In relation to gagging orders, which apparently protect the rich and famous from the consequence of their misdeeds, there seems to be agreement that it is up to Parliament to act to restrain their use. But this misses the point. At the core of the judgments given by the courts lies the Human Rights Act. The judges are being criticised for making unpopular orders (well, of course the media wouldn’t like them, would they?), but all they are doing is carrying out the will of Parliament. The words of the Human Rights Act, like all statutes, are susceptible of varying interpretation, and there is a particularly difficult and sensitive balancing act for judges to carry out in this instance. They have to balance the right of freedom of expression against the right to a private and family life, and it is no wonder that some commentators are offended by the particular results. There are calls for Parliament to amend the law, but I cannot envisage any wording in new legislation that would avoid the need for the judges to take nuanced decisions in borderline cases. So let us not blame the judges.
I do however blame the women. In many of the cases of gagging orders we read about, women have sold their favours to celebrities and then have tried to make even more money out of the situation by offering to sell their “kiss and tell” stories to the papers. This is no doubt an unpopular point of view on my part, but I feel quite ashamed by these women’s behaviour, although some say they have the right to “speak out” and “set the record straight.” What word do we have for women who make lots of money from illicit sex?
The newspapers are commercial organisations who pander to their readers prejudices and interests.
We blame the newspapers for publishing tacky gossip, but they only do it because the general public lap the stuff up like cats to cream.
I think it might be an interesting angle to look at why people lap this stuff up and whether it is the general public that is getting out of control.
Trying to curb the newspapers reporting of gossip would be akin to the clamping down on drugs, drinking or smoking – pointless as people will always find a way round the ban.
Much more interesting would be to wonder if a social change could take place akin to how drink/driving was once accepted, but is now a mark of serious shame.
I personally look forward to a world where people just shrug and say “whatever” when a news report tries to comment on some z-list celeb being seen in a nightclub.
Save the gossip for genuine stories, not the endless drip feeding of tittle-tattle.
It is much more than newspapers lapping up the juicy bits. Who really bothers to read it in its full page? It’s again about the freedom of speech. And that is vital to us all.
A civilised society cannot play around with the ‘human right’ of people to speak out and voice their pleasure or displeasure. It is the act of freedom.
Why should people who ask us to vote for them be empowered to keep their duplicitous deeds under wrap because it may embarrass them? They should have thought about that before taking the position they did. And, any children are the people whom these offenders should be worrying about. Can you imagine the mess the culprit will create if he feels no one will know or find out, including his children. Jack the Ripper comes to mind. Or, Fritzel.
Why should killers be unnamed in society? What good could that be to any of us. Once upon a time offenders were exposed by being put in the stocks in the village street. Now they run cunningly away by paying huge cover up fees to lawyers and judges. And how will the poor hide their shame? Or will this be simply a rich or powerful mans out?
When they are cheating the tax payer the tax payer should know about it so they can be rid of them.
The real message here is, those in power, example, the Duke of York, want to hide their lack of judgment or down right hypocrisy. They don’t want us to know about it because they lose face. Those they exploit are then turned into wrong doers. The gold digger, the Jezebel. That is not good enough.
Remember, Hitler hid his deeds from the public as he too wanted to be thought of as the saviour of his nation. Look how that turned out. Is that what you want?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that convicted criminals shouldn’t be named – or that legitimate issues of public interest should be censored.
Although, I do think there is a problem with naming suspects in some situations.
However, is knowing that a z-list celebrity is sleeping with someone other than their officially named partner really a matter of public interest?
In a modern society shouldn’t we actually say “so what” to such infidelities, or do we still have a Victorian attitude to such issues?
“What word do we have for women who make lots of money from illicit sex?”
Shrewd, rich…Should have gone into politics, Monika Lewinsky ! 😉
There is a more serious issue than this, I really couldn’t care less about the celebs it’s part and parcel to me. There are the men named in rape cases later found innocent, there is the Bristol landlord questioned by Police with his name in lights all around the world who was totally innocent. These are the people we should protect not those whose aim was fame and fortune, if it’s a lie sue for slander or libel you can afford it unless it maybe true !
Hounding and stalking for a story are an infringement but if there is credible witness testimony a story is true, print it if your lawyer says ok. Do I care who John Terry got his leg over….Not really, these things happen it’s called life. Did John Major’s career stop ? Bill Clinton ? And dare I mention the Italian ? Only the papers
think this type of thing sells papers, it really doesn’t but they have to fill them up with some gossip. Grow up !
Baroness Deech, My view of you has taken another turn for the worse. It wasn’t that high after your ‘blame the victim’ nonsense about Oxbridge.
What on earth would you tell these people seeking secrecy and super-injunctions if they lived in America, where the rights of wronged women are protected by the First Amendment ?
The American phrase ‘Suck it up, dude!’ seems to suffice. The idea that we in Britain seem quite happy not to stick to the principles of the First Amendment is disgraceful and is a damning indictment of our judiciary and legislature.
“The words of the Human Rights Act, like all statutes, are susceptible of varying interpretation”. I blame Parliament: far too many appointed peers with nothing to loose. Perhaps if they were elected clarity and quality standards might improve?
“What word do we have for women who make lots of money from illicit sex?”
Illicit: Adjective; forbidden by law, rules, or custom.
Interesting, what forms of sex are forbidden by law?
Interesting: what forms of sex are banned by rules?
Interesting: what forms of sex are banned by custom?
The word must be ‘Easy’!
Experience tells
that all progressively-positivising, health-promoting, individual-human-development, sexual-impairment-remedial, and personal-maturation-supportive sex-education and sex-performance are, in every Civilisation, Constitution, Law, Regulation, Custom, Culture, Society, Religion, and Marketplace around the English-speaking world,
prohibited.
UK registered sex-clubs-for-men employ women with little or no sexual-performance skill, to sell to the lonely man, 20 minutes of ‘hand-job’, literally no better described than “a begrudged forced orgasm wank” (quote me).
======================
But Baroness Deech is onto much more human-development-impairing ‘normalities’ when she points to ‘human-rights’, ‘privacies’, ‘freedom of expression’, ‘the rich and famous (versus the poor and unknown)’, ‘gagging’, ‘unimaginability of effective new wording in legislation’ and ‘need for nuancing by judges’.
It is the many and variously hatching ‘Human Rights Acts’ that are weak, toothless, love-less, covenant-stifling, and thereby inedequate,
it is the corruptly-privately-owned sources of them that is weakening and now probably ‘self-extincting’ all Human races on Earth
and huge-numbers of innocent life-supportive natural-species and non-renewable resources into the ‘bargain’.
Obscene amounts of monetary bribes (qua ‘earnings’, ‘costs’, ‘pay’, ‘rewards’, ‘motivators’, ‘bonuses’) are being blackmailingly-demanded and co-dependently-given, from the Common Purse
for increasingly costly and ‘indispensable’ Professional, Governance, Judiciary, Human-Rights Courts, Academia, Religious, and Marketplace Centres wherein the ever-negativising uroboric and ever-lipotoxifying vicious-circles of esotericly-revolving high-‘earners’ and their exclusive professional associations and spendthrift lifestyles, burgeon;
whilst the absolutely basic essential for sustain-worthiness and sustain-ability of the Human_race and its Governance, Planet-Management, Individual-Human-Development, and Collective-Next-Planet-Colonisation-Space-fleet,
namely the Ever-Progressive-Listing of Needs & Affordable-Hows,
is nowhere to be found, studied, and ongoingly expertly-cum-democratically serviced and up-dated.
=======================
If anyone thinks the above to be fantastically exaggerative, let her and him carefully record “How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth”, and replay the two footages, by two different bodies-of-expertise additionally spokesperson’d by David Attenborough, reporting that
(1) Earth’s Natural Systems and Resources are Finite; but Humankind’s Present-Day Worlwide Consumption, of Non-Renewable as well as of Renewable Resources, both quantatively and qualitively already requires one-and-a-half Earths to sustain it;
(2) 10% of the World’s Peoples, namely the ‘White First World’, are destroying (‘consuming’) more than 70% of the Earth’s resources, life-supports, and lifeform-species.
Then come back and tell me where I could join a truly sustain-worthy local community of any kind.
Please.
=============
0341W270411.JSDM.Plymouth PL6___.
I’m surprised at how few of you seem to be uncomfortable with the idea of the courts, and by extension Parliament, deciding what news is too private to publish in a free society. Especially troubling is that the super-injunction prevents any oversight of its own use. How can a democratic society countenance this? I can see the allure of protecting the families of the people who do wrong, but where does it stop? If a figure who bangs on about family and values is having an affair, doesn’t the public have the right to know that he isn’t living up to those values? If you accept that the soccer star, why not a politician or religious figure? Why stop at protecting those families? If a person is convicted of a crime, their family presumably suffers considerably. Why not protect them from the media’s glare by forbidding the publication of names related to crimes?
Also, if Baroness Deech is going to be ashamed of the women, I’m going to be ashamed of the men who enter public life knowing what sorts of people, including those women, are lurking about, yet allow their blood to in a direction other than towards their brains.
In the end, a tool that helps the elite cover up their mistakes, and the fact that they even made a mistake, by using government authority to prevent their publication sickens me and should sicken you. Blaming the trollops while lauding the judges who grant super-injunctions just adds insult to injury.
Rich – please note I find the men at fault too; there is an easy way for them to keep out of the press, and that is to behave themselves. But the judges really have to apply the wording of the Human Rights Act, with these consequences. And they can only apply them when applications are made to them. I agree that the unaffordability of legal action is a real problem although there are arrangements that can help (Jackson Report).
So what should Vicky Haigh have done to keep herself out of the press, and to have prevented a superinjunction being issued against her?
Obviously your logic is that superinjunctions are used by men to hide bad behaviour, so what’s the woman in this case been up to?
That was not my logic. I object to women selling their stories of “intimacy”; that is not the case in relation to Ms Haigh. She seems to have had lots of publicity but I don’t know anything else about her situation.
She was threatened with jail for speaking to her MP.
““What word do we have for women who make lots of money from illicit sex?”
Shrewd, rich…Should have gone into politics, Monika Lewinsky ! ”
The word certainly isn’t ‘prostitute’, because they, as members of the oldest profession, would not talk about their clients in this way.
Let’s give Andrew Marr credit for saying that he now feels uncomfortable about his actions.
On a legal point, what right do the judges have to impose those conditions anyway? They certainly should not impinge on parliamentary privilege; indeed information on court rulings should be made available to all who request it, after a certain time-lapse.
On a cultural point, I, as a viewer/listener/follower of this or that celebrity, couldn’t care less about the details of their private lives, one way or the other. If someone is good at their job, then keep them on. If they’ve committed a crime, then put them in jail for a while. Besides that, what’s the fuss all about?
Slowly the truth is oozing from between the sheets.
But before I write about that, I would like to ask why Parliament and the courts feel the need to ‘protect’ grown men, who know full well when they pick up women for sex, that these same women may feel the right to tell the world they were fancied by fame. Why should they not? Did he make a pact with them at the time telling them they had the option to refuse him if they did not want to remain silent? These low life people are big boys who play in a rough world. The are boastful and over bearing and they exploit the exploitable because it excites them to do so.
Well, by the same token, it excites the women to tell the world that fame fancied them enough to take the chance. And most of them are not one night stands, no matter what they want to tell the wife. And it is not the courts business to interfere in the sexual play of any man or women. They knew what they were doing when they decided to go for it.
However, this secrecy act has very little to do with the exploits of the Andrew Marrs of this world. It is more to do with the machinations of Sir Fred Goodwin and what the government wants to keep quiet in the theft of the peoples social funds. There lies the real reason for fast forwarding the ‘right to privacy’ law.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8475841/Sir-Fred-Goodwin-under-pressure-over-super-injunction.html
There is more the government wants to cover and these injunctions are a good way to threaten people with prison should they dare expose what is going on. Yes, they are keeping murderers crimes quiet by this method. Only the press have been forbidden to reveal what they know.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/analysis-how-the-human-rights-act-led-to-super-injunctions/
Of course it is difficult to really comment on what is being stopped from discussion. But, it is serious and will be of detriment to us all.
The courts already have the right to hear cases in camera. Which means no reporting or discussion must take place. With respect to children there has been the order of the courts to make a child or children wards of the court. Which also stops reporting and denies any right of public knowledge.
Why do you think the Public hears nothing about the terrible events of children like baby Peter Connolly, until it is felt they can hide the facts no longer?
These court cases are not always in the best interests of children or their families and the law was going to change on these cases because all it does is cover government error. And devastating government error at that. Now, it is felt it may be best to allow those who make such dreadful judgments to face the music of public opinion. Therebye making them more wary of their decisions.
If we have more secrets, soon we will know far less than we do now, and believe me, we know very little of the murky world in this kind of silence and secrecy.
Governments despise the freedom of information act. And they are looking for ways to conceal that which they don’t want the public to know.
It is not in any of our interests to allow this kind of sinister back room dealing. Money, power and those who want to hide from their actions are the only ones who gain from this overt skull duggery.
If it continues, we will all have to get our information from our friends abroad who live in open societies. Or, hope for more people like Julian Assange and his Wikileak organization. But if these Parliamentarians and their stooges in the courts have their way, they will close ranks and deny us the right to know anything they do that is not for our good. And at the same time, ask us to vote them into power to dupe us as craftily as they did with the banking crisis.
Which brings us back to Sir Fred Goodwin. He can reveal what they don’t want him to, so he gets the super injunction to cover him and them from paying for their misdeeds.