Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Cash for Peerages, How the Guardian got away with it

I listened to an interesting report on BBC Radio 4's Today program on how the Guardian got away with publishing what it did without getting slapped with an injunction.

In short they made sure the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, did not get his application heard until the presses were rolling and by the time the hearing was underway in fact the delivery trucks had left and were on their way. The Judge decided that it would not be proportionate to bring them back, so refused the injunction!

Fantastic!

Also Trumpeter Lanfried left this comment on the previous article:
The latest line is, Ruthie wrote but did not send the e-mail. That little twist in the story could surely only have come from Downing Street. But no, we are told they don't do leaks. Hmmm. As my young daughter used to say, "Chin rub, chin rub."
It is getting murkier and murkier!

Update 10:48

The BBC has this here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems to get deeper ,now that it has been injuncted and has varitions slapped on it ,will this be allowed as evidence or can they still say they won't get a fair deal.

Benedict White said...

It can be allowed in evidence, and I can't see the Abu Hamza defence cutting much ice in court. After all he had an awful lot more bad publicity in the press pre trial than has been the case over the cash for peerages affair.

The only issue may be that as public figures it may be hard to find a jusry who had no preconceptions of them for other reasons, but the same applies to Abu hamza and Pete Doherty.

Anonymous said...

No problem Benedict White,all they will have to do is pop into my local, they will have no problem getting enough punters for the jury.This happy band have no preconceptions or interest in anything political,doubt they will have heard of Abu hamza,Pete Doherty might ring a bell though.Yep, Pete Doherty could be the problem I feel.

Benedict White said...

Anonymous, Many thanks for the offer :) If they need a jury I'll point them towards your pub!