Freedom of the press

Hooorah! Just one more day of toil and then it’s au revoir dear Blighty and bonjour La belle France.

Not much on the spurting radar today, bar of course sensational breaking news that Max Mosley’s spanking orgy of Nazi shame must be downgraded to a simple standard spanking orgy of shame following his win in the High Court today.

Frankly it’s a sad day when a man can’t indulge himself in whatever perverted though strictly consensual kicks he likes in the privacy of his own dungeon (without or without the Third Reich overtones). Which Mr Mosley most definitely did not, oh no, not evenly slightly guv’nor. Chinny reckon.

Anyway there’s been a lot of soul searching and finger-wringing especially in Her Majesty’s thoroughly disinterested press over whether this judgement has curtailed the freedom of the meeja to investigate public figures. There’s a lot of deep legal and philosophical arguments and wrangling on this one, but we can distil it to the essentials thusly.

The Screws was fined 60k for breaching Max Mosley’s privacy. 60k! That’d just about pay for a good senior Editor’s lunch or around 30 odd similar lunchtime entertainments.

In return, the Screws (minus of course the slapper’s nominal photographer’s fee) probably sold at least half a million copies on that Sunday, a few more on subsequent ones and that’s not counting millions upon millions of hits on its web site, all of which has generated a significant portion of wedge for Uncle Rupe.

With those kind of figures it’s probably safe to say the freedom of the press isn’t in any kind of serious jeopardy.