In fact, balls. Worse than balls: a load of mandelson. I don't wish to be as emphatic as our friendly Commonwealth medico, but, No. Every problem you cite was already addressed by statute law and the CPS have acted. To overturn 300 years of press freedom in this manner, with a stitch-up like this? No, that was pretextual. The fact that a few people abuse an absolute right never excuses, justifies, or palliates an attempt to take that right from the people. Never. Never. Never. And - I don't wish to sound like Professor Morgenbesser, who was arrested by a New York copper when he asked him, 'Who do you think you are? Kant?' (PC O'Plod being unfamiliar with that philosopher and mistaking the name for another word)- but, if you really take the contrary position to that I have just stated, pray tell me which of your rights you care to have sacrificed or impaired by those whose power and livelihood depend on its not being too much exercised, all on the excuse that it has been or might be abused by others.
So far as I am concerned, some 530 MPs, Hacked Off, and not a few people at the Grauniad are Vichy Britons and traitors to liberty, and I shall exert myself at every opportunity to destroy them.
Re: No, actually.steepholmMarch 19 2013, 17:22:41 UTC
My dear Wemyss, why are you talking as if I were an admirer of the current proposals? All I have argued is that we would not have arrived at this point if the press had managed to keep its collective wanger in its pants. Is that really controversial?
If it were a question of just "a few bad apples" (as was so long maintained), they might have weathered the storm. In fact, it's become apparent that from the outright criminality of phone hacking to the louche croneyism of the Sodding Chipbutty set, to the systematic way in which papers regularly choose to "monster" (I believe is the word) certain harmless groups and individuals, and the toothlessness of the PCC in redressing such injuries, the press has been a classic example of power without responsibility and the effects of same. I believe that if they want to fight back, which they cannot effectively do without the public's goodwill, they must own that fact.
I concur that some Fleet Streeters - not a majority, but more than a few bad apples - gave the troughers in Westminster a handle and a pretext. I concur in your estimate of the PCC (as, I may add, does everyone at the Telegraph and a good few at the Indy, who agree that things wanted changing). The fact remains that no abuses, however grave or however widespread, justify or palliate what is happening, and that is the point I really must make as loudly as possible.
So far as I am concerned, some 530 MPs, Hacked Off, and not a few people at the Grauniad are Vichy Britons and traitors to liberty, and I shall exert myself at every opportunity to destroy them.
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If it were a question of just "a few bad apples" (as was so long maintained), they might have weathered the storm. In fact, it's become apparent that from the outright criminality of phone hacking to the louche croneyism of the Sodding Chipbutty set, to the systematic way in which papers regularly choose to "monster" (I believe is the word) certain harmless groups and individuals, and the toothlessness of the PCC in redressing such injuries, the press has been a classic example of power without responsibility and the effects of same. I believe that if they want to fight back, which they cannot effectively do without the public's goodwill, they must own that fact.
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