Nevertheless, everything he writes is well worth reading, particularly this.

This is old news, but I missed it.  Laurie Pycroft of Pro-Test fame, did not.

Mark Stephen’s article in The Times last week that was commented upon by me here, has provoked responses from the claimant in the libel proceedings, Mike Keith-Smith and a Times reader Kristen Roy, which were published in The Times today.

I republish their correspondence here: -

"Sir,

 

As the successful claimant in Keith-Smith v Williams, I strongly object to Mark Stephens’s assertion that the decision by Judge Alistair MacDuff, QC, marks “a dark day for freedom of speech” (news comment, Mar 22).

 

Since when did the right to free speech imply the right of an anonymous malefactor to engage in a long-term campaign of vile and obscene abuse against an innocent individual? This disgusting conduct is not “the democratisation of knowledge”. A far better analogy would lie with the facility, common in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian dictatorships, for malicious individuals to bear false witness against their neighbours from behind a cloak of secrecy.

 

If I have made a stand that in any way assists in the plight of other victims of internet abuse – and I know that they are legion – then I am very proud to have done so."

 

Mark Keith-Smith

and,

"Sir,

 

The High Court ruling in the case of Keith-Smith v Williams demonstrates the application of common sense to legal treatment of speech over the internet.

 

The internet is a technologically unprecedented medium and certainly presents conceptual difficulties for the law where jurisdictional questions arise. However, there is little justification for creating a new set of libel laws for the World Wide Web or, rather, taking them away altogether. A libellous allegation remains exactly that, whether read from a paper in hand or on a screen before the eyes.

 

Are people really so adept at distinguishing “ranters” on the internet from those making viable claims? Should we be? And, if we are, then why are we deemed unable to make these distinctions when the claim appears in hard copy?

 

The characteristic of the internet which sets it apart from others is quite simply its potential for dissemination at mind-boggling speeds, in mind-boggling volumes. The internet is a legitimate mode of communication and to place it in a legal vacuum undermines the very real place it now occupies in today’s society."

 

Kristen Roy

Let me start by saying that I do not think the opinions they profess are either misguided or wrong.  I just do not agree.  I have a different perspective.

Mr Keith-Smith has a political persona to protect.  The palpably false insults made by his nemesis, an obviously malicious woman, could have been used by unscrupulous opponents who were willing to smear his good name behind the scenes, though I am unconvinced of the likely success of this tactic on the part of such miscreants.

As I have already said in my earlier post on the subject, the danger of litigating against small time "slanderers" is that the legal action publishes the libel to a larger audience that will contain even more people who will believe, irrationally, that the falsehoods are true, because for one reason or another they need to believe they are true.

In some cases (though clearly not in the instant case) a libel action is used as a gagging device to suppress a truth (Liberace, Jeffrey Archer.) This is not lost on the public. Thus very often, only the most popular litigants of uncontroversial occupations or pursuits truly escape unscathed.  So often, even successful libel actions do not have the desired result.

I fear this victory is likely to give succour to those who wish to silence critics on the net.  Bloggers have a limited audience and their shelf life is relatively short.  A blogger or owner of a website who is clearly bitter and twisted about something will lose an audience fast and nothing they say will carry any weight, anyway. We are not discussing mass audience newspapers or television media whose utterances have far more weight (and thereby cause more damage) because they try to verify their facts and have lawyers to ensure that so far as is possible, there is not any overstepping of the mark. Only a handful of blogs have a very large audience and the reason for their popularity is that they are amongst other things, interesting, authoritative in their chosen subject and in the main avoid gratuitous offence.

It is the possibility of gagging actions that most bloggers could not hope to afford to defend, which bothers me.  Pitfalls for the claimants, do not.  If they wish to risk doing a Gillian Taylforth, then so be it.

It had to happen of course, as night follows day.  Terrorist elements amongst the Animal Rights fraternity have shown already that harassing and threatening opponents is an effective means of controlling and forcing them to submit to its will.  The tactic is catching on amongst other single issue groups, the most recent example being  anti abortionists, as is reported today by Sandra Laville.  As yet, our home grown hard-line anti abortionists have yet to blow up an abortion clinic as happened in the United States but, no doubt, from now on we can expect little acts of harassment and intimidation here and there against anyone who is seen or suspected to support, legal abortion.

In the case reported today in The Guardian, the miscreant anti abortion group is UK Life League which is run by a James Dowson.  Like Animal Rights groups, it also appears to rely upon doctored photographic evidence as part of its case in drumming up support and finance.

"Life League, which is a registered company, raises money through donations, and stalls on streets across England and Scotland, a tactic successfully employed by animal rights groups."

Remember that name and next time you pass a Life League stall in the high street, please give it a wide berth.

“Labour isn’t wicked…” says Danny Kruger.  However, it is seeking to pass legislation similar to that passed by the National Socialists in Germany following Adolf Hitler’s electoral success in 1933.[1]

The problem is that just like the Nazis, Labour too has a vision.  It believes fervently in the justice of what it does and will not be diverted from its chosen course.  It does not believe that its opponents act in good faith when criticising the measures it proposes.  It is not open to reasonable compromise.  It neither listens nor wants to listen.  It has a mission that will be fulfilled.

Unlike the Nazis, Labour does not want to intimidate, terrorise, imprison or murder a significant part of the population or wage war against its European neighbours, though it does seem to need to micro-manage the activities of the citizenry.  This Labour Government’s crime is that it cannot conceive that any British Government should ever wish to abuse the powers it is currently seeking to create.  Its arrogance is breathtaking.

It was in Scotland that opposition to the Community Charge first exploded.  I should not suggest for one moment that the anti-smoking ban in Scotland will lead to so much violent protest, but quiet, large scale disobedience is assured.  No matter how softly softly the authorities seek to enforce the ban, it will just cause more hard feeling and generate the political opposition to the measure that was so singularly missing when it was first proposed.

As someone who does not smoke, it suits me not to inhale others’ cigarette smoke or have the dubious honour of my clothes smelling as if I had polished off a pack of twenty, personally.  Nevertheless, I feel that smokers are being victimised.  Many non-smokers I have spoken to feel the same way.  Beyond our politicians and persons involved in the provision of medical or health care, amongst non-smokers the support for a ban is soft  or non-existent.  Smokers are currently resentful but compliant.  This resignation to their fate will not last long once the inconvenience of their being unable to smoke in their favoured pub or club has sunk it.  The sheer unfairness of it all will rankle.

Many hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters will be directly touched by this ban in a way that Iraq and Sleaze did not.  Iraq did no more than reduce Labour’s Commons majority  from epic landslide proportions to a “pathetic” thumping one of sixty plus. Sleaze, taken on its own, is not likely to lose many seats for Labour, particularly if Honest Gordon takes over at No.10. The smoking ban will irritate many natural supporters and the Government should bear in mind that it is not only bad weather on Polling Day that can keep away Labour supporters.[1]

Andrew Sullivan reports today in The Sunday Times concerning the row that has erupted in relation to an episode of the cartoon series South Park being “pulled” from a television schedule because it appears to have offended Scientologists.  Now others seem to be jumping on the “cartoons” bandwagon, the willingness to kow-tow to the complainers is unsettling.  There may be solid commercial reasons for this particular example of self censorship, but nevertheless more people with super sensitivities about their beliefs might to be encouraged to chance their arm.  Should this trend continue, a line will have to drawn. 

Mr Sullivan argues,

“…it’s this artful ability to say in cartoon form what you cannot say in any other without a libel writ that makes cartoons irreplaceable…

 

Cartoons and puppetry, as the classic series Spitting Image proved, can convey truths and explore fantasies no other form can.

 

We need those truths and benefit from those fantasies. A free society survives partly because the powerful are mocked, and their pretensions undermined. Religions, which guard their own illusions carefully, are particularly ripe for satire.  And they should be.

 

Whenever one human being is claiming to tell the truth about the meaning of life he is making a very powerful claim — and in a free society he also runs the risk of getting a raspberry. Laughter matters because piety begets power.

 

Orwell once remarked that one reason fascism never took off in Britain was because the sight of a goose-stepping soldier would prompt your average Englishman to giggle. Someone is now silencing the giggles.  And our world is a lot creepier because of it.”

Yes, quite.

The Court of Appeal's decision in the Shabina Begum case was disturbing for a number of reasons and happily the House of Lords has reversed it. I suspect that Boris Johnson echoes the thoughts of many of us when expressing his opinions on the matter in his article in The Daily Telegraph, today.

I do not smoke, so the recent legislation that will soon ban people from smoking in certain public places does not concern me to any material degree.  I do not hunt, so I have not been deprived of my sport by that means.  I do not shoot, so when that is banned, I shall not suffer, nor shall I when the time comes for angling to be outlawed.  I am astute enough to realise that sooner or later however, one of my little freedoms will be the subject of Government interference.  It is for this reason, that when the smokers or hunters or any other minority whose little freedoms have been trampled under foot finally revolt, I shall be there alongside them at the barricades.[1]

I have little doubt that Tracy Williams went too far when insulting Keith Smith, a UKIP parliamentary candidate, in a chat room in April 2004.  Whether he should have issued proceedings for libel is another matter.  Ms Williams’ insults were palpably false and were merely intended to insult.  No reasonable person was likely to take them seriously.  Mr Smith’s victory has done no more than broadcast the nature of the insults to millions of people rather than the few hundred who might have visited the website in question.

My concern is that Ms Williams’ insults were very tame when compared to much of the criticism directed towards other, more powerful politicians, individuals and corporations which routinely appears on UK blogs.  I hope a precedent has not been set.  Many political blogs, though full of invective and bile (and almost certainly libellous) are highly entertaining, very much in the tradition of James Gillray.  It would be a shame to see them gagged, particularly as the media in general now seems to be so feeble in its criticism of big business and big Government.  We shall have to wait and see.[1]

Some weeks ago, in anticipation of the tenth anniversary of the Dunblane tragedy, I started work on a long article documenting successive Governments’ attempts to control gun crime by bearing down hard on lawful gun ownership, and pointing out the futility and unfairness of it all.  It is enough to say that the article was not completed.  This article by Ross Clark in The Times today says much the same thing, is shorter, better written and far more interesting.

Nicola Woolcock reports in The Times today about Oxford University’s successful attempt to secure an injunction against animal rights activists preventing their screaming through megaphones and taking photographs. The earlier injunction had placed no restraints on noise, which enabled the activists to use amongst other things, horns, whistles and tapes of dogs howling. They had also photographed and videoed staff, students and construction staff.

The report continues,

"However, the University’s attitude towards freedom to demonstrate is called into question by its decision to apply for an even more stringent injunction at a full hearing next month. It wants the weekly protest cut from four hours to one and the maximum number of demonstrators reduced from fifty to twelve."

Why is the University’s attitude towards freedom to demonstrate called into question? The animal rights activists are not there to demonstrate, they are there to intimidate. They have not just turned up in their hundreds, had a noisy march, called their opponents a few rude names and having made their point, then gone home. They are there every day, causing a nuisance and making it very clear that if anyone disagrees with them, that person’s property and/or health might suffer. It is arguable that the University should have sought an even more stringent order. The animal rights daily gathering in Oxford is nothing to do with freedom of expression.

A persuasive plea from Rachel from North London.

It is ironic that the BBC, which strives so hard to serve “minorities” has been so roundly condemned by a report by Stonewall, the organisation that campaigns on behalf of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.

The report cites numerous examples of presenters on the two main BBC channels making negative comments about gays.  The report's researchers, who included heterosexuals, watched one hundred and sixty eight hours of programming between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. over a period of eight weeks.  During that time, it is said, lesbian and gays, references to them, or related issues featured in just thirty-eight minutes of coverage, of which thirty-two minutes were deemed derogatory or offensive and just six minutes were deemed positive.

A number of things struck me about the report.  Whilst I cannot claim to have watched the same one hundred and sixty eight hours of programming as the researchers, I have watched programmes in which the alleged worst offenders, such as the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Anne Robinson and Chris Moyles happened to be presenting.  None of these individuals are homophobic.  All call a spade, a spade and are vocal about their opinions.  Chris Moyles might be a piss-taker, but very often the butt of his humour is himself.  I accept that gay characters in so many plays, soaps and other programmes seem to be a parody, but then the other characters are clichéd, as well.  I suspect that as the researchers were specifically looking for bias against gays, they found it.  Seek and ye shall find.  Had they been asked to watch the programmes and note down anything they thought to be significant but without being told what they were looking for, the result of the survey might have been very different.

Too often, focus groups and activists from “minorities” are blind to the “robust humour” to which the general population is subjected.  They are too ready to adopt the role of victim and are far too sensitive and perceive slight where there is none.  It is also a sad fact of life, that the World does not perceive any of us as we perceive ourselves, but so often, the World’s perception is right.

The portrayal of homosexuality in the media is very often trite and silly.  The BBC is pro European Union and Tory-Sceptic, but it is not homophobic.[1]