I don't particularly care whether Andrew Marr had an affair with Alice Miles a journalist with the Times, and I wouldn't seek to comment on the fact that she had a child, which she and he thought was from the relationship but turned out not to be, while he continued his marriage to Jackie Ashley from which he has a son and two daughters.
Neither do I particularly mind that Marr should ask Gordon Brown whether he was taking prescription medicine in the run up to an election, because voters have the right to know whether candidates are in good health.
But I do object to the fact that Marr as an interrogator of politicians should choose to take out a super injunction to prevent newspapers publicising his affair on the grounds of protecting his children. "I also had my own family to think about, and I believed this story was nobody else's business."
A bit late for that surely?. Mr Marr had already ignored the well-being of his family.
But most important of all, why should politicians fear inquisition by journalists if they know the journalist is trying to hide a guilty secret? If the BBC had any guts, Marr would be off our screens tomorrow, but he will probably still trouser his £600,000 of license payers money because the BBC has no guts. Still we can all now think of him as the jug-eared.love rat.
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There's also the worrying issue of people in the public eye who are totally free of scandal yet who are victims of unwelcome rumours and are unable to clear their names and restore their reputations by actually naming the guilty person who has taken out the injunction.
There is no freedom of speech in England.
I think that could be easily achieved, simply by saying "I have not taken out any injunctions or superinjunctions".
Yes, but if the injunctions weren't taken out in the first place they wouldn't need to affirm their innocence.
As a point of interest, how would a person negatively affected by such slurs take legal action against the person who has taken out the injunction?
£600,000? That's something of a bargain. I know with absolute certainty that John Humphrys - that sanctimonious, hair-shirted scourge of parasitical City fat-cats - was pulling down £750,000 in the mid '90s. That was before he started selling books, going on lecture tours and hosting 'Mastermind'. With inflation alone, he must be pocketing well over £1m.
"So, Mr. Humphrys, perhaps you can explain to the audience, because I am sure they would be fascinated by your answer, what exactly it is that you do that is so very difficult that it makes you worth some seven times the Prime Minister's salary. No, I'm sorry, Mr. Humphrys, I'll have to press you because you simply haven't answered the question. Do I really have to repeat it? No, that's really not good enough, I'm afraid. Mr. Humphrys, please don't prevaricate, obfuscate or otherwise attempt to frustrate the genuine enquiry I have made on behalf of the hard-working licence-payers up and down the land. Why, Mr. Humphrys, are you so very special?"
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