It is wrong to insult an Olympian who has just missed out on a medal, and worse to bring his dead father into it. But, as Melanie Philips and others have pointed out in this morning’s papers, it is hardly criminal. Yesterday, Dorset police arrested a teenager after he sent a nasty message to Tom Daley, the Englishman who finished fourth in the synchronised diving on Monday. ‘You let your dad down and I hope you know that,’ said @Rileyy_69, on Twitter. Tom Daley’s father died last year of a brain tumour, so he, his friends and his supporters were understandably angry. Even @Rileyy_69 saw that he had crossed a line, and apologised, before threatening to drown Daley in a pool (a tweet he later deleted).
But he was too late. He had transgressed the boundaries of acceptable online opinion, and the baying online crowd wanted punishment.
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