Lucy Connolly is set to be freed from prison today. She was sentenced to 31 months in HMP Peterborough last October for inciting racial hatred with a ‘threatening or abusive’ tweet in the aftermath of the Southport killings, having pleaded guilty in Birmingham Crown Court. Her appeal for early release was rejected in the Court of Appeal in May. According to the Mail, she will nonetheless walk free in a matter of hours. Ten months in prison for one deleted tweet…
UPDATE: Connolly has now been released.
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”