that the news reports say is that her tweets were ‘abusive’. And yet she was ‘unmasked’ by the media (the media’s own word), as if she were some gangster or drug lord, and she was hounded by an online mob of self-righteous troll-haters, who couldn’t possibly wait to discover if she had done anything illegal before branding her an old, twisted, fucked-up bitch. In the world of the trollhunter, the norms of justice count for little – ‘burn the troll’ is their unofficial motto.
And secondly, the treatment of Ms Leyland shows how utterly warped is the depiction of trolls today. Ms Leyland and the other tweeters of shocking stuff about the McCanns have been depicted as awesomely powerful people who destroyed the McCanns’ lives and poisoned the internet. This is the same narrative presented to us during every trolling scandal. Whether it’s well-known female columnists being subjected to sexist tweets or politicians being sent vulgar, violence-tinged messages, again and again we are told that trolls are holding the internet to ransom and damaging fragile members of the media and the political class. This is so opposite to the truth that it is almost surreal.
In reality, the power, the real power, rests with the trollhunters, not the trolls. All of the trolls that have been exposed in recent years have been quite sad individuals: Liam Stacey, a student with a drinking problem who was jailed for 56 days for writing abusive tweets about the then ill footballer Fabrice Muamba; John Nimmo, a 25-year-old ‘jobless hermit’ with ‘some level of learning difficulties’ who was jailed for six weeks for sending abusive tweets to feminists; and now Brenda Leyland, a rather sad-seeming woman from a small village in Leicestershire. These people wield no power whatsoever. The people with power are the trollhunters, the well-educated, well-connected columnists, activists and politicians who have signed up the entire media, both tabloid and broadsheet, to their shrill campaign of hunt-the-troll, and who have got the police to carry out dawn raids on people’s homes, the CPS to press charges against them, and the courts to bang them up in jail.
The trollhunters’ self-flattering depiction of themselves as lone, brave warriors against mobs of harmful abuse-spouters is an Orwellian warping of the reality – which is that it is the trollhunters who lead a mob, a mob of mediamen, coppers and prosecutors who get a much-needed collective political and moral kick from hunting down and jailing sad individuals whom they depict as a threat to the online, social and moral fabrics.
Perhaps the worst thing about the trollhunters is the censoriousness they have unleashed. They have painted the internet as a cesspit of foul and damaging speech that must be monitored and cleansed by the authorities. They claim only to target violent speech – threats of rape and death – but this isn’t true. For example, Nimmo, jailed for sending abusive tweets to a feminist campaigner, was not found guilty under the law that forbids the ‘writing’ or ‘uttering’ of a death threat, which is the Offences Against the Person Act. Rather, he was found guilty under the Communications Act 2003, which criminalises speech that is ‘grossly offensive… indecent, obscene or menacing’. In essence, his crime, like that of most other trolls arrested and fined or imprisoned, was to be horribly offensive. No wonder the police in Scotland could recently warn abusive tweeters of tennis player Andy Murray, and the rest of us, that ‘there is no place for personal abuse of any kind on [social media]’.
That the police can make such a sweeping, dictatorial statement, essentially decreeing that you must never be abusive or offensive online, is pretty terrifying. And it is entirely down to the trollhunters, the scourge of the web, who have nurtured mob-like behaviour, authoritarianism and intolerance across the internet.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. He will be speaking at the debate Should we fear democracy? at the Battle of Ideas festival, held at the Barbican in London on 18-19 October. Get tickets here.
Picture by: Sky News

Thank you Andrew, a very good well written article imo 

Better reporting from The Times today talking of the backlash against Brunt,how he feels bad and that his home address has been posted on twitter.
On the other hand I will never buy the Daily Record again in my life.
Sister paper of the Mirror it is trying to spin the backlash as a movement by people upset at the McCann,s being trolled.WTF.

Anne wrote:

Freedom wrote:To balance the better stuff, we're now at the complete opposite of the spectrum.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/lorrainekelly/5967774/Sun-columnist-Lorraine-Kelly-says-McCann-internet-trolls-deserve-prosecution.html

I can't access the whole article but the first bit is bad enough for me.

Remember this, love it, go for it Jon.

Thank you for that Anne I had never seen it.She calls herself a journalist.She is beyond contempt.

travis macbickle wrote:

Thank you for that Anne I had never seen it.She calls herself a journalist.She is beyond contempt.

She's not a journalist though, is she? Not in the sense of one who diligently researches to find out and report the facts of a situation. She's just a jerk with an opinion and, tellingly, a platform to voice it.

Andrew wrote:

Freedom wrote:Andrew, I understand your anger when harmless individuals are humiliated and maybe driven to suicide (the facts have yet to be ascertained re Brenda's death) while the real scum of the earth is allowed to do and say what it wants.

However, I don't see how anyone can say with certainty that one particularly vile Twitter poster is the same as another.

Yeah really angry about it all. No we don't know the exact facts re Brenda's death as yet. We do know that she was getting nasty messages from the likes of who I mentioned and from others that are the paid shills of the Mccanns.

It's common knowledge that that twitterer is that person I mentioned.

However to abide by forum rules then I need proof. Will find it when got time.

Sorry CF for my rant. Just really pissed off at this moment in time.  

Andrew be calm and strong.

Your energy,insight and input are much valued.

Andrew wrote:Jencalo_Amoral ‏@TheJENReturns  now2 minutes ago
@TheSpectator7 ~ hardly ever tweeted her afaik but yes Scotland Yard may call if they wish. Nowt to hide here #mccann

Deleted tweeted this just now.

Another of Deleted tweets from Dec 2013.

@Sweepyface - You'll piss off when they come knocking on the door. It's happened to others so be prepared.

The police need to look into Deleted. She is one vile and nasty piece of work.

Just what is her connection to the Mccanns apart from being on the payroll..?


Andrew do you have absolute proof this is the person.  It is not fact is it, therefore has been deleted as you are accusing and perhaps not rightly

Worry not Andrew, the list is up in full on the other site where PeterMac has posted it, so it will be seen. I was deeply shocked to read them. I also read yesterday that I was dead, having been identified by a tweeter basilandmanuel as Sweepyface.

I cannot for the life of me understand why this woman would commit suicide.

I think the mods are right not to post the tweets here but having read them I totally appreciate you are very, very angry and you're entitled to show it. This is yet another unbelievable, inhuman outrage.
We should not so much be angry as furious, enough is enough. Seven years of spin and false sightings -

Trial by media - TM have a media monitoring unit of their own, which tells me that knowing what people say about them is more important than spending money on finding their child. How long has this media monitoring unit been in existence? As from September 2007 is my guess which leads me to think that the main part of donations received are spent on this sort of thing.

Why was Sky in the pocket of TM? Right from the start, to such an extend that when they flew back to the UK in September 2007, Gerry phoned Sky and told them 'Be there!'

Well, at least there will be an inquest, let's hope Brunt gets his just deserts. We should make a list with references of his tweets and reports which were hardly flattering for the McCanns.

The tweets are on the link I posted tigger on two different threads here. 

 What I don't want here is people named and outed, especially if there is no proof, we do not need to lower ourselves to that level, we moan enough when the pro trolls do it, we need to rise above it, anger or not and inform the police of any threatening or malicious tweets or postings. I'm also sure someone is keeping a note of all their nasty communications from what I read elsewhere.

Sonia Poulton Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJ7aDmcuG4&feature=youtu.be

Thanks Scrants for posting this on Blacksmith thread, but I will also put it here for Brenda...

I know he doesn't like us c & p his blogs, but I think he would let us make an exception for Brenda.

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Only Some Lives Matter

AJS writes: I read the news of Brenda Leyland’s death with a sense of bewildered  sadness. She was a reader of the Bureau, of course, but I never had any direct contact with her.
The shock of her sudden death was bad enough; what made it immeasurably worse was the casual brutality of its reporting. McCann Troll found dead: that was the front page epitaph of nearly every newspaper and broadcaster. Could there have been a been a more horrific contrast between seven years reporting of a missing child – not even known to be dead – and her family, in which every single report in the MSM had dripped with oleaginous, soap-opera  false emotion and infantilism, and this cold and uninterested despatch of a human tragedy? It was truly horrible, like the the thump of an anonymous shrouded corpse being tossed into a pauper’s grave. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
The poet and churchman John Donne’s avowal that, in a mysterious and incomprehensible way, every death in some sense diminishes us all, words that have been endlessly quoted in  modern times, not least in the media,  as an assertion of our shared humanity, had been tossed aside with equally casual contempt. Only some deaths matter.  
So deep has this spiritual degradation  gone that the media  didn’t even notice the enormity of what they had written. Only as the day went on, and only under the pressure of shocked feedback, did the stories start getting modified and re-written, a bit at a time, to reduce their mortuary-slab  indifference.
Those of us with experience of the modern U.K media know that the one thing they can never get near describing is real life itself, only distorted soap-opera perversions of it. Now, it seems, they can’t  handle real death either. And those of us with that experience can easily  forget how truly terrifying the descent of the media can be to those who have never encountered it – they are literally knocked back, breathless, as these monsters are suddenly marching at them, cameras and microphones thrust forward like offensive  weapons, demanding answers. Afterwards they are in a state of shock as they try to make sense of what has been visited upon them and what their lives may be like in future. Look at the shock in those hauntingly expressive eyes of Brenda Leyland as that rat-faced degenerate Brunt – a true representative of what the media have become – menaces her. Only some lives matter.
I found myself  brooding at intervals throughout the day on  what the poor woman must have been confronting in those lonely last hours. It somehow reminded me of another appalling end, that of the critic Walter Benjamin who, like Brenda Leyland, wandered like a wraith, a spectre, for his last hours, apparently completely alone and beyond the reach of a helping arm, before deciding, at length, that he had to die.
How terrible. How unutterably sad.

http://blacksmithbureau.blogspot.co.uk/

Here is the actual video, link has already been posted, by Sonia Poulton

We are not trolls to question  the disappearance of Madeleine McCann





Thank you Sonia

Thank you Sonia. I admire you!

Thanks to Joana Morais..............



Mysterious death of woman who 'attacked' the McCanns online
7 October 2014 | Posted by  Joana Morais 




Maddie Case: English woman was found dead in a hotel room
British Media Regulator has received 34 complaints over Sky News report

by Marisa Rodrigues

The English authorities have not yet been able to explain the death of a woman accused of “attacking” Kate and Gerry, Madeleine McCann's parents, on the social media. Brenda Leyland, 63 years old, was found dead in a hotel room, two days after her identity was exposed in a Sky News report.

Brenda's name, according to that English TV channel, was reportedly included in a list given to the Metropolitan Police along with dozens of persons who have made comments considered excessive against Kate and Gerry. This is a 80-page dossier containing comments from Twitter, Facebook and online forums against the couple, some of which death threats.


Brenda was just another of the couple's critics. She has allegedly written that the child's parents should suffer “for the rest of their miserable lives”, and that Kate and Gerry “should burn in hell” and live "“in total misery”.

A Sky News report crew decided to doorstep Brenda at her house in Leicester, where the McCanns live. With the camera always on and without protecting the woman's face the reporter asked her why she wrote those messages on Twitter, to which she replied “I’m entitled to do that”. Then the reporter informed her the police was investigating her activities. The woman did not show concern.

The report was broadcast on Wednesday and the media harassment that ensued has allegedly forced her to leave her home. On Saturday night, the police were called to a hotel in Leicester and Brenda was found dead in one of the rooms. At that time, the local police said the death was not being treated as suspicious. But the causes are not yet known.

Criticism about the outing

Sky News and the reporter have been severely criticized by the British public opinion. Ofcom, the body that regulates the activity of the Media in the United Kingdom, received 34 complaints about the report and is considering whether to open an investigation against its authors.

in Jornal de notícias, paper edition, October 7 2014

English return next week

Scotland Yard (SY) is expected in Faro next week for a meeting at the Judiciary Police Directorship of Faro. The meeting between the leaders of the two police forces will be used to work out the details of the next steps in the Algarve, within the scope of the English investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine.

The team led by Andy Redwood wants to question “seven persons of interest”, including the three men that had previously testified.

JN knows that there is still no date set for the completion of these steps which appear in fifth letter rogatory sent by the British authorities in August and received by the Public Ministry after the searches in Praia da Luz failed to produce any results.

SY's “Operation Grange”, started in 2011 - four years after the disappearance of Madeleine - and has already cost over nine million euros.

in Jornal de notícias, paper edition, October 7 2014

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2014/10/mysterious-death-of-woman-who-attacked.html

candyfloss wrote:Here is the actual video, link has already been posted, by Sonia Poulton

We are not trolls to question  the disappearance of Madeleine McCann





Thank you Sonia

Wow, fantastic Sonia - just what`s needed right now. Thank you so much.

Bravo to Blacksmith and Sonia Poulton..I think if anything, rather than silencing critics, this tragic event will actually make more people stand up to be counted and demand to be heard

Absolutely great stuff from Sonia.

Babalou ‏@B_balou 11 mins11 minutes ago
Robert Sharp: "Brenda Leyland & Twitter Storms" http://www.robertsharp.co.uk/2014/10/07/brenda-leyland-and-twitter-storms/ … "...I see none that I would describe as threats or abuse." #McCann

What the hell is Jerry Lawton on about, just posted this tweet.....


Jerry Lawton ‏@JerryLawton 49 secs49 seconds ago
Kate #McCann returns to gym despite knowing one fellow fitness fanatic is a secret troll who posted online abuse about her

candyfloss wrote:What the hell is Jerry Lawton on about, just posted this tweet.....


Jerry Lawton ‏@JerryLawton 49 secs49 seconds ago
Kate #McCann returns to gym despite knowing one fellow fitness fanatic is a secret troll who posted online abuse about her

Is it saying Brenda and Kate has been in the same surroundings ?