On 2012-11-18 12:10:02 +0000, GB said:
On 18/11/2012 08:10, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
<21899a02-cf8c-460d...@k6g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>, at
23:25:02 on Sat, 17 Nov 2012, Phil Mcbride <philmc...@gmail.com>
remarked:
We have tried to report the matter to the police as harassment but
they aren't interested. They said there must be a clear danger to life
for it to involve them.
That is of course wrong on various levels. The new harassment law comes
in on 25th November, which should make things clearer.
I have no idea what the email said, but suppose it was a bit of a rant along the lines of:
"I did my level best to sort your teeth out, but you didn't keep the d*** brace in. I think you're hopeless, you have the awful-looking teeth you deserve, and you only have yourself to blame. Don't darken the steps of my practice again."
That might be of interest to the GDC, but it's hardly harassment (in my view**). I don't want to get into details, but it would be wrong to give the OP the impression that the police ought to have acted unless you have more info about what was in the email.
I think you may be underestimating the success of the lobby groups who have been trying to bring in the criminalisation of any kind of critical speech on social media. They have been deliberately conflating the risks of small children[1] being bullied (although of course small children are not supposed to be using Facebook for instance) with any kind of rudeness among adults. It remains to be seen how much they have succeeded. Mr Perry is on record as taking one side on this issue.
[1] In this case, if the dentist was rude to a child, I think the GDC should make it plain to him this is unacceptable: but I don't think the criminal law should be involved.
--
Percy Picacity