Official: Lady Dorrian Rules Courts Should Apply Different Standards to Bloggers and Mainstream Media 241


We are racing to lodge our application to the Supreme Court by Friday, so I am just going to post an email I just sent my legal team:

BEGINS

This is an extraordinary passage of the Opinion:

“(4) The applicant describes himself as a “journalist in new media”. Whatever that may involve, it is relevant to distinguish his position from that of the mainstream press, which is regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the applicant does are not. To the extent that the submissions for the applicant make comparisons with other press contempts, and the role of mainstream journalists, this is a factor which should be recognised”.

What does the last sentence mean in practice? Well, submissions for the applicant only made comparisons with other press contempts in two areas:

1) Disproportionate sentencing compared to other press contempts

2) Implicitly, that the opinion poll showing mainstream media responsible for far more jigsaw identification demonstrates selective prosecution.

It seems to me much more likely she is referring to 1). In which case she can ONLY mean there should be a different sentencing tariff for bloggers than mainstream media. IN PRACTICE SHE IS ARGUING THAT BLOGGERS SHOULD BE JAILED AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA NOT.

If she did mean 2), she can only be arguing that a different bar for contempt? jigsaw identification? should be applied to mainstream media journalists as opposed to bloggers, and it is OK selectively to prosecute bloggers but not mainstream media for doing the same thing.

Either way, this seems to me a screaming red flag Article 10 AND due process area that ought to grab the attention of the Supreme Court.

It seems to me quite incredible to argue that an employee of Murdoch or other tabloids has intrinsically higher ethical standards than a former senior diplomat, British Ambassador and University Rector, and therefore the tabloid hack must be, openly and acknowledged, treated by more favorable standards by the courts.

Frankly, that is nuts. I find it hard to believe she wrote that paragraph – but I am very glad she did. It shows a very great deal indeed.

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241 thoughts on “Official: Lady Dorrian Rules Courts Should Apply Different Standards to Bloggers and Mainstream Media

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  • Ron Arnott

    In Scotland today, the cautious will preface any comment with; “but Officer, I merely quote our National Bard.”

    “I own, ‘‘twas rash, an’ rather hardy,
    That I, a simple, countra Bardie,
    Should meddle wi’ a pack sae sturdy,
    Wha’, if they ken me,
    Can easy wi’ a single wordie
    Louse Hell upon me.”

    There’s much more that Robert Burns had to say about abuse of power but already I smell smoke coming from your spell chequer!

    • Alf Baird

      Awfy braw wirds fae Burns, weel duin Ron.

      And we do not even teach oor bairns in schuil our wonderful language, the only thing that really differentiates us from all other peoples and their braw langages, and the way of thinking and culture that derives from it!

  • fonso

    It’s possible this lady was appointed to the bench for reasons other than her logical thinking skills.

  • deepgreenpuddock

    When I see something like this, which appears to be an obvious example of discrimination, which we in the last few decades of liberalisation have come to think of as very clearly an inadmissible perspective However our lives are very much circumscribed by discriminations-social, financial, race and class .Legislation can only deal with the most egregious examples-mostly discrimination is carried out under an ‘invisibility’ cloak. anyone who thinks the BBC an equal opportunities employer is deluded. Similar discriminations exist throughout other public institutions and private companies. ‘Everyone knows’ to paraphrase Leonard Cohen. Discrimination is entrenched within every aspect of our lives/
    For Lady Dorrian to make such an obvious misstep is curious. It can’t be stupidity- she has clearly given much thought to these issues.
    The notion that the paper based press is held to higher standards if beyond risible. Has she missed the Leveson enquiry? I think what she may mean is that improper information on hard /paper copy is more readily monitored or challenged than the rather more unstable qualities of digital media-although that is a peculiarly dated understanding of how the digital media operates now.
    The other thing I tend to look for in such controversies is some underlying shift in consensus social values. We are certainly embroiled right now in a number of identity/social role crises. One obvious one is GRA but underlying this is a wider movement to empower women and to dismantle the many ways in which women have traditionally been discriminated against.I believe the Alex Salmond case is highly illustrative example of him operating at first in a more permissive social environment and being overtaken by a shift in the consensus of what is proper behaviour. We are entering what I see as a period of female indignation at the way men have traditionally operated in a predatory , disrespectful, exploitative manner especially in relation to getting sexual favours, where money and power define this process. we are now at the very start of a great social realignment. Lady Dorrian may feel she is part of this movement and in her rather influential role may feel she has to play a part in the rolling back of the greater sex discrimination at the expense of a ludicrous curtailment of free speech and the shift away from jury trial for sexual offences. Most bloggers are men and she may see this as one of the ways by which the favouring of maleness is propagated .Craig’s blog is unashamedly not puritanical and he has often made his libertarian views on sexual matters known,In other words he is a staunch defender of the values of the seventies and eighties which saw the great shift away from the rather oppressive hang over of Victorian prudery and sanctimonious and hypocritical propriety which Burns lampooned in Holy Wullie’s prayer.Burns is of course a great hero of the Scottish enlightenment and a beacon of free speech and a great example of the freewheeling romanticism and exploitative sexuality which has been a model for so many men into modern times and which is now being challenged for its destructive qualities-usually at the expense of women trying to get by in a patriarchal world. One senses that the days of women being just another commodity to be used by men are in the early stages of a major societal change. That however brings to mind that we live in a capitalist world that exploits all and any resource, societal or physical. What I see is a technological shift into ever more feminised (soft?) activity as a way of exploiting female labour, a process ongoing from the 50’s and 60’s
    This must also be seen in the context of a shift away from the central activity for women of procreation, where we now have a largely overpopulated under-resourced, environmentally stressed world. children are now lifestyle accessories and another source of capitalistic opportunity. I still have not quite worked out why Scotland has become a battlefield in this process but it may be a combination of demography andthe peculiarly friable social/political conditions.

    • Marmite

      There is nothing liberal about Britain’s attitudes toward sex and gender. They are antediluvian and need to be kept that way in order for power, wealth, and the status quo to be maintained. This is what the so-called liberals are too thick to understand, and they will remain perpetually blind to their complicity in all the forms of gender violence that they claim they are fighting against. The worst sex offenders in Britain are the ones who claim to be championing liberalism and rights, contra Victorian mores. I supposed Dorrian would be in that showboating category. It is the most violently sexist country I have experienced, because it thrives on the divide-and-conquer strategy of pitting the genders against one another, and this is also seen in the battle over the right for multiple genders to be recognised, which everyone outside Britain can only see as puerile (and an indication of how peurile and intellectually deficient we have become in this country). Any country or culture that sees sexism as a one-way street is also, and can only be, bent on perpetuating sexism of the worst kind. Britain is a culture that still treats men as adults, and infantilises women, and still (after all these years) cannot tolerate different kinds of sexuality. And it even has an equalities minister to make sure that those bigotries and inequalities continue to exist, that women and the other genders are forever kept down and dependant, that homosexuals continue to be ostracised, that men are forbidden to cry and have feelings. This helps to generate all the noise and distraction. It is nonsense to argue over which sex is more commoditised and enslaved. The real struggle is not between the multiple genders but a struggle against the power that is held by all those extremist conservatives (greens, equalities ministers, feminists, Marxists, Guardian hacks) posing as liberals, after having so successfully hijacked what used to be decent causes.

    • Alf Baird

      “I still have not quite worked out why Scotland has become a battlefield in this process but it may be a combination of demography andthe peculiarly friable social/political conditions.”

      Postcolonial evidence suggests independence to be decolonisation. Colonialism involves discrimination, prejudice, racism and worse (fascism), and imposes an ethnic/cultural division of labour of course. Those Scots such as myself who have suffered ethnic discrimination in our own land may appreciate what independence is about, though a great many Scots have still to ‘get it’, more especially the native bourgeoisie who, in any colony, seek to ‘mimic the colonizer’ (Fanon) whom they hold in high esteem and in order to maintain their status and privileges. Prevailing demographic trends arguably serve to hold Scotland and Scots to their colonial oppression and exploitation.

  • pete

    I have still been trying to collect my thoughts and contain my rage about Leeona Dorrian’s judgement regarding this so-called “jigsaw identification” stitch up, which is an obvious attempt to silence critical thought regarding the governance of Scotland.
    “jigsaw identification” see https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/05_02_2016_01_31_56_Should_protecting_the_anonymity_of_victims_o.pdf
    It is an unjust law and should be repealed, it is an offence to natural justice and if we had a proper constitution it would have been struck down long ago.
    Imagine if Craig has said – hypothetically – witness ‘A, B or C’ had a tattoo of Nelson on her forehead. That observation could clearly be used for identification, but he did not, nothing he said led me to to conclude who any of the alphabet sisters were, I don’t know now, nor do I care. That they might be known to the rest of their peer group seems to me to be an inevitability. You cannot make a law to prevent that. If they were in danger because of being identified then they should have been offered a new identity and moved somewhere else. That would be the proper action if they were under threat from a dangerous predator, no such finding was the result of the case, instead the law has decided that to encourage other vengeful entities to band together to defame people they do not like by giving them lifetime anonymity and ignore any lies they peddled under oath.

    • giyane

      pete

      Step A Decide the Judge: Dorrian
      Step B Decide the culprit.: C Murray
      Step C Decide the crime: Blogging
      Step D Decide the Bait: False police accusations.
      Step E Decide the sentence: prison

      I think it’s fair to say this was a carefully planned disaster waiting to happen.
      In the same way that US war records in Iraq, Julian Assange and The Guardian were a carefully planned disaster waiting to happen.

      I know it isn’t right to accuse the PTB of malice aforethought, and it’s wrong to assume that our intelligence services are intelligent enough to plan these two disasters.
      But these power elites in Edinburgh must talk about something when they socialise and their collective malice and genuine fear of losing their positions in society seem to have cobbled together a communal plan, to eliminate the goldfish which in their collective anxiety is giving them the evil eye.

      Get rid of that ghastly Murray man. I think one has to assume that this was a societal effort, not from one individual working alone. Power in numbers. Self -reassuring eachother that their shared terror of being observed by a critical observer meant they had to formulate a collective plan. The police, The Judiciary, the Corporations, the MSM, and not forgetting The Crown.

  • Rhys Jaggar

    Just made a new donation to your Supreme Court legal fees, Mr Murray.

    I always thought that the first principle of a Legal System was that what mattered was the crime committed, not who allegedly did commit it.

    Seems clear from this official’s statements that they believe in a two-tier legal system with a freedom to break the law for their friends and a rigorous punitive system for those with the courage and integrity to stand up to them.

  • Douglas Scorgie

    fonso
    June 11, 2021 at 08:45

    “It’s possible this lady was appointed to the bench for reasons other than her logical thinking skills.”

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    Absolutely Fonso. Through decades of experience in a variety of careers (the brewery trade, the police and the NHS) I can say that there is a pattern where senior managers choose their lower managers from a cohort of not very bright people that can be browbeaten and relied on to be loyal to their “superiors” and follow orders.

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