In the press again #equalmarriage

On St. Patrick's Day the following letter appears in both the Belfast Telegraph and Newsletter under the headers: "Gay 'marriage' plans: the bill will be millions" and "Gay 'marriage' causing fiasco over legislation."

The British Government now realises that same-sex 'marriage' will require a massive rewrite of legislation dating back to 1285.

Over 2,000 laws referring to marriage have to be changed at a cost of many millions of pounds and all to support a whim of David Cameron, who is determined to push ‘gay marriage’ through despite the majority of the population objecting to it, including many gay people.

The Government plans to take the word 'husband' and 'wife' out of legislation and replace them with 'partner' or 'spouse'.

he proposed change for the word 'widow' is the phrase 'woman whose deceased partner was a man'.
Other legislative changes are to be made to prevent a man becoming queen in the event of a king 'marrying' a man, to stop a man from becoming the Princess of Wales, should the Prince of Wales enter into a same-sex ‘marriage’ and to ensure the 'husband' of a male peer is not referred to as lady, duchess or countess.
This ill-thought-out fiasco is to be funded by the taxpayer.

The Republic of Ireland, and other countries, need to be on their guard to stop their governments foisting similar misguided legislation on them.

Dr Owen Gallagher
Co Antrim

The first thing I noticed was the highly accurate estimate of many millions of pounds. Now  as an economics graduate and the former employee of a Member of Parliament this was like waving a red rag to a bull. Especially as this was coming at the time that Ben Summerskill was back in my attention with his cost of legislation quote from the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats fringe event in 2010. Where had this figure been plucked from?

Therefore the first place I went to check was the Government's own impact report, something that is carried out by civil servant statisticians (oh yeah I was in a Government department stats branch too in my working life) for every piece of new legislation. So yeah there is a current estimate of cost of implication of between £3.3m and £4.7m. However, as a economist you do not merely factor in the cost but also the benefit. Further down on the same page comes the estimate of benefits between £0.1m and £15.7m.

These figures are over the first 10 years of the legislation and there is notes that the costs of the legislation are not expected to continue past the initial 10 year period but of course that the benefits to the economy will. Indeed the cost of only £4.7m is actually quite small in the grand scheme of things, during the week, after I'd pressed send, we learnt that the new pound coin was going to cost hundreds of millions to implement.

So it was that I took to my keyboard nad had my responses in The Newsletter on Saturday and the Belfast Telegraph today. The unedited text appeared in the former and I include that below, but I was glad that The Newsletter gave me the heading "Economic benefit of equal marriage outweigh the cost" and the Belfast Telegraph "Marriage law costs warning 'a scare' tactic".

Here is the text of the published letter:

I note that Dr Owen Gallagher takes the highly accurate figure of “many millions of pounds” in his letter (March 17) as a reason for Government to think carefully before introducing equal marriage.

However, all new legislation will incur a cost. That is why statisticians work out the impact that legislation will have.

I can only assume that Dr Gallagher is drawing his figure from the Government’s own Impact Assessment of the legislation from August last year which does indeed give a figure of between three and four million pounds as the cost.

However, this report also lists the economic benefit as well, which is put at between four to five times as much as the cost over the first ten years.

While the cost will be up front the benefits will continue beyond that 10-year period.

I would hazard a guess that by merely quoting the costs and not the benefits that Dr Gallagher’s doctorate is not in economics.

However, the costs of the introduction of this legislation are not great in the grand scheme of things.

To try and use this figure, which comes to about five pence a person, as a means to scare people is a cynical misinterpretation of the facts.

You can read more of my published letters down the years on the published letters tab.

Has Cameron sounded death knell for Coalition? #Leveson

I’m sorry I have no posted for a couple of days but I have been rather busy preparing  for the marriage of fellow bloggers Paul Burgin and my cousin Rachel Stalker. 

Therefore I will be probably be a little late in making this statement but I will make it anyway.

Back in July 2011 David Cameron said:

"The public want us to work together to sort this problem out, because until we do so it will not be possible to get back to the issues they care about even more"

Failure to take on the key part of the report from the Inquiry he was calling for on that day is a sham.

He went on later when being question on that day he recalled Parliament to say:

"...the last Government and the last Opposition too often put on the back burner the issue of how to regulate the media. That is the mistake that we made. We have both—all—got to be honest about it. And by the way, this is not just about the relationship with News International; it is also about the work we do trying to win over the BBC or The Independent or The Guardian. Let us be frank about this, and let us be transparent about the meetings that we have. Then we can learn the lessons and use this as a cathartic moment to sort out the relationship and put it on a better footing."

It appears in his comments about the Leveson report where he says that "writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land." would threaten freedom of speech that hold a problem. He welcomes Leveson's calls for an independent regulator of the press but does not want to regulate for it either. Therefore as Leveson and many of us know the Press Complaints Commission is a lame dog able to bite but not to punish those that have stretched the realms of what is right and decent to print in a free press.

 If David Cameron defies a vote in Parliament about giving statutory powers to an independent press watchdog or issues a lily livered bill that does not take into main thrust of Leveson's recommendation, then we reach an impasse.  I believe, should that happen, the Liberal Democrats should call for a vote of no confidence and vote for the motion. We cannot maintain an sense of integrity if our coalition partners ignore a report that they called for so urgently.

We have the word democrat in our party name for a reason and that should be adhered to. There have been any number of time that I have voted against a policy that our party has adopted but as the majority has accepted it I will defend such things. On the issues that Leveson has raised we have had debates, maybe not formally but as things have been going on, that a self-governing press has certainly failed. Added to this that the Press Complaints Commission has lacked the power to make any punitive judgement that would have any real implication.

From my brief post wedding reading of what Leveson is saying these are two key components. From what Dave ‘friend of the press barons’ Cameron is saying these are just the reasons that he is prepared to fly in the face of democracy.

Last time I checked, which I admit was Thursday lunchtime, the UK was still a democracy. Having at the end of last night had my principles tested as a sole Lib Dem in a hot bed of Labour activists and a few Tories, I know just what we as Liberal Democrats should do. When I showed the groom a treat that said that Harriet Harman had agreed with Nick’s statement that was enough to tell us that there was a consensus there as Harriet has been baying for Nick’s blood for weeks and months now. If the public wants it, Labour, Lib Dems and 70 Conservative back benchers want it, Cameron doing nothing or acting half-heartedly to bring forth legislation is a smite on the democratic principle. If he acts like this he is an affront to democracy and we as a party who support the democratic principle should have nothing to do with this despot

How to precis a ranty blog for the letters page

How do you manage to cut down my ranty blog post from Saturday into something short enough for a Newspaper to print in its letter page?

Well here is how:

I READ in the News Letter (August 18) that Mike Nesbitt has written to UUP members asking them not to dance to the republican tune on marriage equality.

I would like to assure Mr Nesbitt that, while I want to see marriage equality in all parts of the union, I certainly am not a republican.

He also says that marriage equality has no realistic prospect of coming about in Northern Ireland.
It wasn’t that long ago we were saying that about the IRA laying down arms, or Sinn Fein and the DUP being able to share OFMdFM together, yet these things came to pass.

He carries on to say that all members of his party should be careful with their language not to offend.
His email is just the tip of the iceberg as far as offending the LGBT community in Northern Ireland is concerned.

Our so-called ‘unionist’ politicians are happy to leave LGBT people behind as second-class British subjects on issues of adoption, the blood ban and now, it seems, marriage equality.
If Sinn Fein, the Green Party, Alliance or SDLP can bring about change for an LGBT community that is neither nationalist or unionist, Protestant or Catholic, then that is the sort of tune I want to waltz off to - into a shared future.

Not every one in a public story is public property

Eric Joyce has made the news again today. I'm not going to be linking to any of the articles and here is the reason why.

The reason he has made the news was that he is accused of an affair with an at the time 17 year-old student at one of the high schools in his constituency. Someone who was working in his constituency office. She also co-chaired the debate at her high school, one of those at which I stepped in as agent because our Lib Dem candidate was working at the time and unable to get time off.

That was where I first met the teenager in question. Like Eric Joyce I was one of her friends on Facebook and mutual followers on Twitter and this is where the reason I am not linking to the story kicks in.

The Tabloid has used Facebook pictures of an intern working in an MPs campaign office and Tweets between the two as evidence of an affair. I think of all the young party activists who appear in campaign shots across all parties across Facebook all the time. Many of our younger members love to bag as many pictures as possible with the big names when they come to campaign, so it is hardly surprising that pictures of a young campaigner with big names appears on Facebook. She was a keen, politically knowledgeable and active teenager.

Like Eric I also asked via Twitter how the result of her exams went when they came through, I do the same for anyone looking forward to exam results on my feed every year, especially those I've met and know. I also wished her a happy birthday when she finally turned 18 after the election, one thing that emerged during the question on votes at 16.

However, there is an accusation that the affair has been going on for the last 2 years. But, the young lady in question has the right to move on without the baggage of such a story being around any current or future relationship she may have. I notice today that her Facebook profile has been taken down, her Twitter account has been protected for some time. Whatever the interest in the story this is someone who is still only 19 that has been plastered across the papers today, this is someone who through the interconnetiveness of social media has maintained friendships with a mixture of political people.

Yet this is someone who feels hounded today by the tabloid press.

While the rich and famous attempt to hide behind super injunctions young people can be preyed on by the press. In this case there are quotes from members of the Falkirk Constituency Labour Party. It is likely that the identity of that nineteen year old was given to the press by one of them in a final attempt to push the resignation or at least deselection of the MP. But in doing so they have made her collateral damage, seemingly without thinking of the consequences that have unravelled today. As someone who knows her reading my twitter stream today has made horrid reading.

As Johann Lamont the leader of the Labour in Scotland says: 

 "If these reports are true, [Eric Joyce] is a man who has abused his position of power and authority."

He alone has the case to answer to if he found to have abused his position of authority. It is not open season to spread lies, or even just dig scurrilously for any fragment of truth, if there is any, and potentially ruin someone whose live has moved on. It is not right to have slain down a 19 year-old as collateral damage.

Labour call in the thought police

At least that is one implication of what shadow culture minister Ivan Lewis could bring about with a register of journalists. You only have to look at what Labour's Socialist cousins around the world have done by allowing only certain publications to publish news down through the years.

So while I agree that something needs to be done in light of hackgate a register of journalists and a striking off of some of those is not the way to go about it. Where would this register end? How would it affect freedom of speech and thought? Would it be used to expand to bloggers?

The expansion to bloggers is something that Labour and the Tories have both toyed with. Bringing in some regulation on the press that the politicians have control, even a quasi control over is not the way that we should be going.

What we need is an independent press authority that has the power to inflict punishment on the press and by that I do not need expelling them from expressing a thought in print. We need a complaints procedure that anyone can activate not just someone who has been directly affected as in some circumstances by the time the hurt party/parties get around to taking action it is already too late and too much hurtfulness can already be caused even as they are grieving.

I expect the register of journalists to go the way of Ed Miliband's £6,000 tuition fees and be buried very quickly as is the way of trying to make policy on the hoof that Labour appear to have adapted this week.

The press and me at Conference #LDConf

I may not have the youngster factor of Alex White, Matt Downey and Maelo Manning (pictured above)* so the chances of me being picked upon by Huw Edwards, or Matthew Paris for a press call or less at Lib Dem Conference. After all I'm another white man, or a certain age in a suit, even though I'm an openly out one (which again ain't that unique at Lib Dem Conf). However, that doesn't mean that I didn't get a few media hits over the week.

First there was my way into the ICC on Saturday I got grabbed by Winkball who were there all week.



Then on my birthday the BBC grabbed me for this piece on their website.

Finally in the queue for the leaders speech I was interviewed by the Time magazine reporter who happened to be in front of me in the queue. There are just a few short words from me in this but still I've gone international.

* Indeed scarily their combined age is less than mine, excluding Huw of course.

We need a press watchdag with teeth not just a yap

We now are all well aware that self regulation of the Press has been a failure.

This morning both David Cameron and Ed Miliband this morning called on the Press Complaints Commission to be ditched.

The Prime Minister said:

"The PCC has failed. In this case [hacking] it was absent, ineffective and lacking in rigour. It lacks public confidence. We need a new system entirely."

While the Labour leader said:

"It failed to get to the bottom of the allegations about what happened at News International in 2009.

"Its chair admits she was lied to but could do nothing about it. It was established to be a watchdog. But it has been exposed as a toothless poodle.

It is time to put it out of its misery. The PCC has not worked. We need a new watchdog. There needs to be fundamental change."

The thing is many of us have known the problem with the PCC in the past, as indeed I have often blogged. It doesn't offer any real threat, it acts retrospectively and it is self-regulating, coming from the editors themselves shepherding their fellow editors.

Ed's call for a new watchdog misses the fact, what we have is a watchdog that has no bite. We need to give a bite, they have to be able to act quickly. Act not just at the behest of an individual wronged, as now, but in the interests of good, fair and just practise in reporting. It has lacked the rigour as the Prime Minister has said because the leaders of the big two parties have failed to come down hard on the papers and media tycoons, because they rely on these press barons to get their point across.

When Vince Cable said he was going to declare war on Murdoch, he was immediately removed from the front lines of his own department making a decision because the Prime Minister didn't want anyone with cajones to take on the media bosses to endanger his position, especially as his press advisor at the time was a former Murdoch employee.

Let's not shut down the PCC and create the PCC on Sunday that is a Murdoch trick. Let us turn the PCC into a body independent from the press, give it real powers to intervene and punish, whilst also allowing a free press, and allow it to act swiftly.

And another thing...PCC says the Chancellor lied for #No2AV

The Press Complaint committee has upheld two complaints from Electoral Reform Services Ltd that the Chancellor George Osborne, as reported in the Daily Fail and the paper that shall not be named, LIED (OK the language used is that he was wrong) about the use of machines and that Electoral Reform Services Ltd would benefit from a Yes vote on 5th May.

Of course the whole issue of cost was a central tenet of the No2AV teams campaign. It was their opening batsmen, their leading goal scorer, their Oscar winning script, all rolled into one. Of course referendum communication we learnt during the campaign are not held by the Advertising Standards Agency code of conduct. But the PCC has found that the Chancellor has told untruths to fight this campaign, he may argue that he was merely echoing the statement from the No campaign. But if that was based on such a falsehood surely the Chancellor should have been more careful about what he said.

As I've pointed out before, such a breach by the Chancellor of the Treasury's own advice may actually be in breach of the ministerial code. While the PM take action against so senior a member who has broken the code. He restricted the role of the Business Secretary over the BSkyB takeover, about to take place tomorrow apparently, because he said publicly that he wasn't about to bow the knee to the mighty Murdoch. Yet his Chancellor has bowed the knee to the head of the Tax Payer's Alliance and their usual tactics to spread falsehood for political self preservation.

The only part of Westminster voting reform that was up to the public was the voting system, the Conservatives had already secured a reduction in the number of members which favoured them unfairly under the current system and required a change in voting system to provide a check and balance.

Well done George mission accomplished on that one, though it's hardly cricket. More Eton Wall Game. Oops did I spot that.

Open Letter to All My Female Friends

Dear all,

This morning's Today programme on Radio 4 has just said that the Foreign Secretary being in a room with another man was a 'lapse of judgement' for a straight politician. Therefore and henceforth I shall have to make some adjustments to the way I live to avoid making a similar 'lapse' seeing as I am an openly gay politician this will affect my female friends and acquaintances.

To Caron, you had better not get ill again. I know during your recent illness I spent many hours coming to see you and sometimes turning up while you were still in your pyjamas. But if the press were to get hold of such information it would be dynamite and a serious lapse of judgement in their opinion. Therefore in future this will have to stop, even if you are on death's bed all meeting you will he have to be clothed in outdoor wear and you will have to wheeled or trolleyed, if necessary, to a public venue. If other's catch the pubonic plague as a result that is a price that will have to be paid.

Also Caron and Elspeth Finlay I know that you have often driven me into the back and beyonds to dump me on some strange street with loads of leaflets. However, in future I may have to insist on a male driver as the exit of a campaign headquarters in the sole company of a woman and not returning for hours, with the same driver, and then looking exhausted might be similarly misconstrued.

Dear Helen Duffett and Meg and others I do love the direct message conversations that we have on Twitter. But I think we are going to have to stop them which means the juicy stuff like planning the BOTY's, or bloggers at conference or just talking about hot men on TV will just have to be done in the open.

As for my dear cousin Rachel, we are going to have to keep using the Lab/Lib Dem supporting cousin epithet on all our tweets to each other using up some of the valuable 140 characters. If only your mother had been born male and we shared the same surname, that would have made things easier.

Addendum paragraph As for Pam Tilson I clearly cannot be seen walking to or from a sporting arena in your company, tongues would wag. So that rules out my accompanying you to the Oval to watch the Glens play at any time*.

So sadly I shall have to make the required changes I cannot afford to have my character besmirched by keeping too close attention and proximity to members of the opposite sex. Guido and the MSM may well think I am slipping or defecting to a heterosexual lifestyle and that can never do.

Yours with regret,

Stephen Glenn

Further addendum I have just had assurances from the PSNI that Dubarrys, Kremlin or any other gay venue I may choose to enter will be swept of fag hags, lesbians and casual female hangers on. A security lock down will then be installed around the venue until 10 minutes after my departure. Drag Queen's are requested to turn up and depart in male apparel and sans make up, changing facilities will be provided at the discretion of the licensee inside the venue.

After all it wouldn't been right for me to be snapped by the press leaving such a place with a woman or faux-woman in shot. Think of the scandal the headlines writers would come up with.

* Actually that works out well for this Bangor fan.

Getting Ready With The Sunscreen

I'm following the example of Jeff and shamefully borrowing one of his phrases in return, in about 24 hours I fully expect to be 'applying the sunscreen' and start to pre-moderate comments on this blog. Watch this space to find out the reason why.

This will only be the second time in the almost five years I've been blogging that I have pre-moderated comments on this blog. The last time ran from 26th to 30th September 2005 (I'll let you google for yourself what might possibly have been going on then). It is not a decision that I am taking lightly but in light of Jeff's situation over the weekend I feel that in the next day it will be wisest choice for me at least in the short term.

I fully believe in free speech and will probably continue to allow most comments through the filter. However, I do realise that over the next couple of months I will not be online as much as I would like to be to keep an eye on what is being posted and may not be an situation to allow comments as quickly as some of my readers may hope.

As I said the recent events that overtook Jeff while he was enjoying the Spanish Sun (lucky sod) are just the latest reason why I am considering this action. Jeff is one of the most gracious and understanding of the Nat bloggers out there. He is most certainly not someone for whom the derogatory Cyber-Nat moniker should ever be applied. He engages with the opposition and is willing to let any PPC have a guest post on his blog (sadly no non-SNP PPC has 'yet' taken up his offer). He like me has always, until recently, allowed a free flowing comments policy. Indeed it was no surprise to read the comments of support for him from across the political divide in the bogosphere. It was though to see a journalist apparently refuse to accept his apology in the full sense in which it was offered.

Unlike the Main Stream Media bloggers tend to be a solitary experience. As someone who used to help moderate part of the BBC website I know that the press has teams of people looking out for comments that may offend, some ISPs are flagged up as potentially hazardous, some just turn up and get flagged by other readers. When you write an article for a paper or for the BBC you really do put it to bed. It goes online and you do not have to keep up to date with the comments that are going on under it in its online state.

When you are a blogger however, you want to interact with those that take an interest. That isn't always instantaneous in our online world. You have to do things, like work, sleep or even just turn off your computer and do something else instead.

So while a media outlet can take instantaneous action against a derogatory comment a blogger may not be able to do so. However, if it is pointed out to them that something has happened and they take the quickest action that they can an apologise for doing so that should be accepted. It is after all only good netiquette. There are times that maybe a blogger should be proactive and realise that they are not going to be available to check several times a day what is going on and set up pre-moderation, but that can sometimes ruin the blog for their loyal readers. Also to be honest I had to call work from Bournemouth last September and get somebody to turn on my out of office on my work email. We forget things sometimes.

But before the media jump down the blogger's throats let them not forget that they have occasion scoured the blogs and from my personal experience:

• Quoted half a sentence out of context (a post about Charles Kennedy during the Dunfermline and West Fife by election)
• Stolen an idea for a diary section (Angela Constance letter on behalf of Jim Devine sending up Nicola Sturgeon's letter)
• Taken only the end of an interview (my Tavish Scott piece from conference again out of the context it was meant)

In all but the first I wasn't even credited for the idea, and all of the above where not in a tabloid, but the one paper Scotland on Sunday.

Yesterday I happened to log on the the BBC just as the news of Ashok Kumar's death hit the breaking news, in the end I had a tribute up and online before the BBC or the Guardian. It's not a competition I doubt the several hundred hits I got in the first couple of hours of that news breaking are anything like the traffic they and other mainstream sites got. Although I did have over 10 hits from the Houses of Parliament before there was any other source except the local paper carrying the news.

That was pure fate, as sometimes unfortunately is what somebody decides to post in your comments section. Sometimes it is off topic, sometimes it is defamatory and sometimes it all happens when you are enjoying some off line time. That is the risk that sometimes us bloggers who wish to defend free speech take. It is one I'm not likely to be taken at least until May 7th.

I apologise in advance for the inconvenience.

Press Self Regulation Fails Time to Disband the PPC

Earlier today Mark Thompson wrote what is the point of the Press Complaints Commission in light of their ruling on Jan Moir and her Stephen Gately piece which lack cajones? Well now his view and mine are both being backed up by Peter Tatchell he says:

"The Press Complaints Commission should be disbanded. By failing to uphold its own standards and enforce its own Code of Practice, the PCC has demonstrated that it is unwilling, unable and unfit to regulate newspapers. We need a new press regulator with principles and teeth.

"Jan Moir's commentary on the death of Stephen Gately was factually inaccurate on two points. His death was not unnatural or lonely, yet the PCC has rejected a complaint concerning this inaccuracy by Stephen's civil partner, Andrew Cowles."

As I argued earlier the case for homophobia was the hardest of the three main clauses that the PCC may have had to judge on. Surely the timing of the article showed a lack of sensitivity to those close to the singer, the PPC merely said that the timing was "in questionable taste". But surely the factual accuracy should have been upheld more than anything else.

The PCC acknowledged that Jan Moir mentioned the coroners reports, that right the one that said he died of natural causes, to be precise Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome (SADS). The whole push of her article was to use unfounded, homophobic stereotypes to prove that is was "not natural".

Of course as Millennium Elephant points out the PCC is paid from by the people it regulates. Why? We have independent bodies to regulate almost everything else. This decision to even ignore the blatant things like accuracy in the face of opinion writing shows what a failure the self regulation of the press, by the press is. It really only serves to help the press.

As Dave Page wrote on today's Lib Dem Voice:

"Had Moir’s comments been made in the average workplace to a colleague who had complained, would she have been let off the hook?"

I think we all know what we hope the answer to that question would be. So in one workplace where such comments only affect a few to another where it clearly affects 25,000 who bothered to speak up, yet no action is taken.

As the PCC clearly have no cajones, there is nothing to really cut off apart from their ability to pass judgement on their own. Let's set up an independent body, with some clear standards (the current ones work for starters but could do with strengthening and broadening in some areas). Today they failed, show them the door and get somebody in that will actually do the job that is required.

READ ALSO: Of course not all Grauniad opinion is of hte abolish variety. Jonathan Heawood poses the opposite stand point. Of course I still say freedom of speech is one thing but being allowed to propagate deliberate falsehood, even in an opinion piece, is quite another.

Now Carter-Ruck Hush Up is Forging the Parliamentary Agenda #carterruck #trafigura

You have got to hand it to Carter-Ruck, they are failing miserably to work for their current and future clients (should they get any) benefit.

Earlier this week they fought they would throw their hand in to hush the Guardian up about them publishing a Parliamentary Question relating to their clients Trafigura dumping toxic waste off the Ivory Coast. While they temporally silenced the mainstream media the blogosphere and Twitterverse jumped in.

Of course the next matter was the issue of the Bill of Rights in 1688. The freedom enshrined in that for Parliament to be reported in the press and the Lib Dem's Paul Burstow called for a debate on the freedom of reporting Parliament even before Carter-Ruck backed down initially. I'm glad to see that on Wednesday the Speaker John Bercow has scheduled a debate over the issue of super-injunctions and their attempt to keep the discussion of the law makers in Parliament out of the papers. He said:

"Debate in the house in such situations is governed by the sub judice rules which leaves the chair [the Speaker] with discretion to allow reference to cases within limits determined by the chair," he said. "I have exercised that discretion and a debate will take place on 21 October at 2.30pm on the 'effects of English libel law on the reporting of parliamentary proceedings'."

Even on Thursday of last week Carter-Ruck were still trying to get Parliament to keep schtum when partner in the firm Alan Tucker wrote to the Speaker, every MP and Lord on Thursday saying he believed a parliamentary debate should not go ahead because the case concerning the existing injunction was "sub judice". The following day his firms injunction was lifted.

Paul Farrelly the MP whose question caused the ructions last week said:

"Carter-Ruck have got a real nerve. Firstly they tried and failed to suppress news that they had obtained a gagging order against the Guardian. Then they tried to ask the Speaker to gag parliament itself. This affair has shown us that privileges protecting press freedom are sometimes only as strong as their assertion. The Speaker and parliament must stand up to people like Carter-Ruck who aggressively try to encroach on these freedoms."

On Wednesday it is the time for the House to do just that. Stand up and tighten the rights of the free press, yeah even if it allows the Daily Fail to print the words that come out of Jan Moir's keyboard. It is time to make that stance to stop law firms showing contempt of Parliament and trying to determine what can be discussed and therefore reported from within.

Parliament are the peoples' representatives not some big law firm, if they take an interest in the minutiae of something there is probably a reason. Sadly Carter-Ruck appear not to have learnt their lesson so it is right for Parliament to stress its authority and the right of the press to report back to the people of their proceedings.

Even the PCC are Making Jan Moir a Special Case

Of course Jan Moir's article would have to be published on a day I was exceedingly busy then out having a good time. Indeed by the time I got home this evening the article appears to have been pulled from the Daily Fail website and the Press Complaints Commission (PPC) actually on their page about making a complaint saying, 'if you want to make a complaint about Jan Moir's article click here'. Apparently their website was down earlier so this may be to avoid too much overload on one server.

If you really want to read the full contents Cardiff Blogger has the full sorry piece with his commentary here.

I read it and logged a complaint with the PCC under three of their clauses. Accuracy, Intrusion into grief or shock and Discrimination. As the last of this has been widely covered elsewhere in the blogosphere I'm going to blog about the later.

Jan Moir writes:

"The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again."

Well I'm sorry they do. At only a few years older I thought I may have been facing something like that. My case was even more bizarre, I'd just left the gym, I may not have been in the peak of fitness but I still was pretty fit, but I experienced my first diagnosed cardiac episode, although I may have been having them for 20 years before. So yes I may very well have been one such person, so I question you accuracy.

When I was 16, one of our school friends did go to sleep and never wake up the day before our second Maths O'Level paper. So the whole school knew and the was there together to hear the news. The whole year was in shock at after the first hour when people could leave the hall, over half of my year did. Those of us who stayed couldn't settle for a good five minutes. At my 10 year reunion we marked the passing of 5 of our year, that is out of 200 or so pupils, as well as the one above 3 others were of natural causes. We had only just started to turn 28 never mind 33. Jan Moir must really have led a charmed life if she has never encountered someone young who has just passed away in their sleep.

As for her total disregard of the official cause of death, well as others have covered that heavily as well what more need I say. Her insinuations that there is something dark and sinister behind everything would mean many gay men should never again offer a bed or sofa for the night to a friend who has missed their last train, or can't be bothered waiting for the long queue at the taxi rank*. But then it appears that Ms Moir doesn't think that a member of Boyzone could be overflowing with the milk of human kindness, let alone the rest of the gay community.

The intrusion into grief and shock is maybe the hardest of the three clauses to apply. In the code it states:

5 Intrusion into grief or shock

i) In cases involving personal grief and shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings.

*ii) When reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used.

Now of course, Ms Moir seems to correlate the tragic death of Stephen Gately with the death of Kevin McGee the former partner of Matt Lucas. So maybe she does think it was a suicide despite all evidence to the contrary. So she does manage to avoid using excessive detail about the method used, firstly as there wasn't any, but more to the point she just makes it up.

The more solid ground of course it point about publication being handled sensitively. There is no way on this earth that this piece in the Daily Fail this morning cold possibly have been considered sensitive. To also publish on the eve of the funeral on the day that the body is returned to Ireland merely heightens the crassness of the piece as well as the timing.

Stuart Sharpe told me there was no point me blogging about this as I was heading out. Then when I got back that there was nothing new under the sun to add. I'm not sure if I have gotten a new take on this ridiculous woman's poisoned pen piece, but it certainly is mine and avoided too much of the obvious.

* You have been warned if you see the two of us out over the next few weekends lads. No can do, Ms Moir might get the wrong idea, the canasta game is just not going to happen.

Epic Fail by Carter-Ruck #carterruck #trafigura

As I reported earlier Carter-Ruck had an injunction to prevent this question:

61 N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

Which was already in the public domain being reported in the Guardian. Under a barrage of Tweets using the #trafigura and #carterruck hashtags the lawyers have backed down. Not before many more thousands of people learn just what Trafigura were trying to hid. The D-Notice gagging the Guardian was lifted before the paper could get this raised in court.

The fight is not over though Lib Dem MPs were seeking an emergency debate of the Bill of Rights sovereignty over the reporting of matters in the Houses of Parliament, this I feel should still go ahead. You can sign the petition on the Number 10 Website here.

When Parliamentary Reporting is Gagged in the 21st Century #Trafigura #CarterRuck #fail

People don't normally pay much attention to written questions in the House of Commons to the Secretary of State for Justice. But when one has been fielded, after 60 others, in this the first week of the new session and the Guardian is gagged from reporting that text people are likely to sit up and notice.

Bloggers from across the political blogosphere have rallied to the issue and the Twitterverse has lit up to many uses of the #Trafigura and #CarterRuck hashtags. So suddenly instead of solicitors Carter-Ruck trying to bury the fact that their client's actions are being questioned has actually highlighted the news to masses of people who would probably never have heard or read about it normally.

As many before me have pointed out the question from Paul Farrelly MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme is being gagged despite the 1688 Bill of Rights. One which provisions is "Freedom of speech and debates; or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament".

So obviously the lawyers are merely trying in vain to prevent the reporting of events in the House of Commons, thing is they cannot impeach the answer being published in Hansard. I expect that to be the most widely reported, or directed to answer in the history of the Parliamentary record being online.

Why McWhirter is Wrong Seeing Pirates Everywhere on the Online Superhighway

You'd half expect us all to heave to and fly the skull and crossbones on our masthead looking at some of the comments from the MSM since the weekend about us bloggers. Will, Yousuf, Jeff, Malc and Alex Massie have already pointed out some misguided and sloppy generalisations in Iain McWhirter's piece in yesterday's Herald. The fact that I feel the need to add my voice should be one way of showing just how wrong he is when he says, "New frontier of the blog hijacked for ugly politics". Simply looking at the diverstiy of the opinion raised against his turn of phrase makes that self evident.

That diversity across Scottish blogosphere of those who have taken up keyboard in agreement against McWhirter will show him one thing. One bad apple, no matter how large, does not ruin the orchard. Like Will I've been around this blogging lark for many years, but Yousuf, Jeff, Malc et al have also caught one fundamental of the medium that Derek Draper and LabourList have failed to recognise, the blogopshere is a community. As Will put it " I can squabble with Caron on matters of policy one minute, then compare notes with her about Strictly Come Dancing the next?". Just like me and Jeff, or whoever, can dispute policy from different view points or from the same depending just what is the subject of the day and now he's on Twitter we may well settle down to an evening exchanging views on the sport or TV just like me and Malc.

A wee while ago I was having a very public spat with Iain Dale online about his use of language in a particular situation. While at the same time behind the scenes when we both realised enough was enough a friendly agreement was being hatched, to try and tune down the voice of others that was overtaking the dispute. The political blogopshere does indeed tend to have it's own sort of Privy Council terms at times.

Scottish Roundup is a prime example of this. There is a site where the various political hues in Scotland work together to round up the best of the political blogs on a weekly basis. The usual suspects aren't always being nominated by the usual suspects either. I have often nominated the counterpoint to the Lib Dem story of the week, sometimes breaking a new blog in the process, because it is about balance. I had to write up the week that Nicol Stephen resigned as leader, (bad) luck of the draw, I didn't shirk from including pieces that criticised him from elsewhere.

It's not all ugly in the world of political blogs and as the others have also pointed out it isn't all poorly written or badly analysed. It is only when someone refuses to engage with the rest of the blogosphere, wants to set up almost overnight a beacon and try and control its use that things can become ugly. This is what the McBride/Draper scenario attempted to achieve by foul and ugly means.

As for ugliness on the Internet perhaps Mr McWhirter is loathe to venture further away than the comments pages on the online editions of the MSM. Admittedly this is an ugly place where vitriol, sheer volume and anonymity can shield commenters from direct challenge. Debate is spurious at times and acid tongued often, it regularly roams far and wide from the subject matter at hand and often leads to insult trading from across the political divide. While this can occur in the Blogosphere is somehow seems to be better managed as the writer of the piece takes a direct concern in the comments posted, will answer back, and if needs must challenge an individual who is lowering the tone or taking things too far.

The blogopshere is far more hands on and the writer can decide just how nasty or clean they want to make and keep it. Once a bloggers baby is released to the Interweb is is more cared for by its parent than most pieces written by journalists in the MSM. Largely they tend to keep track on what is being said, both on their own blogs and on comments they post elsewhere. If anything the interconnectiveness and interaction on the blogopshere is more direct, more personal and more well Web 2.0 really than the 'dead wood press'.

Of course there are exceptions to that generalisation about the MSM journalists, just as the blogs McWhirter picks up are the exception rather than the rule, but Mr McWhirter would appear to not be one of them, yet.

Worth Their Weight in Gold

I burst out laughing at the very well worded first question of the Times, the Week News Quiz this morning:

If bankers are worth their weight in gold - and assuming that each weighed
15 stone - how many could you buy with this weeks £200,000,000,000 bank
bailout.
a) 4,500 - the remaining staff of Northern Rock
b) 25,000 - the global staff of Lehman Brothers before its collapse
c) 100,000 - the UK staff of RBS

Whoever composed such a question has a dry wit and is a worthy quiz compiler.

BTW the answer is c

Local Income Tax and the Scotsman

I'm surprised to be honest that the Scotsman can only find gripes from 25 people about LIT. As any Tax system that you'd want to introduce is far from perfect and what we must strive for is the best possible, fairest and most comprehensively inclusive system that we can. Some of the Nats Jeff and Richard Thompson have given some pretty clear rebuttal on most of the points so I'll not haver on to much. Some I don't agree with 100% and I may get around to some of them later, but by and large many of the gripes can be applied to more or less any change in the tax system, a few are specific to LIT but are things that can be ironed out if looked at properly.

However, Jeff makes one claringly obvious Nat mistake by dismissing article 9 of European charter of local self-government too glibbly. Councils have the right to raise the large part of their own finances, therefore the Scottish plan for LIT is not all fine and dandy. The EU covers all manner of styles and divisions of Government Federal systems to countries like Luxembourg small enough to have all government controlled at one level. But each branch, level etc have their own responsibilities for the money they collect at whatever level but only two National and the local level are presumed to have direct responsibility in every nation.

The Nats are currently proposing a local authority tax raising power. They are centralising one of the fundamental powers of you local authorities. If even Sarah Palin can claim to have power of the budget of 7000 inhabitants of Wallisa surely you local councillors have the same right, whether they are Lib Dems, Tory, Labour, Nats or whomever. They have to spend to meet local requirements and Holyrood is not going to be able to know the minutiae of every plan, need or emergency that may arise when the rate needs to be set for the forthcoming year. And yeah if the council get it wrong you can vote them out, not everyone in Scotland can do the same for the Finance or Local Government minister at Holyrood.

Grauniad Fnuks Up

Stephen Tall obviously is more high up the blogging food chain that I. As Martin Wainwright the Guardian journalist has sent him a email regarding the quote yesterday that David Davis said us Lib Dems had funked it.

Just to alert you asap to the fact that the quote attributed to David Davis by me about the LIb Dems 'funking it' was my fault - putting you in with Labour in a rush - and we are running a correction. Sorry, age and haste. The Correct quote is on the Guardian audio material on the website. The draft correction I’ve just sent reads:

In a piece on the Haltemprice and Howden by-election published on July 9, we wrongly quoted the Conservative candidate David Davis as saying that the Liberal Democrats had 'funked' the poll. He has always made it clear that he is grateful for the Liberal Democrats' support for his views on the 42 day detention and related civil liberties issues. The mistake was made in transcription of the related audio report which carried his actual comments, and we apologise for that.

Sadly it means that in this electronic age the Grauniad is still as prone to errors as in the days they could blame it on the typesetter. But apologies to Mr Davis was writing this yesterday.

Wake Up Scotsman!

The following Scotsman headline obviously grabbed my attention this morning.

Inside Holyrood: Lib Dems go down the unpredictable route

Obviously I was wondering what on earth has happened now. Imagine my shock when basically the unpredictable route of the headline was very predictable. It starting out by talking about the fact that the election of our new leader will be one member one vote by STV. Hello Hamish Macdonell, every leadership election, every committee, every candidate selection, indeed every election to any position within the Liberal Democrats has always been by STV and one eligible member/rep one vote. It's the reason the word Democrat is in the party's name.

Does giving the power of selection make the election any less predictable. Well to the gentlemen of the press certainly. It's easy for them to gauge the opinions of the MSPs and MPs of Scotland. They may also be able to get a feeling from the Lib Dem councillors in Scotland. But they'll not be wholly able to gauge the opinion of the various party members many of whom are very private individuals to be able to predict just how the first round of voting may turn out.

Yes we clearly are at a crossroads as a party. The first declared candidate, Mike Rumbles, has clearly declared intentions to make a major shift not on fundamental policy, as that too is decided by the party, but in how we might interact in today's Scottish Parliament. The party hasn't been asked the question of a referendum on independence at any level since devolution came into play. The decisions made last May were made at the top.

So this could well become the party's referendum on a referendum, it may well be the most clearly defined difference between candidates. After all fundamentally we all adhere to the fact that our policies are shaped and voted on democratically at conference and we all uphold the decision of the majority. Therefore the real differentiation at leadership level is how those policies are conveyed and presented to the people of Scotland.