A Superinjunction Everybody Can Disclose
Popbitch, which is best described as a gossip site, has bought a racehorse and called it Superinjunction.
It hasn’t been entered yet, so it is not in the various on-line racing databases.
You can inquire about a piece of the action by e-mailing superinjunctionthehorse@gmail.com.
Those That Hide Will Eventually Be Found
There must be a joke going round about Ronnie Biggs, Saddam Husein, Osama Bin Laden and Ryan Giggs, as all of them have tried to hide from their misdemeanors and have eventually been found. Or in the footballers case, found out, as it was usually obvious where Ryan was, at least once or twice a week.
Truth be told, Ryan should have stuck to the day job!
The lawyers will be sad though, as they don’t like losing a client with more money than sense. On the other hand, they will have the divorce to look forward to!
Radio 4 Names Footballer Involved in Superinjunction
Perhaps it was an accident, but it just shows how when everybody knows, it is difficult to keep a secret. There’s more here.
The sooner this farce is ended the better!
The only people who will be upset when it ends will be the lawyers.
Those That Live By The Shredder Die By The Shredder
It is often said that everything comes to him who waits. The partial lifting of the so-called banker’s, Fred Goodwin‘s super-injunction, shows that no matter how tight you jam the lid on a can of beans, eventually the pressure builds and it blows up in your face.
There are some choice headlines.
- Daily Mail – Sir Fred, adultery and the public interest.
- Independent – Goodwin’s affair at bank exposed after peer breaks gagging order
- Daily Mirror – No good in these gags
- The Sun – Fred the Bed
There’s a lot more.
The tone is set by this from the Daily Mail.
While RBS was undergoing the biggest collapse in British corporate history, he was busy carrying out an extra-marital affair with a senior colleague involved in the strategic direction of the bank.
Truly, there can be no doubting the public interest in disclosing Sir Fred’s conduct. The collapse of RBS, under his control, led to a £45billion bailout by taxpayers.
Thousands upon thousands lost their jobs and businesses in the financial devastation which followed.
If Fred had had an affair with a Page 3 bimbo, that wouldn’t have mattered so much to the bank and in the end UK taxpayers. The tabloids might have made us laugh as they did years ago with Ron Halpern, a long forgotten businessman in the 1960s or 1970s, but because he had an affair with a senior executive, it meant that his crazy policies were able to get through board and other meetings. I had problems years ago with a company, where I served on a technical committee that had a husband and wife on it. We all had to convince two people who slept together of the correct course of action. It was not easy and the company suffered.
Two people having a relationship in an organisation is rarely a good idea!
Fred Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to banking. So at least we can’t blame that one totally on Prudence, as he wasn’t Prime Minister until four years later. It will be interesting to see in twenty or so years time, when the details of Sir Fred’s knighthood are released, what dicussions took place on his suitability for such an award.
If ever there was a case for a knighthood to be taken away, then Sir Fred is at the top of the list.
Super Injunctions and Deep Searching Software
I have written software that in the past has been used to deep search the Internet. I did it when a company asked me if I could help trace anybody stealing their IPR. I didn’t find anything at all and in that case that was a good result, as it meant there had been no theft.
However software like that could be easily written to deep search the Internet for relationships that shouldn’t be happening. Let’s say two well-known Premiership managers decided to have a good lunch together after the season in a good restaurant. As well they might! Someone might see them and put the story in a blog or tweet and unless someone else was searching for it deliberately it wouldn’t be found. But the deep search software would find it, if it was properly set up, say with a database of the names of all Premiership managers and footballers.
So just as Google tracks the links with its search terms, other software can be written to find relationships.
So celebrities had better be even more careful.
Jon Snow on Super Injunctions
Jon Snow has put this on Twitter.
Every single super injunction has now either been tweeted or has appeared in Private Eye: What has Judge Eady who set them up done? Sweet FA
Tweeters Attempt to Break the Super Injunctions
There are reports that users of Twitter are attempting to break the super injunctions.
It’s now getting to the point, where someone with a super injunction might think of doing an Andrew Marr for the money.
Suppose you are an well-known actor, athlete or a footballer say, who has had a brief dalliance with a Z-list celebrity. But your wife is perhaps a sensible woman who has forgiven you and has warned you about future conduct. Remember, strange as it may seem, there are a lot of women married to celebrities, who very much manage the family’s finances and often have a serious career in their own right. Perhaps you just want to act or play football and get on with your life. So you strike a deal with the Z-lister and sell the story. After all, in a footballer’s case the season is almost over and you can find a nice island hotel to hide for the summer.
So someone will take the money, settle with the Z-lister, write a few articles and run.
Once one has done it, the others might fall like a pack of cards.
You have to admit that probably keeping a super injunction going is not a trivial business and costly in terms of both time and money. The bill might hurt more than the adverse publicity.
Melvin Bragg on the King James Bible
Melvin Bragg has just said on BBC Breakfast that the establishment was very much against publishing the bible in English, as then everybody could read it. He then said asomething like they thought it would destroy society and that there is still a view in the establishment that the general public shouldn’t know anything.
He also said that once the bible was in English, then everybody could discuss religion.
So did the King James bible break the superinjunction of its day?
Andrew Marr Comes Clean
Having watched Have I Got News For You and seen what Ian Hislop has said since Andrew Marr has come clean over the superinjunction, I think that he made his statement just in time. I think if Marr hadn’t broke his silence, it would have been all over the place within a week.
This always happens in the end, as someone makes a mistake or perhaps sadly one of the parties dies and then it gets published.
These privacy superinjunctions may have their place in some areas, like the protection of children But in many places they are just being used by indivduals and companies to hide wrong doing. Or should I say delay publication, as inevitably that’s what happens.
It would appear now that the tabloids are looking for the next person to come clean.
There is also a serious side to all this. Read this article in the Daily Mail. One person, who has found a serious health problem with paint, has even been prohibited from talking to his MP. It’s getting to be all very Kafka!
The Mail is also getting its claws into Fred the Shred in this article. At one time the injunction said that we couldn’t refer to him as a banker.
I’ve just typed his real name coupled with the w-word into Google. You get a lot of very funny articles.
Superinjunctions have now created this new game of Googling the Internet to find out the truth. You usually can! The google Toolbar is particularly useful, as it knows the common searches. Let’s say I’m a sportsman, who say has been associated with a Z-list celebrity, but I’ve taken out a super injunction to stop my wife finding out and divorcing me, thus relieving me of a lot of my money and half my salary, which would mean I’m unattractive to bimbos. If I continually type my name and that of the celebrity into Google, I can check that no stories are appearing. But all I’m doing is making it easier for people to find the association.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Celebrity Sex Secrets
The Times today, has the headline “Call girl must keep celebrity sex secret”.
It says how a celebrity has got an injunction ostensibly to keep his indiscretions from his wife.
He’ll be lucky if he gets away with this!
C did lots of divorces where all sorts of hanky-panky was going on, but partners always worked out the truth for themselves. So in the end, no injunction will stop everything for all time.
So whoever it is that has obtained the injunction in The Times, he ought to make a clean breast of t now, as it’ll all end in tears. The tabloids just have too much to gain from printing the truth. And somebody will accept their wads of notes to give them the story.
I was once told a story in the 1980s by the manager for BT in East Anglia. He said that when they got complaints about high phone bills and checked, they found that someone was calling a particular number continually. From the pattern, they would often deduce, that someone was having an affair. In those days, divorce details were often reported in the local paper and they often found a divorce followed the phone bill complaint.
We can all speculate about who it is in The Times article, but give a couple of months and it’ll all be in the open.
The Anonymous Widower 