- Those that don't care because they think she deserved it
- Those who think what she said was fair comment whether they agreed with her or not and so think its a bit off.
- Those who disagree with everything Nadine says vehemently thinking she is batshit crazy but defend her right to be so.
- And finally those that have seen similar things happen to their own blogs but so viscerally despise Nadine and the right wing blogs reporting it that its easier to question whether any of it is even true through obsessively sad twittering - something that will continue whatever is said.
- 22 May 2009 @ 20:30: Counsel at Wither LLP contacts the support@ alias for TDMWeb with an email with attached legal letters advising they require urgent attention and action. The letters state that Nadine's Parliametary email address has been copied.
- 22 May 2009 @ 21:00: TDMWeb - an upstream provider of services to a Bedford based provider, Acidity - emailed a contact at Acidity, stating that they had attempted to contact him by landline and mobile, and that they, TDMWeb, had taken the decision to stop the IIS webserver that managed the subdomain blog.dorries.org. It was not Acidity that stopped the service as I blogged yesterday, apologies for any confusion I may have caused on that.
- Sat May 23 2009 @ 00:10: Nadine contacted me saying her blog was offline. My initial thought was that it was a server issue that I would look into first thing in morning.
- Sat May 23 2009 @ 01:30: Nadine is advised of the details of the legal letters by Acidity.
First, the lawyers stated that Nadine was making a false allegation against the Telegraph, stating that her argument that the Telegraph expose "constitutes an appalling, sadistic torture of individuals [and] a cynical attempt to maximise profit" was false and that they were actually acting in nothing more than the public interest.
The second complaint was that Nadine had made a false allegation that the Telegraph was carrying out "McCarthyite witch hunts" with the "reckless disregard for the mental and physical health of MPs". Again the Telegraph argued it was acting responsibly and in the public interest.
The third issue was that Nadine had said the Telegraph was "embellishing" some of the cases in order to boost its circulation. In other words that the Telegraph had lied about the provenance of some of the information it was publishing.
The final allegation of issue to the lawyers, was that Nadine had falsely alleged that the Barclay brothers were "fiercely Euro sceptic", and also falsely alleged that they had, through the expense stories "set upon a deliberate course to destabilise Parliament, with the hope that the winners will be UKIP and BNP". The allegations were considered defamatory and rejected as "nonsense".
All the allegations were considered a breach of the Telegraph Media Group and Barclay brothers rights, and had to removed and not repeated. As I said yesterday, the Acceptable Use Policy was cited as having been breached, and they advised the service provider of this.
And that, as they say, is that. Make of it what you will.
Comment moderation is on and anything that I arbitrarily consider to be potentially libellous will not be published.
Update: Nadine's blog came back online on Monday night, minus the aforementioned allegations as far as I can see.
62 comments:
Couldn't they have just asked for an immediate retraction? It seems a bit over the top what has gone on.
30 minutes is generous :^) On one occasion Schillings gave me less than 15 minutes to respond. Part of the problem is that while mere mortals are allowed reasonable time off for sleep, weekends, etc; hosting companies are considered 24/7 operations and thus expected (in the eyes of the law) to respond a lot more promptly.
As an aside, could you add the date and times of the relevant posts to the timeline? Because at the moment it reads as if Withers deliberately left it as late as possible on Friday to send the takedown. That may well be true, but if some of the posts were made at - say - 18:00 then 2.5 hours is pretty quick for a legal response. Posting dates and times would help clarify the timeline give a better idea of the big picture.
Fair point Clive, unfortunatelyt amd now out for the day and only have my phone so slightly difficult. If someone would like to post the info in the comments using Google cache feel free and I will do my best to publish it when I can.
A legal sledgehammer to crack a 'nut' - pun intended. :)
It's interesting, not least because comments on various blogs, whilst ND's comments were still visible, indicated that people thought she may have lost the plot - which was, surely, sympathetic to the DT and the BBs.
In my experience such extreme reaction, by an allegedly aggrieved party, indicates that the perpetrator hit a sensitive spot.
Erm, that's four categories.
Pardon me for not rushing to judgement on your word alone, Phil.
Feel free to show me the bit where the Telegraph show/announce that they plan to deny Nadine Dorries her day in court, as Schillings/Usmanov did with Craig Murray. Until you can do this, it is nothing like the Usmanov event.
PS - Folks really could have done with some of these details earlier. Somehow, readers of your site and Iain's have got the idea that the Telegraph unfairly demanded the deletion/removal of Nadine's entire 'blog' purely because of what she said about the Barclay Brothers.
-
TIMELINE:
'Winners or Losers?'
The main post about the Barclays Brothers conspiracy theory
Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 17:04
'What Stephan said and Martin Bell knew'
Nadine tells us the rules governing expenses didn't really apply to her or anyone else
Friday, 22 May 2009 at 10:22
'Comments'
Dorries announces she is closing comments " for the Bank Holiday weekend."
Friday, 22 May 2009 at 11:40
'Porky Pies'
Dorries denies being slapped down by Cameron and again accuses the Telegraph of putting profit before principle and/or the public interest
Friday, 22 May 2009 at 13:59
[health warning: there is very little about Dorries' blog that works (or works as might be expected), and there is no guarantee that these timestamps are accurate, set to GMT, etc.]
-
Coffee hadn't kicked in yet. Fixed.
Tim, stop being such a misleading disingenuos tithead. Yesterday I made zero reference to Usmanov yet you wrote on your blog saying that you suspected I was doing so. It was a bollocks insinuation, yewt again, like the ones you've made where you persistently theorise that I keep calling you.
I mentioned in this post that similar things happened which is accurate. Similar things did happen. Legal letters, arbitrary takedown etc. I have not said it is the 'same'as the Usmanov issue because it isn't. Only you have said that I've said that through inference. For reference its called a straw man something which you excel at.
As for folks needing this information earlier. Has it dawned on your little brain that I didn't have it and pieced it together since yesterday rsulting in this post? No of course it hasn't because you have personal issues with me, and you can't stand Nadine. That's you cue to say I'm projecting and you canengage in pop psychology.
The facts are plain though. It was you that brought up Usmanov in the first instance, not me. It was you that can't understand the difference between similarities and carbon copies, and it is only you that even thinks I am saying it is a carbon copy. I am not, because to do so would be stupid, and what's more the best I can ever say is it similar because that is not an inaccurate thing to say.
I know how this is goibng to pan out. You shall start demanding I provide more information that I don't have and will thus argue that without that information the entire thing is discredited. Your method of argumetation is so transparent that it is better to deal with it in advance. If I get more info it will be posted, if I don't then it won't be, and no matter you scream and shout whilst throwing your toys out of the pram it won't change.
Now, in your own words to me the other day. Go fuck yourself.
From Iain's post yesterday morning (http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/05/telegraph-takes-down-nadines-blog.html)
"This reminds me of the Usmanov case where a Russian Oligarch had a British blog's site taken down by its hosts because it didn't like what that particular blogger was saying."
Note: typos are due to the fact I am using a phone. That goes for all replies, not just the ones to the green ink boy.
Oh, I do apologise for confusing your post with Iain's to some degree, and for using the acronym 'GFY'.
PS - Would you agree that "The Telegraph deleted Nadine Dorries blog" is a correct description of this event? It's the idea that some people have been getting.
And I changed my name to Iain Dale when exactly? Try again. Tim is conflating two peoples words and saying they are saying the same thing when they did not. Standard practice of the weak straw man arguments he so often engages in.
Fifth category - that Dorries is doing an 'ad hominem' argument. Saying 'Oh, won't someone think of the MPs!' is a modern classic. We don't need Dorries telling us how we should behave until we have sorted the honest, moral MPs from the morality-bereft ones. And after that, we still don't need MPs telling us how to behave. Been there, seen that, it belongs in the past.
No I do not agree with that, nor have I ever said it, so the point you are attempting to make is moot. My original post was pretty clear on the fact that this was a legal takedown Tim, and you know that. No one said deleted because that would be dumb and if people wish to start using the wrong language that is their choice, and it is not responsibilty to correct them. I have a life.
That should have said, Not MY responsibilty.
I think we've already established that we blog in different ways, but if I'd somehow given people the wrong idea to that extent and it had caused many people to tweet/blog something that was not true/accurate (and likely to be unfair/damaging to someone's reputation) - and even if I had not done this but was in a position where people looked to mne for reliable data - I would quickly take steps to correct it, and not just on my own blog.
/justsaying
That's your choice Tim, I have more important things to spend my weekends doing.
So long as we understand your thinking on this.
Correct, I am one person with a life. I don't have staff to run this blog and I have a job as well. If people think that position is wrong then so be it.
Some people might say you shouldn't start what you can't handle or finish, but so be it.
To say the Barclay brothers are EUsceptics at all is utter lunacy when they are fully supportive of Mr. Camerons pro-EU policy and the Telegraph published the hatchet job on Nigel Farage and UKIP yesterday.
Although I'm a great fan of Nadine I thought her blogpost was a little over the top. However, the Telegraph/Barclay brothers response to it makes me think that they protest too much. Nadine needs to repeat her comments in the House.
Tim you're so cute sometime the way you say things like that. I'm sorry I don't stay permanently connected and lack a life.
I wonder whose AUP they wre meaning as looking on the acidity web pages I can't find a published AUP. Which given the services they provide isn't that unusual, and I couldn't find an AUP for their upstream either, so I wonder where the lawyers found this alleged AUP. Not that it is that important, as the take down laws don't require any AUP, I'm just curious as they mentioned it.
You could take 5 minutes to correct the false impression that you put out. If you can't be arsed to correct something that's false or misleading, why do you bother blogging at all? It sounds like such a monumental pain to you
Which false impression would that be then?
Giolla, the company at the top of the chain is Coreix who have a published AUP. Next up is TDMweb (aka ITEC) who list acceptable use under their T's & C's. Finally we have Acidity who list no AUP or T's & C's.
Just as an aside, if I was a wealthy and successful businessman and newspaper proprietor, and somebody with some credibility (however spurious, she is currently an MP after all) and a large audience falsely accused me of deliberately using my empire to subvert democracy for the benefit of a band of racist thugs (and I'm not talking about UKIP here), then I'd phone my lawyers. The Barclay Brothers don't have to be candidates for beatification, in fact I'm sure they aren't, but really you make a baseless accusation like that, which is both personally offensive and potentially commercially incredibly damaging, at your peril.
I'd go further in fact and say that attributing any hidden motivation to the Barclay Brothers or their ilk without some credible supporting evidence could so easily be seriously commercially damaging. Would Nadine be happy to compensate the Barclay Brothers (from her ACA, natch) if her accusation of Euroscepticism is not only false but can also be shown to have been even a small part of the reason that a multi-billion-pound pan-European business deal went down the plughole?
I think it would be quite funny if Nadine D. was sued into penury by the Barclay Brothers. She would have nobody to blame but herself.
Hey Diz
Why not just bar that twat Tim and his acolytes?
It would make the blog a better read...
Hear hear.
Tim Ireland is a huge fucking prick. He's loving this nonsense.
“Couldn't they have just asked for an immediate retraction? It seems a bit over the top what has gone on.”Lawyers are a bit like cats: make yourself look big and scary in the hope that your opponent will back down.
Nadine has a piece on our local Sunday paper concerning this at www.bedsonsunday.com
"Just as an aside, if I was a wealthy and successful businessman and newspaper proprietor....."
You mean like Maxwell - lying cheating crook - who intimidated everyone who crossed him and corrupted many of the journalists who worked for him?
Or, if you prefer, like that great double act, Mohamed Fayed & The Guardian, who concocted the cash for questions sting that did for the last Tory government?
When everyone is howling down MPs unless the first word out of their mouth is "sorry" and the second and third is "very sorry", it is refreshing that Nadine goes beyond personal self-defence and uses the independence and privilege that being elected to parliament confers.
As pointed out, she couldn't speak in the Commons as it is in recess. So, she put her accusations against the Telegraph's owners in a blog.
Apparently many of her fellow bloggers are accepting the Barclay brothers' high-handed approach towards a post they don't like. Why?
Independent bloggers like you Dizzy and Guido (and your claques)seem to think you have more in common with journalists who work for mainstream media than with politicians who broadly share your political outlook.
Think again. In this specific instance, you should be aghast at the Telegraph's anti-free speech attitude.
Maxwell was a crook who abusively sued lots of people for telling the truth about him. It didn't work indefinitely.
Invoking Maxwell's name when somebody with a lot of money has their good name besmirched and assuming that the wild-eyed defamer must be telling the truth 'just because' is actually pretty intellectually bankrupt.
The logical conclusion of your argument is that anybody who owns a newspaper group should be denied the protection of the law of libel. Or, to put it another way, that the Barclay brothers should have to put up with being called closet neo-nazis just because they are obscenely rich and very successful.
I suspect that if Nadine Dorries called me a neo-nazi sympathiser in her blog, I would have to grin and bear it, because there is no way that I can afford to instruct m'learned friends. However, I would do so in a trice if I could! The Barclay brothers labour under no such financial constraint, and have much more at stake beyond the personal offence that they might well take from such an accusation.
Boo hoo, not fair, but there it is. Best have some evidence to hand before you start defaming people that can afford to sue (and probably can't afford not to sue) on the internet, eh?
Firstly, I have no love for either the Barclay's or the Daily Telegraph,.
Now, given that an MP (not an anonymous blogger), one who had a significant amount of recent media attention, has made what the Barclay's/DT considered to be a baseless accusation, what were they supposed to do?
1. Do nothing and hope that everyone just assumes it's that moonbat Dorries at it again. Downside is that should further allegations be made by Dorries then any case is undermined by a lack of initial action.
2. Ask lawyers to write to Nadine asking for the contentious material to be removed. Note that one consequence of Godfrey vs Demon is that the lawyers would be derelict in their duty of care if they didn't also contact the hosting co.
3. Ignore Nadine and go straight for the hosting company.
The DT chose option 2. It is a crying bloody shame that such action will almost always result in the hosting company acting if they can't get hold of the person directly responsible (in this case, Nadine).
They'd be fools to follow option 1 as it would weaken their position in any future legal action. And option 3 is the sort of twatish approach followed by Schillings and clients who sure as hell just want someone to shut up.
I so don't like the Barclays, but can't see what else they could have done. The problem here, as has now been said too many times, are the UK libel laws. Until they're changed this will keep happening. Perhaps people should really save their ire for Mr Justice Moreland who set the stage for all this shit back in 1997.
It really is about time the scandalous libel laws of this country are amended. They are far too draconian in their breadth and depth. They interfere far too much in the area of free speech. I think what she was saying was extreme and probably not exactly true, but it was her opinion. I didn't think you could be sued for an opinion unless it was in some way defamatory or injured the reputation of the party so opined against.
The principle is far more important than Nadine Dorries, like her or loathe her. Remember:
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.
In our glee to punish and throw out the troughing political class be mindful of what comes to fill the vacuum.
Silicon Implant and Clive - both of you immediately react by asking us to put ourselves in the Barclay brothers' shoes. Why?
Nadine Dorries is so much more like an ordinary person, surely?
Are you both media magnates?
More likely, you are simply caught up in this unguided (unless you believe that Nadine's source was right)hostility towards Members of Parliament.
But if you accept that this hostility IS unguided, diffuse, and corrosive, then what are your own democratic credentials.
MPs are, at least, elected. Cameron has "opened the books" for replacements.
Could any of you see yourselves going through the necessary motions to put yourselves in front of the electorate, either under the Tory whip, or as independents?
To my mind, it would serve natural justice if, as soon as an election is forced on parliament by this furore, MPs of all parties join together to pass a "fuck you" bill - abolishing the BBC licence fee and leaving the British media to deal with the fallout from such a "weapon of mass destruction".
Apart from the BNP part can someone explain what is libellous about what she said?
And while I can see an argument for the BBs what the hell is going on at the Telegraph? A newspaper complaining about about being libelled by a politician or a blog is abit like a boxer complaining of GBH after being knocked out in the ring. And they are far from knocked out.
There is an option. Stop buying the Telegraph. You'll read very little about Balls/Cooper for their own reasons and now they shut other people up. And throw in the Speccie for good measure.
Have these legal teams never heard of the Streisand Effect?
NHS Blog Doctor has a screen shot of what the Telegraph don't want you to read.
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2009/05/nadine-dorries-is-silenced.html
ONe very easy way round all this is to host in New York City where they have passed a law specifically preventing UK libel laws from taking effect there, so first amendment free speech can flourish....take note all...
And I thought she closed her blog because of the news that David Van Day, (I'm a celebrity; get me out of here) is standing against her.
Bucks Fizz anyone? - Gosh Nadine has made a lot of DOLLARS!
I just wish the bitch would resign. I'm no fan of the Telegraph at all but i'll blinking well doff my cap to them on this one - absolutely outstanding.
Anon 19:29
Potentially the bit about them embellishing the articles - Dizzy's 'third issue'. The suggestion is she effectively accused them of deliberately lying in order to ruin other people's reputations.
Apart from the BNP partApart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play...
No doubt any allegation of a hidden agenda is potentially actionable, hence the shopping list in the take-down notice. Plus of course refuting only one false allegation could be seen as a tacit admission that the others were true!
However, I'd be right up there with you in agreeing that setting the legal jackals loose over an unsubstantiated allegation that the Telegraph is engaged in a machiavellian covert exercise on behalf of UKIP might be considered a gross over-reaction. And only partly because if I falsely alleged that you were a closet UKIP supporter then you might struggle to demonstrate to a jury that the false allegation was actually defamatory. I doubt that if I accused you of being a closet neo-nazi boot-boy you would have any such difficulty!
Incidentally, my understanding (from reading the background to Godfrey vs. Demon) is that you have a duty to mitigate the damage caused by a libellous statement as far as possible, so that if you don't issue a takedown notice when you could, you shoot yourself in the foot later in any proceedings...
Anon: 19.29
The issue is not about ND having a cob on about the Telegraph pursuing their campaign. She could chunter on about the corrosive effect on her and the rest of the troughing class until next Christmas if she wanted to, and throw in a claim (probably fair comment) that the Telegraph was playing into the hands of the BNP with its 'crusade'. Which arguably they are. However, that's not the same as accusing the paper's proprieters of deliberately running a campaign through their newspaper for the express purpose of benefitting the BNP!
Perhaps the Barclays got the idea from Lord Ashcroft
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/breaknews-15371--37-37---breaknews.html
Turks and Caicos report on corruption due by the end of the month. Will be interesting what they say about the US$10m of loans made to former Prime Minister of T&C by companies owned by Ashcroft as already reported in the evidence to the Commission.
@Phil
Lets talk generalities - would you correct a false impression if you'd posted incorrect information on this blog and found out later that it was incorrect? I'm new to this blogging thing and just need to know how it all works. You seem too busy to actually run a blog, but you don't mind posting a lovely timeline of what you think has happened on someone else's site. The question is: Would you spend the time to retract an incorrect post, or at least modify it, or would you leave it there and plead that you're too busy to correct it? so far the "I've got a life" defence seems to be popular - have you got that as a macro on your crackberry?
@Pete@14:33 - I take it free discussion doesn't figure very largely in your life? How very Tory of you.
Silicone: Read Dizzy's article and you'll see that the BBs AND the Telegraph Group shut her up.
I agree that ND is OTT and more than slightly barmy but that is no reason to shut her up. The Telegraph is undoubtedly doing a public service but to suggest that they are not motivated by altruism is not libelous.
I'd rather live in a country where MPs have their moats cleaned at public expense than one where supposed purveyors of freedom of expression use the law to silence their opponents when their motives are questioned.
@petec
Oh this is priceless. A few hours ago you said 'you could take five minutes to correct the false impression you put out'. When I ask you what that false impression was you say , 'Phil, let's talk generalities'.
Pete, sweetheart, no. Let's not talk fucking generalties, let's talk specifics insteads see as I asked you for such. You made a comment, a clear comment stating that I had 'put out' a false impression and should correct it. When I asked you what that false impression was you chose to start waffling about general hypotheticals about what I might or might not do.
I put it to you that you could not muster a response to the question and chose, instead, to attempt to direct the discourse in manner of generalties to mask the fact that you could not answer. Thus your questions are academic and merely a rhetorical device to draw the discussion away from the matter in hand - off topic is the current interweb phrase for such actions I believe.
As such you're not going to get an answer to your questions because they hang on the starting evidential point that I have created a false impression which you have chosen to ignore and instead ask questions generalities. I would suggest that such piss poor bait and switch techniques be left for the sixth form common room or the House of Commons.
I suggest you try again. As earlier, what was the false impression I created?
Anon @ 22:35
I think ND MP crossed a red line when she publicly accused the BB (& the Telegraph group) of being effectively covert agents of the BNP. It may not be one of your red lines, had it been an accusation levelled at you, but it would be one of mine were the accusation levelled at me, hence my sympathy for the BB's actions in this case.
I should state, were it not crystal clear, that I hold absolutely no brief for newspaper magnates in general, the DT or the Barclay Brothers in particular. History shows that they have in general been a malign and corrosive influence in recent decades. I just think ND clearly crossed the line and that the BB/DT response was inevitable and justified.
I'd also add that in a fantasy world where there was even a scintilla of truth in her wild allegation, that would be at least as big a story as anything the DT has so far printed about MPs expenses, if not bigger, and there are a number of the DT's competitors, smarting at missing out on the scoop of the decade so far, who would just love to go to town on such a story if they had the remotest chance of standing it up. So the BB/DT stamping on ND's bonkers unsubstantiated allegations is hardly the crushing of free expression that some would love to portray it to be...
Nadine’s awe-inspiring lack of appreciation and judgement make the removal of her blog a real loss of entertainment.
Nadine herself has benefited most from the blog being taken down, she may actually survive as an MP as a result.
It must also be a huge relief to the Tory party and the Commons both of which were being taken down with her.
On the other hand, it appears that the Barclay brothers have a little to lose and nothing really to gain (after all it was Nadine).
While understanding a human reaction to an MP spouting rubbish(?) about you, they just get themselves and the Telegraph labelled as bully’s etc etc and spread far and wide the offending accusations that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Is there more to this than meets the eye?
I just wish that Nadine had made the same statements in a more defendable form of words so the fun of watching the mendacious silly dingbat unwittingly bring forth issues that may otherwise not have seen daylight could have continued.
As I wrote a my blog:
You can put me in the group of people who thinks Nadine Dorries MP is not always able to correctly differentiate truth from fiction and, in fact, in the (overlapping) group that thinks that she's being a bit too defensive of her fellow MPs. However I'm also in the group that thinks that the Daily Telegraph's politics team seems to have a grudge against her and more importantly in the group that thinks that she should be allowed to speculate in public. Indeed you can stick me the the group that thinks that having lawyers act like this indicates that the Brothers B may actually have something to hide because the more sane reaction to her blog post would be to laugh it off as the ravings of a paranoid.
Just because a person is paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get them...
And why is the Commons "in recess"?
They pay themselves fuckloads of cash. Can't they, in return, and to show respect to their payers, "sit" all year? They do nothing useful anyway so they might as well be "up".
I thought t5hat was why they needed "second homes".
Without wishing to stir up this row (well actually, that's not true).. Look everybody, Nadine's back, with a brand new blog. Cue frenzy #2.
As I have written here, what pisses me off most about all this is that, while we’re all pointing at Dorries and laughing, we’re distracted from the real story; the story of fraud, theft and blatant immorality. Fascinating though this woman’s deluding ramblings doubtless are,why is Hazel Blears still in the Cabinet? Why do the Balls remain completely untouched? Why is Elliot Morely not in prison yet?
And why, why-oh-why hasn’t Baroness Uddin been dragged onto the streets and hung from a lamp-post?
All because we’re having a good laugh at the hysterical blonde, that’s why…
I would have thought that a UK newspaper would have done better to print something saying "Nadine Dorries said thus-and-so about us. We think she's wrong, and here's why." It's doesn't seem to be in the newspaper's interest to support the libel litigation industry; and they have their own platform for presenting a rebuttal.
Oh, so many issues! First, haven't you just repeated the "defamatory" allegations? Shouldn't MP blogs be hosted on .parliament.uk in the future, and thereby "privileged"? Then again, I really like Nadine, but I worry that she's getting too much negative exposure at the moment, and maybe she should choose her battles more carefully.
"First, haven't you just repeated the "defamatory" allegations?"
No, I have reported them in relation to the lawyers saying what was false.
dizzy said...
'"First, haven't you just repeated the "defamatory" allegations?"
No, I have reported them in relation to the lawyers saying what was false.'Dizzy, I think you will find that reporting somebody else's account of the allagations would be held by the courts to be a repetition of a libel, if indeed it was libellous.
There are 3 categories of people who may be deemed to be instigators of a libel: the author, the editor and the publisher. If you repeat a libel by reporting somebody else's opinion on your blog, I guess that makes you and your blog host the equivalent of an editor and publisher of the original libel
Err I'm not reporting her opinion. I'm reporting what the lawyers wrote were false allegations. I'm yet to receive a letter but if I do we'll see what it says.
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