Max Mosley’s trial has the media agog. The Times was not alone, yesterday, in printing those  quotes from the ongoing case which it found most, umm, in the public interest (what Mosley said “on the pain of being spanked until he bleeds“, for example). I saw a disinterested media lawyer giving an interview on the TV news. His eyes were bulging with the horror of the consequences of the jury finding in Mosley’s favour: “It would limit newspaper revelations to cases of actual criminality”.

Archer-Pannell Towers emitted a guffaw at that. What strange world does that man inhabit, we wondered, that he couldn’t see the fundamental obscenity of what he was saying, that newspapers should have the right to expose private behaviour, if they decide it’s in the public interest. We get so worked up about the state’s intrusion into our privacy that we tend to forget that private corporations, like the evil Murdoch empire, have an anti-privacy agenda all of their own.

Reflecting further on the lawyer’s fear, I allowed myself a delicious day-dream of a post-Mosley future, where newspapers are forbidden from spewing filth about ‘celebrities’ onto their pages. No more Z-listers telling of their coke-and-shag shame.

But then the dream ended. Of course such filth will continue to pollute the public space, because the sad fact is that there’s an endless stream of wannabe Z-listers who are unable to resist offering up all the sordid details of their lives for some fleeting recognition and a contribution to their bank account.

So isn’t it time to have a test case, a sort of reverse-libel case? I should have the right to take the tube to work without being confronted with images of, for example, the joyless mound that is Kerry Katona. I shouldn’t have to see headlines on adverts inviting me to learn even more about the breasts of – her name escapes me, thank God. I should be able to switch on the television without worrying that the hideous image of Max Clifford will swim into view.
 
Ms Katona, the Breast Woman and Max Clifford should be summoned to a courtroom and forced to pay millions and millions of pounds in damages to the blameless citizens of the UK, and forbidden from sharing details of their sex lives with the newspapers ever again. The public has a right not to know!
 
 
 

Announcements made during the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool

Today’s speech on the three-dimensional approach needed to fight crime and fix our broken society. Dan will be posting his view on the View from Here tomorrow.

David Cameron has just made a speech about youth crime and measures to reduce it.  You can read the whole speech on conservatives.com but the main points are:

- Youth crime is rising: there’s a ‘crisis of order’ on Britain’s streets.  Tony Blair wanted us to believe that the recent spate of murders of teenagers only affected a specific part of specific communities – but that ignores the fact that it’s becoming more and more common, in more and more parts of the country, and is no longer confined to any one community or area.

- Labour has tried legislation and saw activity as a replacement for results.  They were wrong.  Consistent, coherent, reformist action is required, not just more laws and more ‘attention-grabbing headlines’.

- The real solution lies in a three-dimensional approach: the police, the courts and society as a whole.

There’s lots more, but this is the key both to this speech and to David’s argument for social responsibility. 

Just expecting the state to do everything is wrong. Just expecting someone else to do something is wrong. Changing our social environment requires all of us to act.  That means that we need to make clear what people’s rights AND responsibilities are.