Shhh…

Here's a naughty and amusing little ditty tackling the current fuss over the use of so-called super-injunctions (most aren't: true super-injunctions forbid the disclosure that the injunction exists, not just the identity of the subject). It also and accidentally I presume explains why it's not a simple matter of freedom of speech.



The song shows you some pictures of well-known people who have apparently broken their marriage vows or engage in non-standard sexual activities.

So? I don't care. Nor should anybody else. Andrew Marr, Jeremy Clarkson and Peter Baynham shouldn't be moral arbiters. Marr does sometimes ask intrusive questions of politicians, and so shouldn't be hiding his own activities behind the law, but it's a marginal point. Clarkson is a repulsive clown, but who he sleeps with is entirely immaterial. Peter Baynham's a comedian. I get very uncomfortable with the News of the World (currently neck-deep in illegal activities) claiming that exposing the extra-marital affairs of minor actresses and entertainers for the lascivious drooling of their readers constitutes freedom of speech.

The only super-injunction that's utterly indefensible is the one given to Trafigura, the company which poisoned several thousand Africans and asked the courts to keep it out of the newspapers. That's proper abuse of the law. All the rest is hypocrisy.

The really interesting aspect of the matter is the extension of the Spycatcher affair: the British government used the courts to prevent publication of the book and extracts, but the judges held that because the book was legally available around the world, and therefore any damage was already done, publication couldn't be prevented in the UK.

With Twitter and webpages hosted all over the world, the state is being seriously eroded. One Twitter account is posting claims about which celebrities have taken out super-injunctions and why (probably incorrectly). It can't be touched by the British courts.

I've no idea where Plashing Vole is hosted - probably the US, but who knows? The courts could be used to sue me for things I say here, but Blogger probably couldn't be forced to take my pages down (though being a corporation, it'll do whatever those in power tell it to). Legal borders no longer mean anything, though Google, the Chinese government and lots of other states are trying to reinstate electronic borders.

Knowledge is Power?

An old university friend of mine is leading a campaign to make information free. Down in murky Brighton, his friend Jason Kitcat (yes, really) is putting clips of council meetings on Youtube.

This seems like an excellent use of new technology to strengthen democracy. After all, anyone can physically attend a council meeting. But no, the authority is claiming 'breach of copyright' and 'political use', which sounds like a desperate attempt to avoid the spotlight - after all, it's OK when a bored local watches you fix and plot, but Youtube exposes you to the scrutiny of the masses, and we can't have that. How can honest footage of discussions be biased?

Can a council 'own' footage of a discussion? Doesn't the council 'belong' to the taxpayers anyway? As far as I can tell, it's public property. Will they, as Jim notes, ban the reporting of council discussions in newspapers?

The core of freedom of speech

There's a lot of whinging around at the moment - people claiming that anything 'offensive' to their ears should be banned.

Nonsense: I don't want to live in a world in which I hear nothing with which I disagree. I want to hear my opponents, then put them in camps (I believe this is the core argument against prior licensing of printed material in Milton's Areopagitica).

Philip Pullman says it better than I could:

Bloggers of the World: Unite!

Lady Butscombe (no, me neither), another member of the permanent political class who has found that the world does indeed owe her a living, thinks UK bloggers should be regulated by the Press Complaints Commission, that famously balanced, impartial and fearsome watchdog which does such a good job managing the printed media.

We're not impressed. This (overlong) letter is being sent to the PCC, and you can add your name to it here:

Dear Lady Buscombe,

Re: Extension of PCC regulation to UK Blogs/Blogging

We write in regard to your apparent proposal that the PCC should consider extending its remit to the 'blogosphere' as reported by Ian Burrell of the Independent on 16 November 2009.

While we are grateful for your interest in our activities we must regretfully decline your kind offer of future PCC regulation.

Frankly, we do not feel that the further development of blogging as an interactive medium that facilitates the free exchange of ideas and opinions will benefit from regulation by a body representing an industry with, in the main, substantially lower ethical standards and practices than those already practiced by the vast majority of established British bloggers.

Although we would not wish you believe that this criticism relates to all your members – The Guardian, in particular, has adopted a number of practices, not least the appointment of a Readers' Editor to deal with complaints, which we consider to be the current gold standard in ethical journalistic practice amongst national newspapers – it is nevertheless the case that the vast majority of national newspaper titles routinely fall well short of both those, and our own, standards and that our direct experience of dealing with the PCC shows the organisation to be, in the main, complicit in those failings.

To give but one recent example of bad practice, of the many that bloggers have documented in over the last few years, an article published by the Tabloid Watch blog in October, documented, in some considerable detail, the tortuous process that one of its readers had to go through in order to get the News of the World to retract a manifestly untrue and inflammatory statement by one of its regular columnists, Carole Malone.

In this particular column, published in July 2009, Malone made use of an all-too-common and utterly racist myth that 'immigrants' (meaning asylum seekers) receive free cars on arriving in the UK, a myth that is most closely associated with the propaganda output of the British National Party. Extract of Malone article:

"All you have to do to get everything Britain has to offer is to turn up illegally with some sob story of how your own country is too dangerous or that you're a lesbian who'll be shot if you stay there and Hey Presto, it's like you've won the lottery! And, in effect, they HAVE.

Free houses, free cars, free healthcare and free money. Hell, they don't even have to work or speak the language. Even the suggestion they should is seen as racist in Brown's Britain.

They can just live as they did before, only with a whole heap more money and zero responsibility to the country providing it."

What we find most striking about the process documented by Tabloid Watch is the extent to which the PCC actively sought to facilitate the News of the World's efforts to avoid undertaking practices that we, as bloggers, take for granted as being standard practice in our corner of the internet: i.e. the prominent publication of an honest and open correction of a factual error on the original article in which the error, itself, was made.

Instead, as we invariably find to be standard practice amongst, particularly, tabloid newspapers; the correction and cursory apologywhen it was grudgingly issued after what Tabloid Watch described as 'two months of wrangling' – appeared in a location other than that of Malone's column in the newspaper's print edition and on its website on a page utterly divorced from the article to which it relates, which was removed its entirety, and in such a way that only someone searching specifically for the retraction would ever be likely to find it.

To all intents and purposes, the retraction might as well not have been issued, for all that it would be apparent to visitors to the News of World's website that it had ever been made.

This is but one clear example of a practice that would be unacceptable amongst established bloggers and one of many that bloggers who specialise in monitoring the national press for accuracy have documented in recent years.

For a blogger to engage in such practices, which include 'stealth editing' of articles, after publication, to avoid owning up to factual errors and removing and/or refusing to publish critical comments from readers, especially those that highlight and correct factual errors.

For an established blogger to adopt such practices would do incalculable damage to their public reputation; this being, after all, all that we have to trade on.

To the vast majority of national newspapers such conduct is no more than standard operating practice.

Consequently we would suggest that before your even consider turning your attention to our activities, you should direct your energies towards putting your own house in proper order.

Should you succeed in raising the ethical standards and practices of the majority of the national press, particularly the tabloids, to our level then we may be inclined to reconsider our position.

Until that happens, any attempt by the Press Complaints Commission to regulate the activities of bloggers will be strenuously resisted at every possible turn.

Regards,

Foreign? Then shut your face.

I listened with utter horror to Radio 4 this morning as government minister Phil Woolas announced that freedom of speech would soon apply only to citizens of this country. Anybody hoping to gain citizenship would have to give up any ideas of legally exercising freedom of speech.

This is insane. Firstly - the UK has signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that being human and alive automatically garners certain rights. Amongst them is the right to free expression.

Secondly, and on a very practical basis: will a letter to a newspaper objecting to this or that policy be checked by the immigration service in case the author is foreign? Will people on a legal demonstration have to bring their ID cards? Then the police can take the names of anyone foreign for punishment (demerits on their citizenship points) while allowing everybody else to carry on?

It will, of course, apply only to the poor, black and Muslims. If an EU citizen (I'm on an Irish passport) protested perfectly legally and then was refused UK citizenship, what difference would it make? EU citizens have the right to work, live and vote anywhere in the EU, whereas someone from outside the EU would remain stateless, poor and vulnerable for making exactly the same protest. Mmmm, natural justice.

One of the things the UK prides itself on (falsely, to some extent: remember one side of the Northern Irish struggle being silenced on TV?) is its tolerance of dissent. That's why Marx ended up in London, writing the Manifesto, boffing the maid and knocking policemen's helmets off after a good Saturday night. Extending citizenship only to those willing to repress any independent thought is horrifying.

Can you imagine the consequences of this in recent memory? Jean-Charles de Menezes's family and friends could have been silenced. Peter Hain (South African) and other anti-apartheid campaigners would have been silenced because the Tories were firm friends of the South African regime etc. etc. etc.

Finally, this sinister suggestion conflates the state or nation and the government. Governments are partisan and temporary, and silencing dissent against a policy that could be reversed in a few months' time is astonishingly unjust. It's perfectly acceptable to deny citizenship to individuals who might damage the stability of the nation or the state - but governments are neither.