Good news and bad

By | 29th May 2013

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

It is not always easy to decide!

As is so often the case, there has been both good news and bad in the past few weeks, so let’s start with the bad news in the hope that we will all feel better once that is out of the way and we can get on with the good news.

The bad news this week starts with the murder of a soldier in Woolwich by alleged Islamist terrorists. Acres of newsprint have resulted from this appalling event and, apart from expressing my revulsion at the event and its circumstances, I do not propose to say any more about it. It was certainly bad news and anything which follows in this piece, however light hearted or frivolous, is in no way intended to detract from the seriousness of what happened. Apart from anything else, it is not what this blog is about, however serious the event. I just thought I could not post a piece without mentioning this huge story.

It is reported that the BBC has abandoned a digital project because “it does not work.” Not working has cost the taxpayer in the region of £100 million and as yet no one has apologised or less still resigned. In anybody’s book that is bad news. A BBC spokesman said that the corporation decided to pull the plug on the project to avoid throwing good money after bad! Our good money after their bad decisions, I suppose. Will we never learn?

Less serious, perhaps, but bad news nonetheless, is the story that demonstrates that in some areas of our national life we appear to have lost the plot. It was reported that Gloucestershire Police apparently have nothing better to do than to harrass an 86 year old woman who makes cheese. People have attended the annual cheese rolling contest on Cooper’s Hill outside Gloucester for many years during which  this was thought to be a relatively pointless but harmless amusement. But now ‘Elf and Safety has taken over, because someone might get hurt, and the official event has not been held since 2009. However, humans being human, the event has since operated “unofficially.” The contest involves rolling cheeses down the hill chased by an enthusiastic hoarde intent on being the first to catch ( and so to keep) the cheese. This year the event took place as planned on Easter Monday and was won by an American from Colorado who had flown 4000 miles to participate!

That the event took place at all is a matter for congratulation. However, in the lead up to Easter Monday, Gloucestershire Constabulary thought it right to send three officers (not one, notice, but three) to visit an 86 year old woman, Diana Smart, who makes the cheeses involved in the event, and threaten her that she could be liable for any injuries suffered by people injured in the downhill cheese rolling event.

Apart from being arrant nonsense, the threat was lampooned by a letter in the papers over the recent Bank Holiday weekend which pointed out that, if they were acting in a consistent manner, the police will presumably be warning the manufacturers of rugby balls, boxing gloves and cricket bats that they should desist from their lawful activities lest they be held liable for any injuries sustained by those “stupid” enough to use their products.

We live in a strange world!

But, it is always heartening to report good news to counter the bad. The first piece of good news is that the annual London Access to Justice/Legal Support Trust walk took place on May 20th, attracting 7000 lawyers who walked the 10 k route around the legal landmarks of London including the Royal Courts of Justice, the Middle Temple and the Law Society to raise money for those unable to afford the cost of legal advice. Millnet’s Ledie Toscano walked the route and the press reported that the walk in London raised in excess of £500,000. At the same time, I walked a route around the Great Twelve sights in Norwich, raising somewhat less, but adding to the total money raised throughout the country for this worthy cause. It is my hope that next year Millnet will enter a team for the London event.

The other piece of good news is that the courts have decided that those who use Twitter have to bear responsibility for what they tweet. A short case note appears opposite under the heading of “case notes.”

I am an occasional user of this medium and can see its advantages provided that I am not inundated with news of what strangers have had for breakfast. As a means of disseminating information, Twitter clearly has its place in these days of social media but those who use it have to accept that not only is what they tweet disclosable in litigation but also that they may be sued if what they write is defamatory.

Sally Bercow, the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, has learned this lesson the hard way. Last week, having been for some time, in her own words, “a conversational and mischievous” tweeter, she was held by the High Court to have defamed Lord McAlpine by her tweet last year, as a result of which the Conservative peer sued her for libel. The cartoonist Matt in the Daily Telegraph had his male character sum it up in front of a TV screen showing the words “Sally Bercow Libel,” by saying “after a week of terrible news, it is good to laugh again.”

Not a laughing matter for Mrs Bercow who now faces a bill for damages and costs reported to be in the region of £150,000, but then it was not a laughing matter either for the object of her libellous comment on Twitter.

As Lord McAlpine’s counsel, former Solicitor-General Sir Edward Garnier QC, said at the hearing one would have to have been “a moron in a hurry” or “an anchorite in a cave” not to have known the circumstances of the tweet.

So, good news and bad, but users of Twitter have been warned. It has taken its place in the arena of social media but its use carries with it the same duties and responsibilities as the written word and is just as likely to attract liability in appropriate circumstances.