Madness

How can Gordon Brown be making promises to get our country out of this recession if he played a huge part in getting us into it? It has been announced that he paid £6,500 over 26 months through his brother for a cleaner who worked for both of them. However, now our Prime Minister is introducing a firesale of national assests such as the Tote, student loans, the Channel Tunnel rail link and a Thame river crossing, in an attempt to pay off Britain's huge deficit. I find it amusing that he can spend a large amount of money himself on just a cleaner and expect money from the Dartford crossing to provide money to pay off the deficit.


It was emphasised today that there is a huge difference between comment and fact when reporting stories. Fair Comment is a defence for libel so long as a journalist makes it clear that what was said was in fact a comment as oppose to fact. 'Comment is cheap - fact is priceless'. Journalists can say hurtful or controversial things due to the principle of 'freedom of speech'. The word 'fair' however means the honest opinion of the journalist which does not make it balanced or moderate.
Libel is made up of three apsects:
1) Defamation
2) Publication
3) Identification
A statement is defamatory if it lowers the repuation of someone, so as to expose them to hatred; cause them to be shunned or avoided; discredit them in their trade or business or generally lower them in the eye of right minded people.
The test for indentification is whether the defamatory statement would lead people acquainted with him/her to believe that they are the person being referred to.
The piece must have been published to which it must have been communicated with at least one other person.
The most important defence for libel is Justification. This is a complete defence if the statement is true and you can prove it with witnesses, who would be prepared to appear in court because you must not only believe it to be true but you must be able to prove it. For the defence of justification to be successful, the matter must be proved on 'the balance of probabilities'.
A libel case was won in April this year by a woman with the same name as Sacha Baron Cohen's fictional girlfriend in Ali G. Here's the link if you wanna take a look...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/22/ali-g-libel-win