Jason Arday found dead today.

Primrose53

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

There have been some truly vile comments made about Anne Widdecombe after her death. She was barely cold before some people were rushing to say horrible things about her, her politics and her Party. A lot of it was lies and they were shared on here too.

Oh dear, that smacks of whataboutery. Refresh my memory about these vile comments please?

I’m not pointing a finger, I’m saying that wrongs done to two people doesn’t make them excusable. The media sensationalising is just horrible in all respects, and we are guilty of compounding that.

but Casdon I never said it did.

I know. In my book there was no justification for the level of unkind comment or judgement in either case. One does not mitigate the other.

Casdon

Primrose53

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

There have been some truly vile comments made about Anne Widdecombe after her death. She was barely cold before some people were rushing to say horrible things about her, her politics and her Party. A lot of it was lies and they were shared on here too.

When did two wrongs start making a right?

Wwm2 posed a question and said “it simply isn’t done”. I answered it truthfully. There WERE vile things said about AW and they are still on here so people can check what they actually said.

Primrose53

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

There have been some truly vile comments made about Anne Widdecombe after her death. She was barely cold before some people were rushing to say horrible things about her, her politics and her Party. A lot of it was lies and they were shared on here too.

Yes, and people from both ends of the political spectrum said how horrible that was. I didn't agree with AW at all, but respected her right to hold her beliefs and appreciated her sense of humour.

I will miss her on the Jeremy Vine show, which I may well stop watching soon, as I find his idiocy more offensive than AW's views.

I fully endorse people's right to believe things that are the opposite to my views. Where I part company is when they show disrespect for those who disagree with them. ROFL emojis and so on are not the sort of thing that AW would have used had she been a poster on here. She was forthright and single minded in her views, which is fair enough (I can be the same) but she was never scornful and superior in her expression of those views, and I respected her for that.

Primrose53

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

There have been some truly vile comments made about Anne Widdecombe after her death. She was barely cold before some people were rushing to say horrible things about her, her politics and her Party. A lot of it was lies and they were shared on here too.

When did two wrongs start making a right?

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

I agree, so sad. What is motivating people I wonder?

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

There have been some truly vile comments made about Anne Widdecombe after her death. She was barely cold before some people were rushing to say horrible things about her, her politics and her Party. A lot of it was lies and they were shared on here too.

An astonishing amount of coverage and column inches devoted to this one individual.

Quite puzzling.

foxie48

Not just you Lemonjam I, too, find it "bizarre" but more than that, I feel incredibly sad that following the death of Arday there is such a lack of sympathy for what he must have been experiencing to have taken his own life.

Exactly so. His last days recorded by his friends make harrowing reading.

No one should be subjected to such hatred.

Not just you Lemonjam I, too, find it "bizarre" but more than that, I feel incredibly sad that following the death of Arday there is such a lack of sympathy for what he must have been experiencing to have taken his own life.

A contribution to this tragedy - and it is one - is that if you were appointing a secretary or a finance clerk due diligence would be done, references taken, a competence test would be part of the appointments process. Cambridge University and its School of Education is absolutely culpable for allowing this fragile man to be so elevated above what he was capable of.

valdali

I think for me, I felt entitled to comment on the Ardrey thread because he wasn't just a Cambridge professor with Learning difficulties . He was a minor celebrity (he was publishing, and it's out in USA, his autoboigraphy for goodness sake).
there are many people who do wrong, Paula Venables for eg, who have not reached this marker of "celebrity" and yet they are still considered game for us to comment on on threads.

Cliff Richard when BBC said he was being investigated for paedophilia, led on main news with a shot of a police helicopter hovering over his mansion. He hadn't even been informed of the raid & was falsley accused. Can you imagine how that felt?

They are both white. I suspect that sadly for some, Jason Ardrey's race was a factor. But for most of us, it was just the sheer amazement at what had happened, & race wasn't a factor.

You can have the debate about how much responsibility the media (SM included) take for those they pile onto. As a phenomenon it makes me very uneasy.

But don't make out that Jason Ardrey suffered anything unique. Did any of those others accused of plagiarism have an autobiography coming out?

Crikey- what a comparison! You were amazed about a 'minor celebrity' (your words), university professor being accused of plagiarism (not an arrest able offence and neither does it involve corporate corruption).

And you go on to say "there are many people that do wrong and compare Ardaay's to Paula Venables and Cliff Richard.

1) Paula Venables, the corporate architect of arguably the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.

2) The reported imminent police arrest of Cliff Richard, a global celebrity for over 50 years, for paedophilia.

Were PV and CR made subject to the same level of relentless scrutiny, in all aspects of their life to prove or disprove what they were accused of- arguably both just a bit more serious than academic plagiarism.

Everyone is entitled to comment on any Gransnet thread. How and what we post about is our personal responsibility.

You are of course entitled to you level of amazement about what you initially read about Cafnas's claims against Arday of plagiarism and any subsequent things you read about him by the main stream media relentless scrutiny into all aspects of his life. But I find the comparison of Arday 'doing wrong' to Paula Venables and Cliff Richard ( found not to have done anything wrong btw) somewhat bizarre. Maybe thats just me 🤷‍♀️

Whitewavemark2

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

Well said.

To Galaxy - that's a fair post. I do sometimes get frustrated with what feels like you making vague statements that appear to position you as having the right to steer the conversation without giving your own views, but I agree that we need to allow all kinds of free speech.

Maybe my irritation is also that you don't seem to accept that you're not the only person to feel that way? If you sometimes gave your point of view, rather than a 'you are all biased' comment it would help, but I am fully aware that my viewpoint doesn't matter to you .

To be very bleak I see absolutely no way to move forward in the general discussion (I don't mean on GN but rather out in the real world)
I can't honestly disagree here, either, unfortunately. I'm not saying it is unfortunate that we agree, but that it's unfortunate that there are entrenched views that I see as racist (the awful 'race card'/'only got the job because he is black' ones) and the free speech and 'right to investigate whatever needs investigating ones'. Both are right, IMO, yet they don't sit well together.

I also believe that there is a massive yet unacknowledged difference between what is in the public interest and what interests the public, and this case seems to me to be in the latter camp.

One academic in one university is not remotely responsible for the education of the youth of today. Even students on the courses he teaches on (very few, probably, at Professor level) won't suffer from any shortfalls in his teaching abilities. In my (humbler, but extensive) experience, the odds are that he would find that his modules would be avoided if they were badly taught, so his influence would be relatively low.

That is in no way to excuse any misconduct. If he is proved to be guilty he should be dismissed, and I've never said otherwise.
But should he be reviled in the press and social media? I don't think so, and 'What about Mandelson/Flack/Dolezal?' won't change that point of view, as they are very different cases.

My feelings on this are that professors are ordinary people doing ordinary jobs (unlike 'celebrities') and don't deserve to have their lives ripped apart as JA's was - by the Guardian or any other paper - unless there is a victim. Maybe looking at the Russell Brand case is a reasonable comparison? There, there were victims, yet there were also numerous 'innocent until proven guilty' comments from what seems to me to be the same 'camp' who have denigrated Jason Arday. Same with Phillip Schofield.

I think it's a huge leap to rank Cliff Richard and Paula Venables with Jason Arday. Cliff Richard is basically a national treasure (and the BBC apologised and apid millions in compensation for the distress it caused) and Paula Venables was in the news because the organisation that she was in charge of put people in prison (wrongly) caused several suicides, bankrupted numerous completely innocent people and had done her best to lead a complete cover up. Are you really comparing Arday, whom you describe as a "minor celebrity" to this?

Sure, agreed, tho it depends on the comments, I was in there too.

But would he have appeared here in an O/P had he been a white professor gone pear shaped. Which happens as do other sad endings of their lives in one way or another.

And I have never, ever seen a thread in GN on a Professor before accused of what he was and the almost immediate leaps into DEI.

I think for me, I felt entitled to comment on the Ardrey thread because he wasn't just a Cambridge professor with Learning difficulties . He was a minor celebrity (he was publishing, and it's out in USA, his autoboigraphy for goodness sake).
there are many people who do wrong, Paula Venables for eg, who have not reached this marker of "celebrity" and yet they are still considered game for us to comment on on threads.

Cliff Richard when BBC said he was being investigated for paedophilia, led on main news with a shot of a police helicopter hovering over his mansion. He hadn't even been informed of the raid & was falsley accused. Can you imagine how that felt?

They are both white. I suspect that sadly for some, Jason Ardrey's race was a factor. But for most of us, it was just the sheer amazement at what had happened, & race wasn't a factor.

You can have the debate about how much responsibility the media (SM included) take for those they pile onto. As a phenomenon it makes me very uneasy.

But don't make out that Jason Ardrey suffered anything unique. Did any of those others accused of plagiarism have an autobiography coming out?

Primrose53

fancythat

Simplification of the whole thing, by anyone, does no one any favours.

Neither does posting reams and reams of quotes, links, thoughts and making the water even more muddy.

I meant simplification, as in it was all down to one reason. Whatever that reason may be.

Don’t you think that now the man is dead , crawling over his entrails is in very poor taste?

By all means question process and what led up to this but to continue going over Arday’s life is grim.

How would it appear if we took it into our heads to crawl over Widdecombes failures after her death. It simply isn’t done, or at least a decent interval should take place.

Farzanah

Most of us know very little about this man except what the media have chosen to put out.
It seems to me there is a certain gleeful energy generated when those who have been successful are publicly brought down - especially if that person is “different”, ie black and autistic in this case.
This is a fellow human being like us with flaws, which we all have, and loved ones who care about him. So sad.

He invented and embellished so much that we don’t even know if he really was diagnosed as autistic. On his application forms he would have been asked whether he had a disability and autism is classed as a disability. If he genuinely did have it and said so then he may have needed support of some kind.

For those alleging no support was offered, follow this down to the highlighted section, but also the headlines, ie public enquiry as to "why" and the role of the media/SM warrant consideration

Calls for public inquiry into Jason Arday 'witch hunt
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwymmp30711o

Includes:

“Lord Woolley told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme on Sunday he and a number of close friends had met Arday four days before he was found dead at a south London address.
He said Abbott and social activist Misan Harriman were among those who gathered to offer support as they had also experienced "horrible media attention".
He said Arday felt "hounded" and the relentless media coverage had been "a bloodsport".
"Diane said to him, she held his hand, and said we will help you get through this," he added.
"But on that day, we saw a man half his body weight and desperate beyond belief."
Lord Woolley said issues of plagiarism were constant in academia and that a number of individuals, who had been accused of plagiarism had not been subjected to the attention Arday had received.
"We have to ask this question, we have to talk about - which a lot of people don't want to talk about, is racism. You have to look at negatively differential treatment."
On 6 August Cambridge announced an independent investigation into Arday's appointment.

A University of Cambridge spokesperson told the BBC that during his time at the university, Arday had received a range of support in relation to his physical and mental well-being, including counselling and support and advice
Our support continued in the face of intense public and media scrutiny and after his resignation they added

Its worth asking

was the original Arday thread part of a witch hunt...did we all have a part in singling this man out

galaxy I don’t mind you using my name when you are talking about me. It helps if other people are interested in what you are posting😊

However, I’m not sure how your assertion fits with the law?