ok so from memory this is what happened:
LP: something about identity politics
Spiney: something in reply
LP: All politics is identity politics
Love Detective: link to IWCA artice
[For those who don't use twitter, LDs link will have appeared in Penny's "mentions" and not in her timeline, assuming she doesn't follow LD. There will have been no way that she could reasonably have been mistaken that it was LD sending the link, unless she is using a weird twitter client.]
Spiney retweets the link
[For those not on twitter, the only way she will have been able to see that Spiney RTd the link is if she (a) followed spiney but not LD or (b) follows both but was logged out when LD tweeted it originally but logged in when Spiney RTd it. In that particular circumstance she could have seen the RT in her timeline, and may have been able to reply to that. A bit of forensics shows me that LD tweeted the link at
11:13am and Spiney RTd it between
11:39am and
11:46am whilst Laurie replied at
12:51pm which doesn't rule out the possibility that she saw spiney RT the link in her timeline, though it seems unlikely and she'd have to have been following Spiney.
Some client(s) when you reply to a something someone has rt'd includes both the original tweeter and the person who retweeted in the reply. I have no idea if she uses that client, but aside from looking at the tweet to see who has rt'd it, I also think it would be impossible to have seen Spiney's RT unless she followed him (which I imagine Spiney can confirm/deny)
There's fuckloads of clients for twitter out there and I've no idea how they all work - there may well be a genuine reason going on here that she's talking about but I don't know what it is and whatever it can only mean that she was definitely 100% calling Spiney racist, if it wasn't directed at LD]
Laurie then calls LD and Spiney racist ("Oh I see, you're racist, block")
Others chip in saying wtf? you think the IWCA are racist? LD = ex afa etc
Laurie complains to her timeline about the nasty bullies, a few ppl like Owen Jones sympathise then back out as they read the back story
People continue to ask LP why she hasn't apologised, until the point where she almost does it.. almost. But not to Spiney, and in a way that seems to confirm she was calling Spiney racist.
She said "you're right, the RT-reply system does make it unclear who that was directed at. My mistake, I apologise."
[this is the bit I've talked through above that I don't understand what she means. Whatever, if it wasn't directed at LD that means it was directed at Spiney]
Somewhere in this bit someone mentioned to her that IWCA have used Carter Ruck to sue before, and I think she maybe got a bit nervous, hence the attempt to apologise to LD whilst still finding a way to not admit she made a mistake even though that means calling Spiney racist.
It's a proper clusterfuck. everyone makes mistakes, everyone gets things wrong, everyone jumps to incorrect conclusions. That's fine, it happens. Admit the mistake, apologise, move on. It's not unforgivable to be wrong.
