Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Simon Singh and the libel laws
I think many sensible people (including me) signed the Singh petition, and so did some people not too sensible (like Richard Dawkins). Over the years I have seen many like Dawkins and the first name that comes to mind there is L. Ron Hubbard, whose first pseudo-factual paper in Astounding Science Fiction looked like a real breakthrough, just as so much brilliant stuff was often published during the John W. Campbell years. Hubbard, though, had more pioneering imagination than Dawkins and Dawkins's atheist Sunday Schools cannot be taken seriously - fortunately.
More seriously we must remember that freedom in the UK has always been limited (I think for example of the Official Secrets Act) . Interestingly enough Mr. Justice Eady himself, as mentioned in Private Eye 26th June, page 29, seems to rule that servants of the UK criminal justice system cannot have their privacy protected when they breach regulations. I'm not going to suggest that that is a flawed ruling but the article later goes on to point out that misbehaving judges apparently must be shielded, even in cases of falling asleep in court, public sexual offences etc. I am wondering what the EU will have to say about these shenanigans, probably little.
More seriously we must remember that freedom in the UK has always been limited (I think for example of the Official Secrets Act) . Interestingly enough Mr. Justice Eady himself, as mentioned in Private Eye 26th June, page 29, seems to rule that servants of the UK criminal justice system cannot have their privacy protected when they breach regulations. I'm not going to suggest that that is a flawed ruling but the article later goes on to point out that misbehaving judges apparently must be shielded, even in cases of falling asleep in court, public sexual offences etc. I am wondering what the EU will have to say about these shenanigans, probably little.
# posted by uv : 3:36 AM
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