Wednesday, April 17, 2013 

We are all bourgeois now.

As unhappy coincidences go, today's announced rise in unemployment seems as fitting a tribute to Maggie as anything else.  We all Thatcherites now, says David Cameron, and while you can't level the accusation against him that he believes unemployment an acceptable price to pay for his overall reforms, especially considering no government since has believed in full employment, his government is going way beyond Thatcher's obstinacy on economics.  She after all did relent to an extent when monetarism sent the economy into free fall; Cameron and Osborne seem likely to ignore the advice of the highest priests of neoliberalism, the IMF, to scale back on austerity, such is the way they've made it impossible to do so without humiliating themselves.

Just as I didn't watch the royal wedding (and why on earth would anyone, for that matter?), I somehow managed to avoid the funeral.  Quite why so many find something to admire in our ability to put on pageantry when required equally escapes me; authoritarian nations also tend to be pretty good at putting on a show, and yet with the exception of the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, we usually make fun of them precisely on that basis.  Just as the only reasonable reaction to goose-stepping soldiers is to laugh at them, so the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the monarchy and also now the chosen few regarded as being the equivalent of royalty ought to be mocked.  It is utterly ridiculous, almost everyone except for the dewy-eyed few know it to be ridiculous, and so undoubtedly this ridiculous tradition will continue to be rolled out for every major state event, such are our ways.

If nothing else, today has at least been revealing of how politicians regard each other in private.  Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were first elected to parliament in 1983 on "the longest suicide note in history" manifesto, but neither it seems had any objection to Thatcher being given a quasi-state funeral.  Indeed, it seems the only major thing the Tories added to the plans drawn up under the last government was the military aspect.  They might not have known that the right would take the opportunity of her death to attempt to portray her as second only to Churchill in the great national figure stakes, yet if they've had any such concerns since they certainly weren't on display today.  Nor has the week of hype and eulogising left the Mail drained; if anything, it's reached such a peak that you doubt they'll be able to top it when Liz pops her clogs.  "A journey's end", the front page read, while below they claim up to 250,000 were lining the route of the procession (since changed to a more realistic 50,000).  Just as you have to multiple the figures given by the police for any demonstration other than one by the Countryside Alliance by the power of 4, so it now seems you have to divide the numbers given by the Mail by the same amount.

Nor was the ceremony itself beyond critique.  Today wasn't the time and place to discuss her politics, said the Bishop of London, Richard Chatres, who then decided at the end that it actually was as he defended her over the infamous "no such thing as society" comments.  She did believe in society, and the interdependence of people, he said, which is almost certainly true; what went unsaid was that however you read her remarks, she clearly said people shouldn't even expect to be housed by the state. I don't think anyone disputes that first and foremost our responsibility is to look after ourselves; it's that a majority of us still believe that the state should provide an adequate safety net, whether that be in housing or benefits. Society is not the state, as the Tories said at the last election, but Thatcher's government did more to fray the threads that tie communities together and make up society than any since the war.

The real irony of today is that for all their tributes to her, not to forget George Osborne's solitary tear, Cameron spent his first years as Conservative leader trying to repair the damage her overthrow did to the party. Arguable as his overall success has been, the last week has been a reminder to everyone that her legacy is still inescapable.  To suggest this is unlikely to go down well in those places that the Tories need to win to get a majority next time out is to put it too lightly.  The overwhelming mood might be apathy rather than anger, such as that in Leeds and Edinburgh rather than Goldthorpe, yet you shouldn't bet against Labour using a few of the images of the past week come in 2015, hypocritical in the extreme or not.

This said, Cameron was right in saying we are all Thatcherites now.  At least he was if he was meant the political class, as they clearly are all Thatcherite in one sense or another.  A significant number of the population by contrast remain in favour of an alternative, it's just they aren't so much as offered one. Nor are they likely to be. And eventually, something is going to break.

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4/17/2013 09:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, April 15, 2013 

A small, ridiculous gesture for a massive, undignifed death jamboree.

One of the problems that comes from Labour deciding to just let the Tories have their week of mourning/deification with the very minimum of criticism is that you let the likes of George Galloway represent what a significant amount of people are thinking.  It was an utterly absurd, cowardly move for the BBC to not play Ding Dong in full, instead opting for the typical compromise that pleased neither side.  I really thought we'd moved past the point at which things that were in poor taste were banned/censored due to outside pressure, not least when it comes to music.  There's plenty of music in the top 40 that's offensive in terms of how objectively awful it is, but if people buy it, it gets played.  It's how the system works.  Start altering that and it renders the entire exercise even more completely and utterly pointless than it already is.  Also, regardless of what Guido or the Mail think, for 52,000 people to buy a song in one week purely as a protest only underlines how the attempts to claim Thatcher as our greatest peacetime prime minister are a step too far.

And so now Big Ben is to be silenced for the duration of Saint Margaret's funeral.  It's a small, ridiculous gesture for what is turning into a massive, undignified summation of how for all Thatcher's rolling back of the state, the parts that were in most need of trimming are still fully functioning.  Turning your back on the entire charade really does seem to be the best possible way to register discontent with what has been a fully fledged political campaign from the moment the news of her death came through.

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4/15/2013 08:32:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 11, 2013 

A political Queen.

Writing about Thatcher (and politicians in general), it's easy to forget that behind the often harsh, apparently uncaring exterior, there was a real, feeling woman who clearly was capable of great kindness as well as denouncing her opponents in the strongest of terms.  One of the more myth-squashing anecdotes from yesterday's Commons and Lords sessions was Lord Butler's retelling of how a student challenged her on referring to children as "illegitimate", despite their parentage not being something they had any control over.  Thatcher responded that it was better than calling them the alternative (bastard), yet later she reflected to Butler that having thought about it, the student had been right.  Looking at the photograph taken of her in Battersea Park only last month, I was reminded of my grandmother's passing last year, who also spent her final years battling with dementia.  Regardless of what we do with our lives, at the end every single one of us dies the same way, alone.

All the more reason why we shouldn't let Thatcher be remade into what is effectively political royalty.  The way Tory MPs tried to shout down both David Winnick and Glenda Jackson yesterday may well be typical Commons behaviour which all sides are often guilty of, yet it was surely inappropriate when so many of their colleagues made tributes that went far beyond the sycophantic and instead into the most slavering hero worship.  The idea she had any role in the fall of the Soviet Union beyond her early picking out of Gorbachev is absurd, as is her much overstated love of freedom.  She believed in it for those under Communism, not so much those under authoritarian regimes that were British allies.

Fair enough, David Cameron clearly admires her deeply, and so his rhetorical flourishes can be forgiven.  Ed Miliband also acquitted himself well, making a well-judged speech that covered both the good and the bad without riling either side. It's also unclear just how much of the planning for the funeral was done by which government: we now know Operation True Blue dates back to around 2006, indicating that some sort of public remembrance was going to take place regardless of who was in power. Which would have been fine. A ceremonial funeral goes well beyond that, giving her the same status as a royal, ignoring how one of the reasons we continue to grudgingly put up with Brenda is that she has stayed resolutely above politics.

The comparison is apt, because much as any criticism of Liz is treated as being akin to a modern form of blasphemy, so it seems the likes of the Mail now want Maggie to get the same treatment. As predictable as the outrage was from the usual suspects at those not treating their heroine's death with the due amount of respect, the Mail's pursuit of those behind one such death party is incredibly petty. Splashing two days in a row on the opponents rather than celebrating Thatcher's life and legacy seems a really odd way to go about things.

Then again, perhaps the Mail thinks focusing on the beastliness of some is the only way to win over those it would normally consider its natural allies.  To judge by the ratings the tribute programmes hastily screen on Monday picked up (3 million) and the number of views news stories on the major websites have received since, Thatcher's demise and the circus that has followed since might be fascinating the politics nerds (guilty), but it doesn't seem to be transfixing many others.

And why should it?  Those born on the day she left office are now 22, while the passing of time for those older appears to have dulled both the interests and opinions of the majority.  Moreover, we can either bemoan or celebrate her legacy, but none of the mainstream political parties want to truly break with it.  The battles she fought appear to be all but over, while her main disciple is urging Ed Miliband to not so much as inch leftwards.  Looks as though, yet again, it's up to the next generation to break the spell Thatcher cast over British politics.

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4/11/2013 09:11:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 

Anthems for a 17-year-old girl.

One thing almost completely buried (ho ho) by the passing of Margaret Hilda Thatcher (and credit where credit's due to both David Winnick and Glenda Jackson for refusing to go along with the consensus in today's tribute debate) has been the remarkable treatment meted out to Paris Brown, the unfortunately named 17-year-old appointed to be yoof crime tsar by Kent's police and crime commissioner.  Try to put aside the fact that Brown's mission was supposedly meant to be to bring the police and young people closer together, as "they used to be", or that almost no one wanted the PCCs in the first place, and instead marvel at the sheer laziness, cynicism and callousness involved in the Mail on Sunday's attack on someone still not old enough to cast a ballot herself.

You might recall that back in 2009 the Scottish Sunday Express ran what was quite possibly the most ill-judged and despicable newspaper piece in many years.  Written by Paula Murray, the article "exposed" what it described as the "shame" of the survivors of the Dunblane massacre, who now having reached 18 were daring to live their lives the way almost every other 18-year-old would. Murray had scoured their social networking profiles for the slightest evidence of "bad" behaviour, whether it be drinking, swearing, sex, getting tattoos or even into the odd fight, and instead of being told by her colleagues or indeed even her editor that this was just about the most appalling breach of privacy imaginable, Derek Lambie went ahead and splashed it on the front page.  Deserved opprobrium duly landed on the heads of all involved.

Four years later, and we have the first major evidence that the politicians and public figures of the future are likely to be damned for what they put on their Twitter or Facebook pages potentially decades previous.  The hatchet job performed on Brown is still astonishing though, both for the vehemence of the attack and the sheer breadth of what the MoS decided to focus on.  Understandably, most attention was focused on Brown's comments on "pikeys" and her description of everyone on Made in Chelsea as "fucking fags", but the paper also saw fit to draw attention to the fact that Brown talked of how the "worst thing about being single" was "coming home ... horny and having to sleep alone".  A young woman daring to express sexual desire in a public forum? How dare she!

Regardless of when she made some of the tweets, and as Brown swiftly deleted the account we can't check whether she did make some when she was 14 or 15 and not recently, there really isn't much here to get even slightly outraged about.  No, it isn't clever to say you're glad your little brother hit someone who gave his friend a black eye, nor should it be acceptable to call people fags or faggots regardless of the changing meaning of the word, although it should be remembered programmes like Made in Chelsea are produced with the intention of winding people up.  As for her attack on "pikeys", it's fairly apparent she was using the word not as an attack on gypsies directly, but in the sense it's came to be used in as shorthand for thieves in general.  Still not anywhere approaching OK, but are there many who can say that at Brown's age they didn't also make such sweeping condemnations of people, or even use racist language?  I know I can't.

Quite apart from the hysterical hypocrisy of the Mail stable of newspapers condemning someone's non-PC comments on race relations and gay rights, what really rankles is that they chose to draw attention to some of her more introspective, vulnerable tweets, including one where she's obviously criticising herself for how she has sometimes behaved when drunk.  17-year-old has on occasion had a drink! Hold the front page!

It was hardly surprising then when, presumably pressurised into doing so, Brown sat across from the PCC Anne Barnes apologising for the messages while crying her eyes out, all in front of the TV cameras.  I don't think I've seen a more pitiful sight in quite some time; a young person thought she was doing something to help those her own age, and was duly rewarded for it with the kind of attack usually reserved for those who have in some way or another attracted the Mail's ire.

Brown shouldn't have had to resign, but almost certainly had no option. Joe Jones says she have been fully vetted, with her social networking profiles looked at, yet is this really the kind of territory we're now getting into?  When teenagers can't even be allowed to make mistakes or say stupid things for fear they might later have them picked up on, we're in clear danger of creating a generation of politicians who are so desperately dull and have such indistinct opinions that the public becomes even less enthused with the system than they currently are.  Whatever you thought about Thatcher, she believed in what she was doing.  Plenty of those now growing up have the potential to be outstanding future leaders with similar qualities, and are presumably exactly the sort the Mail on Sunday would approve of.  If we're going to attempt to kill them off before they even get started because of daft things they've done on the internet, our democracy is going to be a very dry place indeed.

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4/10/2013 06:51:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, February 15, 2013 

The tabloids: publishing death porn since the advent of the printing press.

Much comment, understandably, on the Sun's decision to run a front page splash (and in this instance it really does seem the right word) on the death of Reeva Steenkamp, illustrated with a full page photo of the model and presenter appearing to undo her bikini top.  It's certainly tasteless, and as Marina Hyde notes, just happens to come the day after the One Billion Rising protests, the campaign intended to bring more attention to violence against women.

It's hardly the most egregious recent case of tabloid death porn though, and one which at the time barely caused a ripple of complaint as far as I can remember.  Back in 2008, the Daily Star splashed on the latest evidence heard at the trial of Mark Dixie, who was subsequently found guilty of the murder of Sally Anne Bowman.  "MY SEX WITH SALLY ANNE'S DEAD BODY", the front page screamed, alongside the ubiquitous shot of Bowman from her modelling catalogue, hands in the top of her jeans.

As for the motivation behind using such photographs to illustrate crime cases, Dixie's trial more than provided a clue.  Found on Dixie's digital camera was a video of a man masturbating over a copy of the Daily Mail, the front page of which featured a photograph of Bowman.  The police also found said copy of the Mail in Dixie's possesion, and noted the cover was dashed with a "sticky substance".  The Mail, all but needless to say, merely reported that the police had found a video of Dixie "performing a lewd sex act on the six-month anniversary of the model's death".  Not, you understand, which publication and what material had further energised his "lewd sex act".

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2/15/2013 06:12:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 23, 2011 

Paul Dacre must die!

It's always nice being surprised. Just when you think those behind this nation's tabloids couldn't be any more hypocritical, pathetic or cowardly, along comes the legal threat from the Daily Mail to Kevin Arscott, blogger at Angry Mob. Two years ago he wrote a furious post on an atypical piece of Mail immigration dog-whistling which took what was a heart-warming story on the number of babies treated on a ward in Chelsea and Westminster hospital and turned it into an example of how NHS services were being exploited by foreigners, while also expressing horror at the number of mothers who themselves had been born abroad even if they were British citizens or legally resident here.

By the standards of swear blogging (including some of my own angrier responses to Mail articles), it was fairly tame stuff. Arscott wrote:

I hope Paul Dacre dies a slow and painful death and that people queue up to shit on his grave.

Thanks to Google's wonderful algorithms, his post somehow became (and remains, for now) the second result when you search for Paul Dacre. Whether or not Dacre was Googling his own name (doubtful, considering his aversion to the internet) or he was simply alerted to it by an underling, it seems that he was enraged enough by Kevin's impertinence to set the Mail's lawyers after him. As Unity points out, it's apparent that nothing he wrote is either libellous or defamatory; it's simply abuse, nor is it similar to yesterday's case where a man in Northern Ireland was convicted of an offence after writing on Facebook that a DUP MP should "get a bullet in the head". Arscott merely hopes Dacre dies a slow and painful death, not the most pleasant thing to say, but by considering the depths some on the internet sink to it's incredibly tame.

The Mail's lawyers must have known that the chances of winning any case for defamation on something so slight were minute; that almost certainly wasn't their aim, however. Just through sending their threatening email to Angry Mob's UK based hosting company they will have counted on them caving in immediately, thanks to the notorious Demon ruling and successive EC directives, or demand that he take it down himself or else they'd terminate his account for breach of their terms of service. They did the second, and like myself when faced by threats from Schillings over Alisher Usmanov and Craig Murray, he's removed the post for now.

It is remarkable though, isn't it, that the editor of the very newspaper which has so fiercely campaigned against super-injunctions now resorts to the use of solicitors over something so unbelievably petty: he doesn't want an affair or something embarrassing about his private life hidden away, he just wants someone being nasty about him on the internet to feel his wrath. The editor of a newspaper that repeatedly attacks those whom it thinks have risen above their station, whether it be through a perceived lack of class or for "outraging decency", who feels so self-concious about the second Google result for his name being something that isn't entirely adulatory. An editor who according to numerous accounts treats his staff in the typical tabloid fashion, where they ask each other whether they've been "double-cunted" that day, having been called a cunt twice in one sentence by a man who dedicates page after page to why-oh-whying over the supposed decline of standards, dares to send in expensive briefs over a 2-year-old post which doesn't even begin to lower itself to such name-calling.

Mr Dacre, if you or your solicitors happen to come across this, I too hope that you die a slow and painful death and that people queue up to shit on your grave. It won't even begin to make up for the shit you've been forcing down the throats of the English public for the last 19 years.

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6/23/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, May 16, 2011 

Anything else going on apart from...?

"It's been a week where you sit there thinking, is there anything else going on in this country apart from a bunch of z-list celebrities having sex with each other?"

So asked Ian Hislop, in what was to be the last episode of Have I Got News for You to feature Angus Deayton as host. It was also the same week in which Ulrika Jonsson said that she had been sexually assaulted by a well-known television presenter, who was inadvertently named by Matthew Wright shortly afterwards. The past week has seen a very similar situation, albeit it slightly hampered by how we're not supposed to know who some of those z-list celebrities are.

If nothing else, you have to hand it to the tabloid press: it often accuses the supposedly more serious-minded broadcasters and papers of hypocrisy on the grounds that they more or less duplicate their coverage, albeit under the guise of poking fun or discussing the potential implications for press freedom. There's been no such back-biting this time, for the reason that they've been amazingly successful in turning what have been only the latest incremental development in privacy principles into an issue of freedom of speech so vital that the prime minister has intervened on more than one occasion to declare his unease. Under the banner of "super-injunctions", almost none of which the recently issued orders have actually been, they've campaigned vigorously for their right to print more or less what they like about prominent individuals and what they might have been up to, invoking morality, censorship, democracy and almost anything else they think might win more supporters to their cause. Helped along by social networks and the difficulty of removing information once it's out in the wild on the internet, as well as a growing feeling, especially among those who live their lives online and hide very little about themselves from anyone who cares enough to look, almost no actual attention has been paid to the details of the cases themselves, the way the tabloids have personally fought the injunctions, or indeed to just how open they've been about why they really want to return the the height of "bonk" journalism as practised back in the late 80s.

Indeed, just how limited the general debate has been was showcased on Newsnight on Friday, where Hugh Grant and Charlotte Harris faced off against Helen Wood and Fraser Nelson. Grant, fresh from bugging a News of the World journalist, came across exactly you suspect as the tabloids would like: outraged that anyone should know absolutely anything about him without his express permission. Much as I find the argument that if you don't want to end up on the front page of a newspaper you shouldn't sleep with prostitutes to be self-serving in the extreme, Grant did his best to prove it, arrogant throughout while attempting at times to play the victim, demanding Nelson to condemn certain practices which he had never condoned. Charlotte Harris, who must be much more convincing in court than she has been in any of her innumerable television appearances, gave her questionable and limited legal analysis, while Fraser Nelson, who despite always looking incredibly pleased with himself seemed to be ignorant of many of the details of the recent cases. Then there was Wood, called on just twice during the entire programme, who looked distinctly uncomfortable throughout.

She wasn't helped by a quite incredible second report from Kate Williams, which happily alleged that injunctions were returning us to the Victorian era where rich men could do as they please and the women were left voiceless, as it galloped through over a century of sexual history in a couple of minutes. Solipsistic doesn't quite adequately describe it, and poor old Helen was so confused that she clearly hadn't quite grasped what the sexual revolution was when asked whether it had worked for her. Considering she was on Newsnight talking about working as a high class escort, and indeed has been paid a considerable sum having sold her story vis-a-vis Wayne Rooney, even if she can't identify another "high profile" male she performed sex acts on, it's hardly resulted in her penury and exclusion from society, referred to as a tart and hooker in the same press she made a deal with or not.

Just how potentially misled we've been by the self-serving reports in the tabloids, gobbled up and regurgitated whole by the rest of the media is demonstrated by the interim judgement in the case involving Imogen Thomas and the anonymous, although widely named footballer. Contrary to Thomas's (literal) sob story of how her name's been run through the mud despite not ever wanting to sell her story, Mr Justice Eady relates the footballer's side of events. According to him, the whole thing appears to have been a set-up between her and the Sun, where she demanded to meet the player on two separate occasions at different hotels, both times asking for money with the obvious implicit threat being that otherwise she'd sell her story. Each time it seems the paper was waiting to take pictures of their arrivals: if the player paid up, then she got her money and the paper still had the story with no evidence that Thomas herself had been involved; if he didn't, then she would presumably have been reimbursed by the Sun. The footballer additionally says that rather than the six-month long relationship Thomas claims, they had only met three times between September and December last year. While that hasn't been contradicted by Thomas's representatives, she did later deny that she'd either asked for money or had "caused" the Sun's initial report last month.

While Eady is only presenting the case as it currently stands before any trial, the footballer's side of the story is all too plausible. It also fits with the pattern that rather than most of the injunctions being issued after individuals getting wind of a story or being contacted prior to publication, there is often also an element of blackmail involved, as there was in the controversial ruling where Eady issued a contra mundum injunction, as well as in that involving Zac Goldsmith. Eady, clearly at pains, goes on to point out despite much of the comment that the current process has been built around two major rulings by the House of the Lords, with four even more recent cases where the Lords refused permission to appeal (paragraph 21). Moreover, as he writes, in cases where blackmail is either alleged or where it looks to have conceivably been involved, anonymity has been previously given as a "matter of public policy". It's only now, when all the details have not even begun to be made public that this has been questioned.

Damningly, as Eady goes on, the Sun's representatives didn't even attempt to argue that any story would be in the public interest. Instead they simply claimed that Thomas's rights to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights were being denied by the footballer's "reasonable expectation of privacy". Worth quoting in full are the two final paragraphs of his ruling:

On the evidence before me, as at 14 and 20 April, I formed the view that the Claimant would be "likely" to obtain a permanent injunction at trial, if the matter goes that far. As I have said, it remains uncontradicted. The information is such that he is still entitled to a "reasonable expectation of privacy" and no countervailing argument has been advanced to suggest that the Article 10 rights of the Defendants, or indeed of anyone else, should prevail. There is certainly no suggestion of any legitimate public interest in publishing such material.

Moreover, in so far as Ms Thomas wishes to exercise her Article 10 right by selling her life story, she is entitled to do so, but only subject to the qualification that she is not thereby relieved of any obligation of confidence she may owe, or free to intrude upon the privacy rights of others: see e.g. McKennitt v Ash, cited above, at [28]-[32] and [50]-[51]. In so far as there are any conflicts of evidence or of recollection between her and the Claimant, it will be for the court to resolve them at the appropriate time. I will discuss with counsel whether it would be appropriate to order a speedy trial for that purpose.

This more than rebuts Thomas's claim afterward that she was being denied the opportunity to defend herself: if she wishes at length to contradict the footballer's version of events, then she can and hopefully will, albeit without naming him.

If this latest ruling were the exception to the rule, then the campaign waged over the past few weeks would be worthy of support. As previously argued, some injunctions have been questionable in their sweeping nature, but far too often as the Guardian pointed out they've been confused with our libel laws, which are currently under review. Despite having emitted such sound and fury, in many of the cases the tabloids don't even pretend that the public interest will be genuinely served by their serving up of the celebrity shags of the week; instead they make the highly dubious argument that it's such sensationalism and gossip that has enabled them to provide other journalism and campaigns which have benefited the wider public. Deprived of them, they'd wither on the vine and die, especially now as the internet has so eaten into their market.

Even in this time of declining circulations, the Mail sells over 2 million copies a day while the Sun clocks in at just under 3 million. Neither have suffered the massive falls of their competitors, and both will continue to be printed for a long time to come. They might fear the effect of kiss 'n' tells being completely choked off, yet even under the most extreme reading of Eady's latest ruling it seems laughable that every z-list celeb will be lining up for an injunction to cover up their dalliances. As morally (and hypocritically) outraged as the tabloid editors and long-time hacks undoubtedly are by the turn of events, it's cover as much over the phone-hacking scandal as it is an attempt to provoke David Cameron into doing something about it. What's more, the ultimate victory has been in making everyone delve into this world of who's shagging who, to make those of us who'd rather just let them get on with it have to dive into the depths of the "privacy" debate. Where Orwell once wrote of the decline of the English murder, so too they want to forestall the decline of the English affair, and they'll try everything in their power to do so.

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5/16/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 

Injunction hysteria and the failure of Max Mosley.

It's difficult to shake the feeling that this week's latest outburst of injunction outrage on the behalf of the tabloids and certain sections of what was once the broadsheet press wasn't so much to do with the mysterious InjunctionSuper tweeter (twatterer?), although they provided the excuse to clear the front pages, and much more to do with the fear that Max Mosley would triumph with his case at the European Court of Human Rights. Having so firmly established that philanderers and blackguards are effectively subverting democracy itself by stopping the popular press from reporting on their exploits, had Mosley won we would now be drowning in a veritable sea of anti-European, anti-liberal, anti-'uman rites venom, the death knell of the British media as we currently know it all having been all but sounded by an unelected elite sitting in judgement from afar.

Happily, and just to confound the caricature of the judges in Strasbourg as often depicted as interfering, foreign lunatics and incompetents, they quite rightly decided that Mosley's Article 8 rights had not been breached by this country lacking a mechanism through which newspapers must inform prior to publication those individuals they plan to run an expose or similar about. This wasn't because in Mosley's personal case there hadn't been a quite despicable breach of privacy, it was more that the circumstances were something approaching unique. As Justice Eady made clear in his ruling back in 2008, the supposed "Nazi element" of Mosley's spanking orgy was a construct aimed at giving the story a public interest defence, even while he accepted that the paper's editor and Neville Thurlbeck thought there was such a flavour, not least because they saw what they wanted to see. Had the paper simply gone with the spanking story and informed Mosley prior to going to press, an injunction would almost certainly have been granted had he taken legal action. Relying instead as the paper did on the story being totally in the public interest as it exposed the son of the fascist leader Oswald Mosley involved in sadomasochism with Nazi overtones, the ECHR's reasoning is that even if there had been a stricture where the press have to inform those they intend to write about he would have been unlikely to fall under its terms.

The Guardian, which while not exactly rallying to the side of the tabloids has been quietly concerned over the recent supposed spike in injunctions, made a third-party submission to the court which made the obvious argument against just such a requirement as Mosley was asking for: that rather than covering only cases where personal privacy was involved, it would apply across the board. While it's mainly standard journalistic practice to inform individuals or companies that they're about to have a report on them published, not least to give them an opportunity to comment, the Trafigura scandal makes plain just how some will seek to have the most destructive, illegal behaviour swept under the carpet. The ECHR in its conclusion made clear that what Mosley was asking for has the potential to have a "chilling effect" on the right to freedom of expression. Along with doubts over just how effective it would be and how such a "public interest" mechanism would work, there was really no other option than for the court to make clear Article 8 does not demand a legally binding pre-notification requirement.

There is no doubting however just how successful the tabloids have been in turning their woes into a matter of seeming immediate national importance. Away from the very few number of cases where the granting of an injunction has been questionable, or where the terms have been arguably far too broad, most have just been typical tabloid tales where the person involved is as much being humiliated and embarrassed because of their fame rather than down to the heinousness of their actions.

Take for example the supposed "world famous" actor, who if he is who we're led to believe I had never heard of before (he's not Ewan McGregor, despite initial rumours) and his dalliance with Helen Wood, the sex worker who did a number on Wayne Rooney. One of his pleasures apparently, again for the reason that we don't unequivocally know, involved a dildo being "used" on him. Such a detail, while not exactly out of the ordinary, is the kind of fact that people remember and snigger about. It is the sort of thing that leads to children and relations being bullied and similarly humiliated. This person is not any kind of direct role model to children, as the tabloids claim footballers and other prominent stars are, nor does he make money out of selling his image as such. He's simply a man who because of his acting work is considered fair game and is grist to the mill. As prostitution itself is not illegal (soliciting is) he's committed no crime other than one of stupidity. There is no public interest in him being exposed in such a way, yet we apparently "know" about it regardless of the injunction.

Let's not pretend either that Twitter, blogging, social networking or the internet on their own make such injunctions and potentially a privacy law untenable and unenforceable, as has been claimed. The rumours about the applicants all have to begin somewhere, and it's more than fair to say that the newspapers themselves have been getting incredibly close to breaching them on their own, dropping almost excessive hints in some cases. Private Eye, which always faces both ways when it comes to the tabloids and their obsession with the sex lives of the rich and the famous ran a "lookalike" in its last issue in which Wayne Rooney was compared with the man alluded to above. Elsewhere it all but named the footballer involved with Imogen Thomas, while reiterating how the papers had covered the injunction involving the TV man who had an affair with a co-star, described more than once as "shameless".

What is apparent is that even if they end up not being able to publish a story which might shift a few extra papers, the tabloids seem to be determined that it gets out there somehow. As some predict, this latest outbreak of belly-aching about how unfair it is not to be able to ruin lives will probably peter out. No one seriously expects the government, even this one, to legislate, not least because it would have to almost certainly draw up some privacy protections which the tabloids would complain bitterly about even while removing the wider threat to their profit model. Judges will continue to cop the flak for making nuanced decisions which politicians are too cowardly to get involved with. Who though could possibly blame them when we have such a wonderful, law-abiding media?

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5/10/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 21, 2011 

Playing the victim in the privacy wars.

Whenever the tabloids start to play the victim, it ought to be apparent that there's something far more vital at stake than the freedom of the press: that other enduring freedom, to make money out of the misery of other people. If you've been cynical enough to think there might be something else afoot that's encouraged the so-called popular press to spend much of this week complaining bitterly about how they're not being allowed to continue to focus on shag 'n' tell journalism to the detriment of everything else, then you'd be right. Even if the phone-hacking scandal hasn't (yet) touched any other newspaper than the ever egregious News of the Screws, they know full well that the longer it rumbles on the more likely the same celebrities and politicos now demanding recompense from Murdoch's minions will turn their attention onto them. Why else after all would they have done so much to either ignore or play down the NotW's sad troubles with the Metropolitan police if they didn't themselves know there would be be similar discoveries if their own email records were exposed to the same intimate attention? It certainly isn't the old Fleet Street spirit of solidarity, of dog not eating dog, which has always been something of a myth.

Anything then to deflect from how so much of tabloid journalism is currently under scrutiny. Politically wise or not, considering the potential for revenge to be taken in the most damaging of ways, Ed Miliband's call for an independent review of the Press Complaints Commission and newspaper practices once the police investigation into the Screws has finished was both brave and welcome. It must have also been alarming to tabloid editors and their owners, not so much because they fear such an inquiry taking place, something doubtful to happen when the levels of mutual sycophancy between themselves and David Cameron are still high, more because it's a sign of just how precarious their craft is becoming that any front line politician feels bold enough to call for something they would have usually not touched with the proverbial ten-foot barge pole.

The resurrection of the issue of super-injunctions for mostly specious reasons should be reasonably apparent due to how the cases the tabloids are complaining about are err, not super-injunctions, otherwise they wouldn't be able to complain about them at all, as they're meant to ban the press from even mentioning they've been gagged. Instead the courts have recently favoured the slightly subtler form of injunction which allows the media to make clear that they've been stopped from printing a story, and even to go into some of the relevant details which could potentially identify those involved. Hence we know a married footballer has stopped the press from splashing on his affair with the fragrant Imogen Thomas, a former Big Brother contestant who's made her living since appearing on the show by exposing her plastic breasts for money, while a "world famous" actor who paid for some sort of sexual activity with the equally lovely Helen Wood, an escort universally known in the gutter press as ROONEY TART/HOOKER for her past dalliance with the Manchester United striker has also been saved from the ignominy of having his poor taste in sex workers revealed.

Justifications for informing the world that famous people tend to be just as human as the rest of us range from the moralistic, such as Paul Dacre's notable attack on Mr Justice Eady for stopping newspapers reporting on the "unimaginable depravity" of the likes of Max Mosley, to how it enables superstars to continue to present themselves as role models to the young while profiting from it through marketing deals, all the way along to the usual press freedom arguments. Others still are now pointing to how unfair it is on the women involved that they can't either protect themselves or sell their stories, as if the likes of Imogen Thomas or Wood are somehow damaged further having usually informed the media in the first place. Excepting Wood, it also ignores their own responsibility for involvement in the affair, even if their identities don't always stay hidden. In a recent case the News of the World had intended to claim that a television presenter had been sacked after the fellow host she had conducted an affair with had requested the break up of their partnership, only for her to support the seeking of the injunction.

It would be much easier to respect the principle of "publish and be damned" if the stories the media does manage to get into the papers were reported accurately. Not content with the already sensational likes of Mosley conducting spanking sessions with dominatrices, the Screws had to sex it up further (arguably to give it something resembling a public interest defence) to Mosley having a Nazi orgy. The John Terry saga of last year took on a rather different air when the quietly determined Vanessa Perroncel managed to extract apologies from both Sunday newspapers involved, more than suggesting that the claims of an affair between the two were inaccurate. Terry has since been restored to the England captaincy, the role he lost after the tabloids called for him to lose it following his "infidelity".

This isn't to suggest there aren't potential problems ahead should the law be more contentiously interpreted by judges. A judgement published yesterday by Justice Eady seems to go a step further than anything so far: in a case he describes as an example of "straightforward and blatant blackmail", he imposed a contra mundum injunction, forbidding not just the national but worldwide media from identifying those involved. These have only formerly been issued in cases where those seeking them were not just at risk of having their right to privacy under the European Convention of Human Rights breached, but their article 2 and 3 rights also; John Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of James Bulger had their new identities protected in such a way, as did Mary Bell. Regardless of the solid medical evidence suggesting the health, including the mental health of those involved has been affected, this could well be a step too far: it's one thing to protect those who have committed terrible crimes as children from being hounded for the rest of their lives or even killed by banning the publication of their whereabouts and names; it's quite another to do so over a case which involves "intimate photographs and other information". Moreover, it's bound to lay down the gauntlet to media outlets overseas who've graciously respected the past rulings who will be far less likely to do so when the stakes are nowhere near as high; and after all, what exactly can they be threatened with which might make them think twice before doing so?

Despite David Cameron today voicing his "unease" over the recent injunctions, it's still manifest that judges are not making the law, merely interpreting it as best they can and following rulings which have set precedents, usually delivered either by the highest court here or by the ECHR. It's also clear that politicians still seem unlikely to be willing to get involved in something which will mean them rather than judges deciding on how to balance the competing rights of privacy and freedom of the press, whether or not they have the tabloids screaming at them to do something or not: in this instance there seems to be too much to lose either way. Having spent so long complaining about vested interests and their role in British life, it's would be nice if the tabloids recognised theirs in preferring exposure over privacy. It's only when it comes to their own newsrooms that they opt for the latter.

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4/21/2011 09:48:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 04, 2010 

Muslims tell tabloids: put us on your front pages!

Minority Thought, 5CC and Steven (as we must now refer to the former Mr Vowl) all deal with the tabloids' curious sense of priorities when it came to the sentencing of Roshonara Choudhry, deciding that the antics of three mouth breathers in the public gallery were of far more importance than the culmination of a far more fascinating and worrying court case in their usual fine fashion.

More of note to me though is how the three papers and their rent-a-gobs have seemingly decided that they know better than Mr Justice Cooke himself does as to how he should run his own court. Mainly due to how the rest of the media either ignored the barracking and the protests outside it, which as usual was the best policy, or only made a token mention of it, we don't actually know for certain what happened. Indeed, their reports are confused: the Sun and Express have either two or three men being bundled out of court by security guards to continue their protest outside, while the Mail suggests those photographed outside were a separate second group. Certainly, if Cooke had been that troubled or startled by their shouts as he passed sentence, he could have either cleared the public gallery or asked for the men to be detained, neither of which he apparently did, with the security guards instead if we are to trust the Sun and the Express removing them of apparently their own volition. He was in by far the best position to see whether or not their comments towards a Muslim juror were either intimidating or as the Sun has it, "terrifying" her. Very few judges taking kindly to their authority being questioned or undermined, especially by those in the public gallery; that he didn't act is surely more than an indication that the reports are either being exaggerated or that he thought the best policy was to let them be dealt with by security.

What this all comes back to is not just how far freedom of speech goes, but also how you deal with those who are determined to make a scene and gain the sort of outrage over-the-top coverage which the tabloids are more than happy to give them. It was much the same back in January when that other extremist and self-publicist Anjem Choudary pretended that he and his organisation were going to march through Wootton Bassett when they almost certainly had no actual intention of doing so. The question of complicity - how by drawing attention which otherwise wouldn't have been given to a certain group you in fact do their work for them is a fine one, yet deserves to be further looked into. If anything, Choudary didn't need to go through with his threat as the reaction was such that his group would have only been over-emphasising the point. His umpteenth successor organisation to al-Muhajiroun was also almost instantly banned, further giving a goon with next to no real support the further mystique of being outside the law.

Surely the proper way to respond to the three's pathetic little protest, rather than instantly making a decision as to whether or not they were breaking any number of laws, was to regard it as what it was: a deeply unoriginal, yawn inducing spectacle and only move them on if there were any complaints made about them, which was exactly what happened. For a nation that prides itself on its supposed innate sense of tolerance and fair play, it's strange that we have such a different notion of freedom of speech to America, a country often criticised for having more than its fair share of reactionaries. When it comes to making mountains out of molehills, our press have shown themselves time and again to be world beaters.

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11/04/2010 11:34:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, July 29, 2010 

The hunger striker and the imaginary burgers.

(Hat-tip to MacGuffin.)

There is, very occasionally, a price for churnalism, albeit one that won't make much (if any) material difference to the Sun. Without bothering to check whether the Daily Mail's original article claiming that Parameswaran Subramanyam had eaten burgers while conducting a public hunger strike in Parliament Square was accurate, something the Metropolitan police had apparently picked up on "specialist monitoring equipment" which they had trained on him, a "Staff Reporter" merely repeated the allegations.

It was strange in the first place that it was almost six months later before the police suddenly decided it was time to inform the press of what Subramanyam had been doing, supposedly having decided not to confront him at the time for fear of starting a riot, and at the same time as the cost emerged of policing the Tamil protest outside parliament. Surely it would have made a much better story much nearer the time of the demonstration? Indeed, why would the police decide to provide someone else to focus the blame on for the "excess" cost? It couldn't have been something to do with what the Mail described in the article as an "overtime bonanza", could it?

However the fantasy came to be implanted in the mind of Mail journalist Stephen Wright, it's one that's cost the paper £47,500 in damages, while the Sun has agreed to stump up £30,000, with both also having to pay Subramanyam's legal costs. As he was represented by Carter-Fuck (sorry, Carter-Ruck) that definitely won't have come cheap. Was copying and pasting and slightly altering the text really worth the wages of a junior hack for a whole year?

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7/29/2010 10:51:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, July 23, 2010 

How government works.

1. Crispin Blunt, the prisons minister, gives a speech containing a mixture of the fatuous and encouraging on how he intends to reform the system. Choice quotes:

We recognise that arts activities can play a valuable role in helping offenders to address issues such as communication problems and low self-esteem and enabling them to engage in programmes that address their offending behaviour I confess before getting this job I was not aware of Prison Service Instruction number 50 of 2008, though was vaguely conscious of some row in the tabloids about offenders being recorded as enjoying themselves. As a measure it was typical of the last administration’s flakiness under pressure. At the slightest whiff of criticism from the popular press policy tended to get changed and the consequence of an absurd overreaction to offenders being exposed to comedy in prison was this deleterious, damaging and daft instruction.
I’m pleased to have marked the actual day of the 100th anniversary of Churchill’s speech on Tuesday by rescinding it.

...

We face the harsh reality of rescuing the public finances or as the Justice Secretary so pithily put it in our area of responsibility effecting a change from an era of policy making with a chequebook in one hand and the Daily Mail in the other.

2. The tabloids referred to, duly insulted, take his comments personally, as they always do. The Sun features the change in policy on their front page, while the Mail makes it their main splash. The Mail, naturally, doesn't feature the quote about itself in its coverage.

3. Downing Street makes clear that there will be no parties in prisons. David Cameron has full confidence in Crispin Blunt.

4. Crispin Blunt is moved from his post at the first opportunity (probably).

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7/23/2010 10:21:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 22, 2010 

Media empires and the rise of the Liberal Democrats.

Very occasionally an incident takes place which tells you absolutely everything about the organisation which those involved represent. When James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks decided yesterday to storm into the offices of the Independent to remonstrate with editor Simon Kelner over a series of fairly innocuous adverts which the newly relaunched paper had been running, which involved the legend "Rupert Murdoch won't decide this election. You will" it can hardly fail to illustrate not just the self-importance and arrogance of the pair, but also the power which the likes of News International can and will wield if you deign to step even slightly out of line.

Their justification for confronting Kelner concerns the old Fleet Street rule that dog doesn't bite dog, and that proprietors especially are meant to be off limits. In practice, this rule is nonsense, and always has been: newspapers attack each other on a regular basis, especially if one publishes a piece felt to be overly critical or which hits too close to the bone. There might well be separate "non-aggression" pacts between the likes of the Mail and Express, and there was a wonderful example of newspapers closing ranks when the former executive chairman of News International Les Hinton phoned round all the other titles asking them not to cover Rebekah Brooks' (nee Wade) separation from Ross Kemp, but for the most part, and especially highlighted by the Guardian's coverage of the phone-hacking at the News of the World, while it isn't a free-for-all, testy criticism is regularly made.

What then did Murdoch and Brooks think they were doing? Did they seriously expect to just waltz onto a paper's editorial floor, berate the editor in strong language, with Murdoch alleged to have shouted "[W]hat are you fucking playing at?" and for none of the hacks that witnessed this to not instantly get on the phone to other titles? NI and the Independent have, predictably, made no comment, but then they didn't need to. This was, as Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff has it, one way for empires to end. What was a mild advert for anyone else, pointing out the obvious, was for a former editor of the Sun, the paper that claims to follow its readers' views and not enforce its own upon them, the kind of truth which couldn't go without a response.

The empire symbolism is even more pertinent when it comes to the uniform right-wing press smearing and attacks on Nick Clegg this morning. Here is an entire section of the press, fully behind either the Tories or small c conservative in nature, all deciding that Clegg and the Liberal Democrats need to be brought down to size after a week in which they've threatened to bring the old two-party system crashing down. A press, whose true level of influence has always been difficult to ascertain, and all increasingly having to follow rather than lead as a new media which no one can control lets loose, which knows full well that if the polls become reality in two weeks then they're in a place which they haven't experienced in half a century, having little to no control on one of the major parties of government, that simply can't afford or allow that to happen. And this isn't just about their favoured masters not strolling to victory as they had predicted and hoped for, but in the case of the Sun it comes down to their personal dignity and decision to back the Tories so early; it comes down to Brooks and Murdoch personally persuading Murdoch senior to back Cameron, to the Sun always backing the winner while under Murdoch ownership. The humiliation of the Sun especially if Cameron doesn't get his majority is going to be total, and they will get the blame just as they claimed the victory for Major's win in 1992. That the support for the Tories has dropped ever since the Sun came out for Cameron is a happy coincidence more than being the reason, but it's one the paper must be incredibly touchy about.

Who knows whether there was the hand of Andy Coulson behind some of this morning's front pages, as the Prince of Darkness himself suggested, who knows whether, despite the denials, Murdoch junior and Brooks were at the offices of the Mail to see someone other than Kevin Beatty, what we do know is that the right-wing press is speaking, unusually, with one voice. What needs to be remembered is that this is the same right-wing press that has been so outraged and disgusted by various Labour attempts at smearing its opponents. Yet here we are, only two weeks from election day, and the Telegraph runs with a story which fell apart under the very slightest of examination which made incredibly damaging personal allegations against Nick Clegg, while the Daily Mail splashes on an article which Clegg wrote 8 years ago which was perfectly reasonable and which only the Mail could have any deep objection to. The Express, as usual, ties itself in knots by complaining that the Liberal Democrats want asylum seekers to work while there's 2.5 million unemployed at the same time as it bangs on alarmingly about scroungers, while the Sun at least decided to go on other policies even if they were weak beyond belief.

When even Iain Dale thinks that the campaign, coordinated or not, to get Clegg or to "kill Klegg", is likely to lead only to the opposite, and that the media is only showing itself up for what it is, then you know that it's in trouble. Never could this have been expressed better than by the Mail itself, via Alix:

There can be only one credible explanation for the utterly irrational outpouring of support for the Liberal Democrats after a mere 90 minutes of X Factor-style TV politics: the public, disgusted by the near moral bankruptcy of the last Parliament, is looking for revenge.

Yes, that's just what it is: an irrational response rather than a thoroughly rational one to two parties whose policies are almost indistinguishable, both led by individuals who were shown up by an insurgent in the first round. It couldn't possibly be a public deciding that it's time, once shown what a third party has to offer, that it's time they were given an opportunity rather than returning to the dead end of a duopoly. It couldn't possibly be an electorate deciding that it's time a fetid, overblown, parasitical and poisonous press stopped forcing their own opinion down the throats of both the readers and the public in general. Never has a part of the media been so terrified of what its own customers and readers seem to want, and how desperate they are to ensure that they turn them round before it's too late, regardless of how it's done. Empires may depend on it.

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4/22/2010 08:58:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 

The panicking right-wing press.

The greatest thing about the spike in Liberal Democrat support is just how terrified it's made the right-wing press. Yet another leader in the Sun about how you can only be sure of getting rid of Labour by voting Tory, ignoring how that's hardly going to help in places where the Tories have no chance, a front page about "Lib Dumbs", and how's about this, via Angry Mob, from the Daily Mail, clearly not panicking at how they could win the largest share of the vote:


Like the Conservatives themselves, they were convinced Cameron was going to walk it. The real reason why it's making them so nervous is apparent: they have no control whatsoever over Clegg and the party in general, and also seemingly over the public themselves. It's one thing to not be able to understand the polls, it's another to not understand why they have turned so decisively. Instead, they're flailing out in all directions, trying to hit an invisible target. If the tabloid press especially has no power and also no influence, then like the Labour party without a moral crusade, it is nothing.

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4/21/2010 10:18:00 pm | | | links to this post

Saturday, February 13, 2010 

Extracting rafters.

Reminded of how much I adore Marina Hyde by this wonderful paragraph out of a generally superb column:

The micro-managing parallels with New Labour are so striking that we must assume Cameron genuinely intends to reprise the shtick which made Blair's lot so uniquely loathsome to the public. It is history lacking the decency to repeat itself as farce. It is merely history ­repeating itself.

Equally reminded of how much I abhor Amanda Platell by her attack on supposed prospective WAGs, one of those loathsome modern abbreviations. She might have something approaching a point, but it's buried beneath venomous, visceral loathing for young, naive women, and intertwined with what it's difficult to describe as anything other than the green-eyed monster:

These long-legged fillies excitedly clatter down the stairs from pavement level, their hooves shod mostly in cheap stilettos so high they make them look ridiculously tall, slightly deformed, like creatures from Avatar.

And they all have the Victoria Beckham stoop that comes with such ridiculous shoes.

The girls' legs go on for ever; as do their dreams of pulling a footballer or a millionaire.

They sway suggestively to the blaring music, drinks clutched in by acrylic-tipped fingers, waving their bottoms at passing boys, thrusting their pert breasts, stroking their bare thighs, licking their lips, tossing their hair extensions.

I am witnessing the mating ritual of the Wannabe WAG. It's a sight worthy of a David Attenborough documentary. Think of a herd of frisky wildebeest stampeding through the Serengeti plain, stopping only to drink and procreate.

The skirts are so short they leave nothing to the imagination. I swear there is only one pair of undies in that club - and I am wearing them.

I know I'm one to talk, but the writing in places is also frankly abysmal:

They behave not so much like Stepford wives, as Stepford tarts, unabashed that they are using sex to procure designer clothes, utterly complicit in the cattle market that unfolds before me wherever I go.

It goes without saying that calling them Stepford tarts doesn't even make any sense, it's just the snatching of a lazy cultural allusion: as Platell elaborates elsewhere, these young women are not submissive and docile as the Stepford wives were, they know what they want and how to get it. They're using the men they're trying to attract just as much as the men are using them.

Any wider significance of what goes on in a tiny number of exclusive London clubs is completely buried under a layer of invective that says as much about Platell as it does about the women she followed for one night. It's also the usual hysterical Daily Mail hypocrisy: as Hagley Road to Ladywood notes, it's the likes of the Mail that help to perpetuate the false notion that there's something glamorous about hanging onto the arm of a footballer or dumb rich boy by their constant and consistent coverage of them, which is far from always being sneering or hectoring in tone. Someone once said that you should extract the rafter from your own eye before attempting to to extract the straw from someone else's eye, advice that our glorious modern media will never even begin to take.

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2/13/2010 08:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 11, 2010 

Unsuper Mac.

You've probably all seen this superb, straight to the point Mac cartoon. I can't help but wonder though whether everyone so far has approached it from the wrong angle; what if in fact it's the sheep speaking the lines underneath and not the man? That would explain the rather blank expression on the man's face, while the sheep on the other hand looks bright and intelligent. Frankly, it looks like the sheep is marrying beneath her, which is why the vicar is so startled. As for the multiculturalism aspect, well, there's always a downside to it, and religion is usually it. Perhaps the man's side insisted on a church wedding, and anyway, if the clergy wish to wear dresses, as long as they're happy, who cares?

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2/11/2010 10:12:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, March 27, 2009 

An interesting set of priorities.

It's interesting and perhaps informative to note that on the day that there was another case which showed the deficiencies and incompetence which often dogs police investigations into accusations of rape, both the Daily Mail and Express decided that a man cleared of rape after 45 minutes of deliberations was far more worthy of going on the front page than the conviction of Kirk Reid, who raped or indecently assaulted as many as 71 women before finally being caught.

The acquittal of Peter Bacon predictably touches all the issues which the Mail and Express love to highlight. His accuser admitted that she was drunk and couldn't remember what happened. She claimed that because she couldn't remember what happened, the sexual intercourse the pair apparently had must have been non-consensual, in line with an appeal court judgement from 2007 which adjudged that a woman who is drunk may well be unable to give her consent, but the decision is still ultimately left up to the jury to decide whether the man had a "reasonable belief" that consent had been given. For a paper that continues to take a highly moralistic line when it comes to sex, Bacon gets off remarkably scot free from criticism, especially considering his comment that he was aiming to try to get a one-night stand legitimately", with predictably the woman copping it instead. She was a self-confessed "recreational binge drinker", had not a boyfriend for a number of years, "was close to her mother", had been suffering from depression, "was known for flamboyant outfits in court" during her work as a lawyer, and had had another one night stand with a different man when Bacon and the woman had previously crossed paths. Bacon, instead, is "a very kind and caring individual, and would never speak badly of anyone", was holding down two part-time jobs, and also studying sociology at Canterbury university.

All of this is with a contrast with the Kirk Reid case, which you might have thought was more newsworthy. The second case within a month concerning police incompetence and repeated attacks on women over a number of years, the conviction of John Worboys being the other example. Reid had first entered the police's inquiries in 2004, and came into contact with the police 12 times before a detective inspector who had just been handed the case joined the dots in a matter of days. Both Worboys and Reid targeted women returning from nights out, often the worse the wear from drink, which Worboys then compounded by offering the women who entered his cab a drink, claiming that he had a major betting or casino win. The drinks were spiked; the women often woke up unable to remember what happened, but knowing that they had been sexually assaulted.

The obvious point to make is that despite improvements over the years, women are still all too often completely disbelieved or not taken seriously when making rape allegations, especially when drink has been involved. This is further not helped by surveys which routinely return results that up to a third believe women are partially responsible if they flirt with someone who subsequently rapes them, with around the same number also thinking the victim should accept some of the blame if she was drunk. As potentially irresponsible as getting drunk on your own is, with no one to take care of you while you get home, all the blame has to lie with the person who takes advantage of it - not the victim.

As much as Peter Bacon has undoubtedly suffered since he was accused, the end result shows that the system has worked. There is an argument to be made for the accused in rape trials to be given the same protection as the victim until conviction, but that then raises implications for those accused of other crimes. Why should those charged with murder or child molestation/possession of child pornography for example not also claim they should be protected until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt? Bacon couldn't really have asked for a better confirmation of his innocence than for him to be splashed across the front page of the second biggest selling newspaper in the country, which will hopefully be some kind of recompense, however slight. A far bigger travesty would be if the wide publication of his case was to further damage the belief in those who have been assaulted and who have never faced a greater challenge in bringing their attackers to justice.

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3/27/2009 09:23:00 pm | | | links to this post

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