Thursday, April 21, 2011

Somewhat over the top

Police state, shrieks Stephen Glover in the Telegraph. Judges are making law, preventing the truth from coming out. Another article in the same rather unexciting newspaper emphasises that it is Mr Justice Eady who
made the injunction “against the world” rather than just against national newspapers and broadcasters.

His order seeks to prevent the publication of “intimate photographs” of a married public figure after a woman tried to sell them for a “large sum of money”.

The judge said the woman “owed” the claimant, identified only as OPQ, a “duty of confidence” and breaching his privacy would damage the health of the man and his family.

His order is intended to cover discussion of the case online as well as in traditional media, despite the difficulties in enforcing it.

The injunction contra mundum is intended to be never-ending and, as its Latin name suggests, applies to the entire world.
Well contra mundum sounds to me unenforceable and, it would appear, a number of people know the names of the celebs in question and are prepared to publish those names in the comments to Stephen Glover's piece. Mr Glover himself is not prepared to find out what happens if you go against a ruling he considers to be unjust. A dissident he is not.

As it happens, I have heard Mr Justice Eady's name before a few times, particularly in connection with the libel tourism case of Rachel Ehrenfeld.

Libel tourism is a serious problem that this government, just like the last one did, is promising to deal with and, indeed, legislation is going through Parliament. The information in Dr Ehrenfeld's book (yes, yes, she is a friend) is of huge importance as it deals with terror financing.

The private lives of TV celebs, be they never that household (actually, I have not heard of them) is of no public interest. The idea that Britain is close to a police state because journalists are being prevented from publishing salacious details about people's private lives is stuff and nonsense.

4 comments:

  1. I am of the opinion that you start out with a privacy law to protect people from the press and you end up with a president of one 'free country' who is so above the law at home that he ends up bribing the prime minister of another. Privacy laws and immunity from prosecution are two cloaks of the despot. So what if premiership footballers don't want to be the 'victims' of kiss and tell stories? If they spent as much on the girls as they do on the injunctions, they wouldn't need the injunctions. Rich people do not need the law to protect their privacy.

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  2. And what gives you or anybody else the right to decide that people have no right to their private lives? That, may I point out, is precisely the definition of that authoritarian state that people blithely throw around: the notion that your life belongs to the rest of the state and you have no right to it at all.

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  3. well if you takr the publics money to perform you become the focus of their intrest so either enjoy it or quit your megabuck job and flip burgers in mcDs And yes England is a police state, Bristol proves that, actually it is below a police state as they are so inept and b useless thay have to criminalise the law abideing public cos the criminals are too hard to catch, that is why I left (either I went or became a criminal and above the law!)

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  4. Well, britchris, I don't know where you went to but they are welcome to you and to your rubbish.

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