Not so super injunctions
Now no names, no pack drill, but the celebrity misdeeds that the super injunctions were meant to suppress are embarrassingly now all over the Internet. Embarrassing deeds by Actors, TV Chefs, Footballers, TV Motoring show presenters, and people who are at risk of having newborn children stolen by social services, the names are all public domain. You can almost hear the widespread guffaws and shocked gasps of “but he seemed so normal” from all over the planet. Not to mention the outraged expostulations of “How the fuck do they get away with this shit?”
I’m sure there were days not long before the French Revolution, when the sans-culottes heard the latest gossip from inside the gilded palaces of state and said much the same thing (Only in French of course). Shortly before the whole shooting match went pear shaped and a number of previously privileged people began turning up twenty to thirty centimetres shorter than they were that morning.
Of course I haven’t read the injunctions in question, or I’d be bound by the terms and conditions, or else be held in contempt of court. As I haven’t had the injunction served upon me, I am officially not aware of the terms and conditions, since nobody is supposedly allowed to tell anybody anything. Nor should they, ergo I can’t know because no one is supposed to have told me, or anyone else. Although there are those who have heard and plainly don’t give a shit and publish anyway.
No doubt a great deal of public money will be spent trying to ‘bring the perpetrators of contempt to justice’ but this isn’t justice we’re seeing, this is the law in its full tyrannical aspect. The courts and judiciary, by defending people who have allegedly perpetrated various wrongs, bring themselves into disrepute. Just because the people concerned have fifty to a hundred grand to spare on lawyers fees. Maybe they’re being paid too much.
Justice this ain’t, because real justice does not come with a price tag.
IANAL, Bill, but I seem to recall seeing somewhere that linking is seen as equivalent to saying it yourself. But fuck it, it’s past time the dickheads heard that the world is no longer three-quarters pink and just because the word British is in British Colombia it doesn’t mean a UK court has any say over there.
Personally I have seen one injunction and even though it’s not a celeb shagging gagging order for the life of me I can’t see why the hell someone thought it worth £60,484.60 of his money. The injunction banned three specific accusations, two of which seemed perfectly suited to a libel action if demonstrably untrue and the third of which isn’t a crime anyway, and is only even unseemly if you’re a deyd in the wloo Grauniad reader (probably enough hints there). Sixty grand? More money than sense. On the other hand if the first two allegations turned out to be true I can see there’d be some public interest, though in the interim innocent until proven guilty obviously holds.
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