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.

———————————–

There is of course a major difference in the finances of bloggers and mainstream media and it is an unfortunate truth that an appeal to the Supreme Court will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Details of how to contribute to Craig Murray’s Defence Fund are here:




Click HERE TO DONATE if you do not see the Donate button above

Alternatively:

Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB

Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a


Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

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

1 2 3 4
  • John O'Dowd

    Reply ↓

    Tatyana
    June 9, 2021 at 14:22
    Your judge tells you in plain text that you must obtain a license in order to speak.
    She explains that only selected people can speak to the public through designated channels.
    All others who want to open their mouths and bring their point of view will be “distinguished” , “recognised” and at the end sentenced to jail.
    Welcome to Soviet Union 2.0

    Tatyana is so right. This is now explicit. In previous comments, particularly during and around the time of the (Salmond) trial, I noted – at the time somewhat surprised – that the MSM would appear to be part of the court apparatus. That is that they were court trustees, trusted to report only those parts of the case that suited the desired outcome for any particular trial.

    It was a revelation (to me at least) at the time. But now Ms Dorian has confirmed this impression.

    Because this is what this means:

    “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.”

    The so-called free-press are part of the court (and hence state coercive powers) apparatus – (the Apparat in Soviet terms).

    Dorrian’s open exposition of this is frankly as stunning as it is astounding.

    She really gives the game away! In Corbyn’s famous words concerning Theresa May: “Stupid woman”.

    Most revealing.

  • Ian

    Despite the dimwitted Dorrian’s obvious ignorance of how the media has completely changed, with blogs and online journals becoming the source of serious, detailed investigative journalism of a type newspapers often do not have the will or resources to print, she has surely also admitted as clearly as possible, that her interpretation of the law is selective. She has said, in effect, that there is one law for ‘bloggers’ and one for journalists, as if there was any clear distinction between the two, which anybody acquainted with the media landscape of the last ten years would not recognise. What seems to have particularly annoyed her, in her earlier judgement that Craig wasn’t simply reporting but exercising his judgement. Heaven forfend that he has an opinion, but when it is supported by facts and eye witness evidence, most people would say he is entitled to. And judgement there was plenty of in the now sainted mainstream media, except most of was virulently and inaccurately anti-Salmond. So that was alright then, it was only pro facts and Salmond bloggers who are to be punished.

    But the wider point is surely that the law, as Roddy Dunlop himself observed, cannot be seen to partial or selective, and that is the risk she is running here. And now we have this eccentric, out of date observation about the media which betrays her lack any recent acquaintance with it, she has clearly said that her judgement and sentence is selective. And a selective application of the law strikes at the heart of any justice system which rests on impartiality and equal treatment regardless of background or profession. There is no professional code which protects journalists from the law, otherwise we would not see them regularly in court, so what is she talking about – as if they are somehow self-policing and she can leave them alone? Garavelli virtually named one person – was that ‘professional’ and ok, then?

    She has loudly and forcefully said that there is one law for some and another for others, despite the same offence being supposedly committed. That is why, under any system of fair appeal (and I have my doubts about that possibility), the judgement would be thrown out and the Scottish courts reprimanded for breaching that fundamental and basic principle.

    • SA

      Ian
      Another conclusion one must reach is that to report you must be an establishment approved journalist otherwise you may not report.

      • Ian

        Yes, and for good measure, let’s add another one. Women will be dissuaded from coming forward because an ordinary citizen reports a trial accurately, while lurid headlines splashed across the newspapers every day will not have that same effect. No sir.
        It is, of course, about control. She assumes, wrongly, that approved journalists will toe the establishment line and not scrutinise the evidence or the judgment. This whole thing is about her obvious extreme discomfort at an intelligent man’s scrutiny of a trial in which she was involved, as well as keeping his readers well informed about his own case. How dare he!

    • Peter T

      This is not a reply to Jm but I can’t work out how to make an independent comment!
      [ — SNIP — ]

      [ Mod: The box to create a new comment is directly under Craig’s article, after the bank details and before the comments thread, under the heading “Leave a comment“. ]

  • Cotter

    Weren’t you allowed into the court as a journalist along with the other ‘journalists’? Doesn’t that indicate equivalence? Have I missed something here?

  • Crispa

    A couple of observations in addition to the above which I agree can only lead to the conclusions stated.

    1. The court seems to have moved the goalposts from its judgement report to this appeal report. In paragraph 57 of the judgment it created its threshold for determining jigsaw identification in stating that ‘likely to lead’ meant “the real risk, the real danger, the real chance”, which I would see as “blindingly obvious”, and, which, since it was not “blindingly obvious” made the initial judgment so unfair. In the appeal report it seem to have shifted the goal posts by claiming to have made its assessment against “a risk of identification by members of the public”, which is not the same thing and certainly not a “blindingly obvious” level of risk.
    2. In its judgment report the court stated that any material in the public domain, including Craig’s other blogs that were not index material and that could be linked to the offending articles could contribute to jig-saw identification. This argument is premised on the start of the jigsaw being Craig’s article, whereas it would apply to anyone say whose curiosity was aroused by reading the lurid details in the Sun or whatever, and finding the pieces from information anywhere in the public domain. That makes every newspaper potentially guilty of jigsaw identification particularly with modern search methods.
  • Peter T

    I think y’all got this wrong. What Lady D is saying here is that ‘new media’ journalists are different to mainstream media journalists. Therefore when he (Craig) makes comparisons of his journalism to that of MSM we should take into account that difference.

    We may, I do, disagree with her view of the difference; but the paragraph is essentially really simple. It is written in flowery legal language which does make it hard to discern what she’s on about, but I think the meaning is that simple. Craig, you might be getting too excited about reading too much into her words.

    It is the second sentence of the paragraph that should form the basis of a challenge to her judgement.

    • Tatyana

      Lady Dorrian calls attention to the difference. And we all know this difference. There is an editor above the mainstream journalist, and there is a specific source of funding above the editor. Unlike Mr. Murray, who has no boss and whose blog is supported by donations and readers’ subscriptions.
      As a representative of the law, Lady Dorrian should not see the difference, but what they have in common. Namely, they are all citizens of their country, obliged to abide by the law of their country and have the same rights to freedom of speech and a fair and impartial court.

    • T

      No, she is saying mainstream press can do worse than what she is jailing CM for but are immune from prosecution.

      • Tatyana

        Perhaps, she mean to say that mainstream journalists are incapable of contempt of court? Or maybe her idea is that independent bloggers tend to have more cynical contempt of court?
        Anyway, no one denies that there is a difference, but what does this have to do with a contempt case? It’s just irrelevant.

        • T

          It has everything to do with this contempt case. She thinks she has explained away why CM was prosecuted but not establishment journalists who were more guilty of the same offence.

          • Tatyana

            Such an explanation one could expect from Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnik, rather than from a UK judge in this century

    • Crispa

      If it is that simple the final sentence (3) is irrelevant. You would just stop at 2, which is descriptive and over which there is nothing to challenge. The obscurity is in sentence 3, The language is not “flowery legal”. The sentence is atrociously drafted even to the point of an unnecessary oxford comma. If you reframe it, to something like this. “The submissions for the applicant make comparisons with other press acts of contempt of court and the role of mainstream journalists. However, the court does not consider that the comparisons are relevant to the case, because he is just “a new media journalist” (and not subject to the same codes of practice etc as the msm journalists are!).
      The implications are as Craig clearly states in his article.

  • Cotter

    Perhaps she should take retirement. She could spend her days doing jigsaw puzzles.

    • Jimmeh

      I think she’s already decided to retire from law. She no longer cares about the shreds of her reputation as a lawyer – she’s prepared to burn that.

      I reckon she has some sinecure lined up, something like chairing a 10-year long judicial inquiry. That would be a nice earner, a day a month. Or maybe an ambassadorship. If that happened, it would be pure serendipity of course – I didn’t mean to suggest that she might have accepted inducements.

  • Coldish

    I note that one of LD’s colleagues on the bench is a Lord Turnbull. I think this must be the same Alan Turnbull who, as Advocate Depute in the Camp Zeist Lockerbie trial, was involved in an attempt by the prosecution to prevent the defence seeing versions of CIA cables relating to prosecution witness Majid Giaka which were less redacted and less edited than the versions available to the defence.
    Responsibility for the affair was assumed by Turnbull’s then superior, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, who told the court that “…[Turnbull] had reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case…“
    This turned out to be an untruth, as the censored passages of the cables were extremely relevant to the defence case, as they led to the effective discrediting of key prosecution witness Giaka and thus contributed to the acquittal of defendant Lamin Khalifa Fhimah.

  • Tom Welsh

    “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”.

    I am quite prepared to believe that interpretation.

    The key point is that employees of the “mainstream media” are effectively working for the government, and thus can be controlled and disciplined more discreetly. Such mainstream media employees are carefully chosen to have the “right” opinions, and therefore need correcting far less often.

    Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.
    — Transcript of interview between Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr (Feb. 14, 1996) https://scratchindog.blogspot.com/2015/07/transcript-of-interview-between-noam.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2EPgix5_5w

    It is free citizens – especially clearheaded, educated, well-informed free citizens – whose freedom of speech must be taken away.

  • neil

    Out of interest, Craig’s article on Garavelli’s article … Is it available anywhere (eg wayback machine) or has it been completely expunged from history?


    [ Mod: See Who Paid Dani Garavelli? (5 April 2020) ]

    • Neil

      Thanks mod, but I meant an article where Craig gives the defence arguments rebutting the prosecution arguments reported by Garavelli. I seem to remember such an article, although I expect it’s heavily redacted if not removed entirely. If it exists, would it be possible to know the title of the article, in case the wayback machine still has it?

  • Manjushri

    ‘…..the mainstream press, which is regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics…’

    My humble opinion is that the MSM are controlled by the same elite entity that decides those codes of practice and ethics. They probably also have a huge influence with judicial appointments.

  • Jimmeh

    If she’s saying that bloggers and MSM journalists face different thresholds for contempt, then she’s wrong in law, surely. Similarly if she is saying that tarrifs for bloggers and MSM journalists should be different. If that were the case, then you should see it on the face of the legislation; but you don’t.

    I don’t understand why she would make such remarks, unless she just got carried away with animus against Craig. At any rate, I’d say she’s torpedoed her own ruling.

    • Tatyana

      She could have said ‘all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others’ 🙂 That would be quite enough for everyone to understand what she means.

  • AmyB

    Surely, by definition “jigsaw identification” means other elements of “jigsaw identification” have been published and that, when combined with Craig’s pieces, you supposedly get an identity. So why haven’t those who put these other elements of the jigsaw into the public domain been prosecuted? Does Dorrian really mean they are exempt because they belong to IPSO??? This is utter lunacy.

  • stuart mctavish

    Judge Dorrian does indeed appear to have done everything in her power to facilitate her decision being overturned on appeal – or tar any failure to do so with the same deep misgivings.

    Unfortunately therefore the Catch-22 might be, if the UK court has no standing (as implied by the absence of leave to appeal, the custodial sentence, the treaty of union and criminal procedure act 1887), that the Scots court can presumably ignore an adverse ruling in any event – so hopefully she’ll go the extra mile and extend clemency on incarceration until the other international courts have been exhausted (despite any breach of the treaty of union that that too may imply) and/or until such time as the Scots Privy Council can be reconvened and made fit for the purpose.

    • Jimmy Riddle

      stuart mctavish = well, it certainly looks as if she’s trying to throw the game.

      But if you deliberately throw your game in tennis, then you end up getting your collar felt by the police and shoved in the slammer. Don’t the same principles hold if a Lord Justice Clerk does exactly the same thing?

  • Jm

    Sounds like Lady Dorrian,who curiously seems to be at the very centre of all of this,is promoting a two-tier system of law and justice.This is absolutely insane and against the fundamental tenets of our law.The whole charade just gets weirder and more sinister by the day.

    This is your “out” Craig.

    • Marmite

      I’m not really sure about that. When has justice in the UK ever not operated on a two-tier or three-tier system? Racial profiling. Gender biases. There isn’t really anything sinister about this if you have experience. It is just par for the course. And justice in the UK is made even more just, needless to point out, by what kind of defence you can afford. From the other side of the fence, no doubt Dorrian just takes all this for granted.

      • Jimmy Riddle

        Marmite – you are, of course, correct. But up until now, they have always *pretended* that everybody is equal in the eyes of the law; Lady Dorrian is the first judge who has openly stated that `equal in the eyes of the law’ is a rubbish principle and who has been so blatant in her disregard for it.

        She is (of course) insane – and as I indicated on the previous thread – the `Queen of Hearts’ from Lewis Carrol’s `Alice in Wonderland’ seems to be an appropriate model for her character.

        • Marmite

          I’m still not sure about that.

          There is a very large group of people in the UK that will be able to tell you that justice is extremely biased in favour of another group, and there is no pretence made of that. They will go out of their way to try and make sure you know just how biased things are, but they will be gagged and ignored too, so that the majority can go on believing the comfortable myth that we are all equal.

          Yes, there are people who work for the system who very pathetically seek to defend its impartiality, and will tell you that this first very enormous group of people are nutters. Sadly, those system-suckers are the real nutters; these zombies are so much a part of the system that they have become blind to its evils, biases, and blatant hypocrisies.

          In short, I don’t think the justice system cares to pretend that everyone is equal in the face of the law. If there was any such requirement for it to do so, then it would be facing 1000s of complaints or lawsuits every year, possibly more than that.

          You and I might have expected better, having the ethical ideals that we have, but I think the average person just accepts that some people stand a better chance in the face of the law, because they are the right class, gender or race, and some stand less of a chance because they are the wrong class, gender, or race.

          So I really don’t think that Dorrian even has the ability or the language to reflect on how her remark could be interpreted as betraying a double standard. She hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary, because this is all just so *natural* in Britain.

          • Jimmy Riddle

            Marmite – you may well be right. I’ve been out of the country since the early ’90’s. I get the impression that the legal system has deteriorated hugely since then.

  • Giyane

    Lady Dorrian is Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. The feminism she wants is not for women to have equal power as men , but to have dominance over men, which she thinks is in a man’s best interests. The wife of Bath’s perfect man is a totally submissive one.

    Lady Dorrian is a bully. She knows there is no law about jigsaw identification, no evidence of Craig relishing exposing the names, no case against Alex Salmond. She is simply an arrogant bully.

    This is pure class hatred. She makes it up as she goes along. There is categorically no difference between the mainstream journalist and the new media journalist. She just invented that whopper to waste more of Craig Murray’s time ,money and energy.

    What was Chaucer’s fat cunt of a a wife of Bath doing on a Pilgramage? Other than enjoying shocking and bullying a new captive audience on that Pilgrimage.
    A person who cynically used a moral crusade as a means of furthering her corrupt personality.

    You’d be safer inside a prison than having to deal with the Wife of Bath. Yet the pilgrimage companions have to endure her bullying for the whole duration of the journey. Some sick bastard old Geoffrey Chaucer, and no stranger to life and politics.

  • Tatyana

    The right questions to be asked today to Lady Dorrian is:
    Besides employment, what other peoples’ differences she believes to be relevant to a legal case?
    What other peoples’ differences influence her decisions? How often?

    • Jimmy Riddle

      Tatyana – well, to put it delicately – in Lady Dorrian’s mind, it all seems to boil down to whether or not the defendant has a John Thomas or not.

  • Ann Rayner

    Was it not one of the ‘regulated’ Murdoch Press redtops which, after the Supreme Court decided that Johnson should not have prorogued Parliament, published pictures of the Judges under the headline ‘TRAITORS’?
    It is possible that they may not be very sympathetic to Lady Dorrian’s ‘Opinion’.

  • Anonish

    Those high standards of conduct and ethics which allowed phone hacking to happen and had paparazzi lying under the wheels of taxis, trying to get a good shot of a female celebrity’s underpants or lack thereof.

    I can only imagine the scandal independent journalists must get up to without the wise oversight and counsel of someone who got a shot at editorial because their dad has friends in media.

  • Steve Trevethan

    Might the judge mean that who you are in terms of the socio-economic aspects of your person are of more importance to the law than what you are alleged to have done/done?

    • Tatyana

      Maybe.

      What is in the face of her words is:

      1. those employed by MSM report of events
      2. those who are not employed by MSM report on events, too
      3. the both reports must be treated ‘differently’ because of the ‘position’ – she uses this exact word – because of the reporter’s position.

      She clearly connects the position and the employment.

  • DunGroanin

    This judgement seems to actually implicate the MSM lack of reporting the defence evidence as also being party to the initial conspiracy of perjury.

    Therefore extending the perjurers guarantee of non prosecution for the perjury they conspired in, to these MSM journos!

    Exceptionalism take a bow. While I look you in the eye and call you a Liar and a Cheat you scoundrels.

  • Sean_Lamb

    Lady Dorrian seems a bit inconsistent in the original judgement she refused to place any weight on the fact Craig Murray had not published the names when there was no court order barring it

    [68] A notable feature of the affidavits is the repeated focus by the respondent on the absence of a court order prior to 10 March 2019 as meaning that had he wished to identify the complainers he could have done so prior to that date, “knowing there was no general law or court order in place preventing me simply from publishing”. This however “would not have been responsible journalism”. That it would have been a clear contravention of the IPSO Editor’s Code of Practice and of the local convention are not matters which appear to have engaged him, although it is clear from para 40 of his main affidavit that he was aware of the convention.

    So at one point she is dismissing behaviour as irrelevant because it was dictated by the Code of Practice and then she turns around and argues that the Codes don’t cover him.

    As far as it goes it would have been permitted under the code

    “The press must not identify or publish material likely to lead to the identification of a victim of sexual assault unless there is adequate justification.”

    The adequate justification was all the complainants were SNP hacks and not career civil servants as the police were portraying them.

    • Giyane

      Sean_Lamb
      Craig didn’t identify anybody because he doesn’t need telling by decree that their anonymity is protected. Dorrian lied. Garavelli had a contract with Tory publishers who absolutely did not prevent her from identifying the anonymous ladies. So Dorrian lied about MSM control as well.

      There is no point in sensible people falling into the elephant traps obviously prepared for their male “enemies”. Craig saw the trap, avoided it, so Garavelli was told to make it look as though it was ok to step on the trap. Lure 2 of the elephant trap didn’t tempt to step on the trap.

      No sensible person has the slightest interest in knowing the names of agent provocateurs, because they are paid hiredmen or women.

      The police often entrap criminals, but Craig isn’t a criminal. If they tried to lure him into stepping on the trap, the clearly that lure also failed.

      In order for both the Scottish police and Scottish judiciary to be corrupted, there has to be a higher power operating the puppet, either the Crown or the CIA. Or both.

      The Supreme Court in London knows which cocks need sucking and which cocks don’t need sucking.
      The Crown is a bankrupt fart with No power at all. The CIA though bankrupt, has the world’s financial currency in its hand.

      So, to cut a long story short, Craig is paying for his help for Assange, and Dorrian relished preventing him from going to Portugal. They are all as bent as hairpins, or more bent. Biggest bent is Sturgeon and Lady Dorrain.

      • Marmite

        ‘No sensible person has the slightest interest in knowing the names of agent provocateurs, because they are paid hiredmen or women.’

        I’m not sure I can agree with this. People who perjure and pervert justice are pretty slimy, but those that pervert justice and hide behind the law while innocent people face justice in their place, are double criminals of a kind. The public has a right to know who these paid or unpaid mercenaries are, but it also has a right to cross-examine them in order to learn who stands behind them. You may say we all know the answer to that already, but I think that is beside the point, and at any rate, I would say that probably the majority of the British public is clueless and so uninterested in the whole affair that it cannot even be asked to search for a clue.

        • Giyane

          Marmite

          You blink , you die. I know Craig doesn’t get the same pan pipe music as Clint Eastwood, but the alphabetties are fiction and a deliberate distraction imho.
          Just Prittle Pratel from Hollywood to salivate the MSM readers.

          The alphabetties don’t exist except as a fictional diversion to distract Craig.

        • Holmey

          ‘No sensible person has the slightest interest in knowing the names of agent provocateurs, because they are paid hiredmen or women.’

          I think it should be in the interest of all sensible males to not only know their names, but what they look like.

          Why?

          From a personal point of view I want to know to make sure that I never end up in their company without reliable witnesses, as clearly they have no scruples when it comes to telling lies under oath, (as the proven evidence in the AS trial showed), in an attempt to get a man sent to prison for sexual crimes. If they can do so that once, I certainly wouldn’t trust them not to do it again, especially if their anonymity is guaranteed.

          In fact, for the above reasons I think it should be in the public interest that their identities are known…

    • craig Post author

      thanks Sean that’s very useful. Plainly she just grabs whatever argument reinforces her prejudice at any point.

  • Kuhnberg

    What this boils down to is asserting the power of the state to declare what is true and what is not. This is happening everywhere at this time, and applies to all administrations, including self-proclaimed ‘liberal’ ones. Without a compliant media, the state can’t get away with lies like WMD, extraordinary rendition, political assassination, the portrayal of Israel as a democracy that only bombs in self-defence, etc. Will the judiciary ultimately assert that truth is truth, even when it is inconvenient to the state? That depends on whether or not the state can depend on a compliant judiciary.

  • Kuhnberg

    What this boils down to is asserting the power of the state to declare what is true and what is not. This is happening everywhere at this time, and applies to all administrations, including self-proclaimed ‘liberal’ ones. Without a compliant media, the state can’t get away with lies like WMD, extraordinary rendition, political assassination, etc. Will the judiciary ultimately assert that truth is truth, even when it is inconvenient to the state? That depends on whether or not the state can depend on a compliant judiciary.

  • Andy Coombes

    “subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the applicant does are not. ” means we own and control it.

  • Caratacus

    I wonder if the good Lady Dorrian has any mirrors in her home? And, if so, she is able to look at her reflection with an untroubled conscience. If she is unable, then she should amend her behaviour forthwith; if she is able to gaze unconcernedly upon her lordly countenance in the morning then she is, I am afraid to have to observe, a sociopath who is entirely unfitted for the role she has been granted.

    • Natasha

      “… a sociopath who is entirely unfitted for the role she has been granted.”

      The opposite is true. The judge in this case is entirely fit for the role of being a lawyer on account of the fact that lawyers are 2nd on the list (top are CEO’s) of most likely to be psychopathic, or be a “sociopath” at work (yes there are clinical differences, but here its functionally the same). Media 3rd. Journalist’s 6th.

      The list of behaviour patterns, all exhibited by the judge in this case, begins with:-

      • Public humiliation of others (high propensity of having temper tantrums or ridiculing work performance)
      • Malicious spreading of lies (intentionally deceitful)
      • Remorseless, devoid of guilt
      • Frequently lies to push their point

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace#Careers_with_highest_proportion_of_psychopaths

  • yesindyref2

    I like to look on the good side of people by default, so hopefully, considering three judges put their names to it, this was a deliberate “get out of jail card”.

    Now, where’s that lucky dip on the lottery?

  • Simon

    The odd decision by the NUJ to deny Craig membership feels more suspect now.

    • craig Post author

      Yes, I have been pondering that a lot. Particularly when I was only regularising from three years temporary membership.

      • Jm

        Yep first thing I thought of when I saw that paragraph yesterday.

        Have they all been got at?

      • Simon

        I would argue that the media is the most important part of the establishment by far. To imagine that any of its constituent parts are not utterly compromised would be naïve in the extreme. If there is a connection in your case then kudos to them – this kangaroo court is the culmination of quite a long game.

        But here I slip into conspiracy mode – I am sure Lady D just doesn’t like you, that is all. Hmmmm……..

      • NotARobot

        Found my post at that time (July, 16 13:14):

        “Hello Craig,
        Very sorry for this new one.
        Just wondering: if you’re denied membership of the NUJ, would it subsequently weaken (or worse deny) your status as a journalist? And therefore deprive you of some protection in case you would need it when being trialed?
        Endure.”

        Can smell some careful planning here…
        (Thanks, Squeeth for correcting my ‘trialed’ into ‘tried’.)
        Endure, Craig.

  • Jon

    Best of luck with registering your application, Craig. As I mentioned elsewhere on another thread, if you can post a Defence Fund Health Update, that’d be great – it might focus minds to donate (again), for those who are able.

1 2 3 4

Comments are closed.