Libel in the UK confuses me, the judge said that the statement was untrue and damaging but OK as it's in the public interest.
Why does public interest remove the need for a statement to be true?
I have little interest in the people involved, just the reasoning.
The current ruling basically means that repeating lies told by others is legally acceptable if enough people repeat the same lies.
So if enough people repeat the same statement all requirements to ensure the veracity of a statement before further repeating are removed.
A propagandist's dream ruling.
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people." - Giordano Bruno
JackyJoll wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:58 am
I wouldn’t claim that current libel law is satisfactory, but I don’t think simply lying can be made a crime.
As far as I know libel isn't a criminal offence, I just don't understand why it's ok to lie if it's seen as a public interest matter.
If I were to make a statement about Kier Starmer supporting peados even though I have no proof then he couldn't do anything about it as it's a public interest matter.
JackyJoll wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:58 am
I wouldn’t claim that current libel law is satisfactory, but I don’t think simply lying can be made a crime.
As far as I know libel isn't a criminal offence, I just don't understand why it's ok to lie if it's seen as a public interest matter.
Thanks I’ve edited.
If I were to make a statement about Kier Starmer supporting peados even though I have no proof then he couldn't do anything about it as it's a public interest matter.
Seems odd.
Has Starmer ever condemned Tatchell?
Anyway, if I untruthfully said a famous person shags cats, it might not matter, because I’m nobody. My saying it does not affect their reputation.
If I repeat a lie about the famous person, that a million people have already spread around, then I probably haven’t harmed their reputation in that case either.
Harming the reputation is the damaging part, the judge said she had caused damage.
She said something damaging that she had no proof of, it still makes no sense that he can't hold her to account because of public interest.
Why is it in the public's interest to be lied to? Or does it have a more technical meaning I don't get?
During World War I, two British pilots who had been shot down and captured by the Germans both endured their imprisonment while dreaming of the same postwar goal.
A few months after Armistice Day, they met in England, and they teamed up to tackle one of the greatest aviation adventures humankind had known until that point.
It was on June 14, 1919 (so 103 years ago today), that Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Arthur “Ted” Brown took off from St. John's, Newfoundland in a wood-and-canvas Vickers Vimy biplane, and achieved an historic milestone: the first nonstop transatlantic flight.
Lindberg made the first transatlantic nonstop solo flight, but Alcock and Brown had already flown across the Atlantic Ocean eight years before. Honestly, they’re arguably a bigger deal, as Robert O. Harder, who wrote a book about it, pointed out:
“The difference in technology, engines, instrumentation and navigation capability between 1919 and 1927 is like night and day. [T]hose airplanes were still really, really rickety ... They were the point of the spear in advancing aviation technology.”
Now, Alcock and Brown were not the only ones attempting the flight. Britain's Daily Mail had offered a £10,000 prize (maybe $600,000 today) to whomever pulled it off, and there were four other teams making the attempt.
One team crashed not long after takeoff. Another team might have won, but they delayed their takeoff to test some safety and mechanical issues.
As for Alcock and Brown, pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong:
Right at the outset, 1:45 p.m., their overloaded, open-cockpit aircraft nearly crashed.
The entire trip was miserable: rain, turbulence and fog, which made navigation difficult.
Their wind-driven electrical generator failed, which meant that their heating suits, radio, and intercom didn't work. They also spent much of the journey wet and shivering.
Their original plan had been to fly to London, but any European destination counted for the prize money. So, having endured a rough journey and with no idea whether another competing team might have taken off successfully after them, they decided to land as soon as they saw Ireland.
Alcock put the plane down in what looked like a field, but turned out to be a bog. The aircraft flipped over and was ruined (although later restored). Both men escaped unscathed.
They were heroes. They met Winston Churchill (Britain's secretary of state for war and air at the time), were knighted by King George V, and of course got their cash prize. Alcock's first-person account ran on the front page of the New York Times (courtesy of the Daily Mail):
"We have had a terrible journey. The wonder is that we are here at all. … The flight has shown that the Atlantic flight is practicable. It should be done not with an aeroplane or a seaplane but with a flying boat."
Come to think of it, Alcock was prescient on that count. The first regularly scheduled commercial transatlantic passenger flights weren't for another two decades, but sure enough they were on Pan Am’s Boeing 314 "Clipper" flying boats.
Sadly, Alcock died in another airplane crash only six months after he and Brown set this record and milestone. Brown survived another 29 years—long enough to see Lindbergh become a heck of a lot more famous.
PANIC - it could get warm for a couple of days at the end of the week.
And, in other news, there aren't enough black people in the Glasto audience, maybe they need to sort their marketing out, or maybe the black community have more sense than to go.
Mussels wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 12:33 pm
Harming the reputation is the damaging part, the judge said she had caused damage.
She said something damaging that she had no proof of, it still makes no sense that he can't hold her to account because of public interest.
Why is it in the public's interest to be lied to? Or does it have a more technical meaning I don't get?
Who does he blame- The people who are insufficiently black?
Read the article, he doesn't blame anyone.
It's a lot of a non-story, why aren't there Black people at Festivals, no one knows, but maybe they're not into sleeping in a tent and shitting in a bucket.
Who does he blame- The people who are insufficiently black?
Read the article, he doesn't blame anyone.
It's a lot of a non-story, why aren't there Black people at Festivals, no one knows, but maybe they're not into sleeping in a tent and shitting in a bucket.
What, all of them?
The underlying story is why hasn't there been a black headliner.
