This post (just a page of many) will be improved over the coming few days.
As some know (but they don't know why) i have lived entirely off grid in a van for 5 years (no solar charging system either, as it draws attention). My only impediment is not much battery in my laptop for days on end. (as ALL public spaces in the UK literally went mad 15+ years ago - there is no 'free speech' to say to even the librarian - many libraries i have tried to use, " PLEASE would you respect the human ferkin rights of library users to have a QUIET space where YOUR holiday arrangements arent broadcast loudly to your fellow library employees and into the users workspace so i know every dull detail! or your latest illness" - UK literally did go mad). And thus no time to write nicely and fully. A quick splurge may take an hour- i can type and write very fast, , but to edit it to nicer more succinct writing takes five. I never have.
Now.... this site was set up only to attempt to get people to think about what 'freedom of speech' WAS 'for'. NOTHING to do with the 'culture wars' of the last 6 or 7 years.
What i REALLY care about is maybe two simpler matters.
1. This legal battle on the publicity matter especially (NOT a rear guard, as Sophia Cannon said a deliberate "revolutionary" attack on the culture) only came about as I an UNeducated person - left school at 16, but i developed my imagination - in this case to IMAGINE how the law SHOULD be when everyone else - experts, said i was actually mad to try!, via years of mainly novel reading. Not bimbo crap like Terry Pratchet. Not elitist either. But via the quiet languid simpler books like Coetzee's Michael K or Hesse or Gabriel Garcia Marquez (though i prefer women writers). And apparently overall reading in ordinary people has now totally collapsed other than in respect of silly rubbish such as 'crime' or even now we have 'romantasy'. This is the real crisis that modernity faces.
2. Monitoring the public conversation for many years it ASTONISHES me that in the modern conversation no expert (psych / justice / etc), so called modern day 'campaigner', or mature senior journalist can EVER in the UK say " when a man is around a young kid a lot it civilises him... tends to pacify him and make him into an overall safer citizen [longterm - rest of life]."
Nor do they say in respect of both sexes, that "having a kid can mature you [or at least once DID] into someone who one day - when kiddos are maybe off to school with some autonomy .. to take wider society far more seriously and even 'take part' ... " Meaning when you look at the environmental issues for example (FACT - the data is clear all over and i am expert 60% collapse in bird numbers 50 years and rate has DOUBLED last 20 years; amphibians have almost disappeared the last few decades; insect [pollinator] numbers are down something like 60% this century - that is Apocalypse)
.......you sit there thinking "I love my 5 year old... and now i get it, it is THEIR planet... so i should take part in the 'cause', for THEM, i love.." Its the only real power i know of.
And then also so many modern commentators the last few years have been showcasing books and other commentators about how truly wonderful it is to be 'child free'.
Strange that... i have meandered several regions of the UK where many (50 something) wealthier people take earlyish retirement and many S.West villages are in fact very 'female' (and actually well known as lesbian getaway / holiday locations ) meaning that middle aged single women gravitated here - and a high proportion are childfree ex careerists (as its very expensive here) , they seem to have ended up retiring to the region en masse and feel 'safe'...
.....great ..wonderful... except one problem: my my the real unhappiness in their eyes, and posture; they cannot hide. And several female friends my age speak of the childless middle aged woman (with no purpose left!) being the most destructive person in THEIR communities...
Anyway MY life story i am attempting to simplify and starting here:
VERY first draft
I am not 'eccentric' i am quite normal.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14nXChKCwDsUzL15lT7iasN-gaDoTxs_c?usp=sharing
This legal case. Summary.
I recently wrote this to someone and will edit it into a more succinct version soon.
I arguably have the most important UK legal 'TEST case' this century in the civil courts on state vs citizen - entirely staged. The citizen's right to speak out. (not some random lawfare scrap) Bear with me whilst i explain a little a subtly complex matter, i know you alone will have the intelligence to grasp.
I know America (and the reality of US society, constitution etc.) well. UK is as you will know a little less straightforward.
I shall now riff upon 'Freedom of Speech' - what my test case was kindof billed as, however this has been rather warped the last decade into something a long way from what it was initially developed for. At least in part.
The US first Amendment speaks of freedom to express ideas and opinions. Over the decades the majority of real people living humdrum daily existence came to depend on the freedom to 'CALL OUT' bad acts of landlord/ employer / commerce and state power via the 1st.. Truth to power.
In the UK until 2006 this legal case was the test case which established where the line was between privacy (for the ordinary citizen) and the wider need by the citizenry to know truth - for the common good. And universal societal justice to evolve So as to effect democratic accountability.
prior to me
Clibbery v Allan ([2002] EWCA Civ 45) is a landmark English family law case regarding privacy and confidentiality in family proceedings. The Court of Appeal ruled that documents filed in private family court are not subject to a blanket obligation of confidentiality, balancing the right to a fair trial with free speech
In the UK 'confidentiality' is so often used as SOP by power so as to hide THEIR dodgy deeds from any public scrutiny. Clibbery vs Allan set the benchmark as to where the edge of the bench was.. in ALL areas of law.
I came along (2005-6) and for NO benefit or need in my own life, reset that benchmark via my 2006 test case which the most powerful judge in the Royal Courts of Justice set up via me (he knew i was a reasonable person and also wouldnt take anything personally - all a game). He - Lord Justice Wall, deliberately nurtured the case forward in front of three of the most senior RCJ judges so it would go straight into UK law overriding parliament. (that's what 'common law' means - by precedent but it has to be top dog judges).
My own case was ostensibly that a ridiculous High Court Injunction ('gagging order') had been almost automatically handed out to me a year earlier when there was no sane reason. They are very serious as they carry a 2 year gaol term for contempt if broken - in reality four years, as quite uniquely contempt sentences dont get half time. I was doing truly nice sweet philosophical TV a little (interviewee on mainstream tv ) connected with child law - never ever contentious in fact i was most conciliatory and useful in my statements - why TV would keep coming back to me.
But forget 'child' law or the like as in Clibbery a lot of other civil (and some criminal too) law was 'set' to this British fudge which basically held that the STATE can hide behind powerful 'secrecy' legislation when it does naughty acts on the citizen - power misbehaves knowing that the citizen can't go to the 4th estate as they can gag everyone concerned via 'privacy' legislation. Clibbery set the dial.
In short from 2006 i reset that dial causing FAR greater openness. My case (Me vs the state not the other parent named) held that EVEN in child cases, the default setting in the courts - all of them, must be that unless there is extremely troubling history that would wound a child for life if it were ever publicly revealed there must be de facto transparency. Always.
It was not a 'test case' re child law it was a test case that because it affected a child (the 'hardest cases') it would serve as precedent in ALL other cases of the state (or business) attempting to silence the citizen via gag in all other less 'hard' cases of law. i.e. "if its necessary to the public good to go public in a CHILD case, well a case about an old person being poisoned by rancid bacon in an old folks home the kids want to get out there in the press [or even on Fakebook] is FAR less philosophically hard to countenance.."
How it came to work in the real world, if ones elderly parent is mistreated in a care home, if the family said to the management that they were "going to the papers to expose their bad ways" even the care home management would of course resort to the acts of a scoundrel in " its not in the best interest of the old person even if they have suffered as you allege, to have their 'private' afflictions spoken of in public... GAGGED!" in reality it works by threat of LEGAL COSTS against an aggrieved citizen if MAYBE a gag is sought..
By changing the benchmark to the 'hardest case' - a child, this meant that almost always no 'authority' could threaten injunction in the event the citizen felt a bit of public truth to power may assist...
I did my own lawyering - untrained self taught. I am 3x Erin Brockovich though sadly 3x less pretty. David vs (major legal aid supported) Goliath.
As it was 'staged' by the sadly late LJ Wall, all the senior media were almost involved in the case. As were many of his fellow judges. It was interesting the huge PR operation underway in parallel - that i in fact orchestrated (and used to advantage). Interestingly every single senior broadsheet journo (all female as women did 'domestic' news) were completely on side - celebratory. Some, bless 'em, even claimed to be fellow "campaigners" for transparency. (like the famous late Denise Roberts of ITV This Morning). All BS - none helped. All said i was nuts to try and roll back this Berlin Wall legal paradigm. Until i did.
And Wall had corralled all his fellow judges to fall into the new line i had created. Many official speeches etc..
Sadly most of the journos of either sex were too thick to really understand even the most basic aspect - it was the 'benchmark' foundational new precedent that could and would be used in almost all 'publicity' decisions in the future.
In 2008 they had a go (Jack straw) at reversing it. He failed. I am a nuclear weapon. Within a few months of him announcing in the HoC he was going to " we have consulted...we have listened to all the campaigners.... we will enshrine in new law next year fullest transparency with new legislation.... [the last paragraph stating of his statement to the HoC ] ' this will have the effect of reversing Clayton...' .. "
All the journos especially Camilla CAvendish (i was directly in touch with some years) too thick to realise a sop.... until Frances Gibb legal ed of the Times reprinted an email from me to her (my buddy) stating this is a HOODWINK... straw was deceiving parliament and a few weeks later he did a u turn on TV.
6 years later by further dodgy dealings (details dont matter) when i was incapacitated due grief they played a fast one and enacted new law closing my lacuna.
End of that dull story (still needs a book on - fancy a crack?) other than to say i understand more than anyone in UK the reality of law regarding Free Speech and.... what it is FOR. It has been my last 20 years.
Now... i am fully with you on your approach to 'culture wars'. No reservations. I probably wasn't a FS 'absolutist' until 9 or 10 years ago when as we know it all got very silly at which point i certainly became an FS absolutist. BUT - and i now approach the reason for this communique, this modern need to debate where is a line in appropriate 'offence'? blahh blahh i lament has entirely obfuscated what FS was FOR - for the majority of people... that freedom, necessity to call out bad acts of baddies. And i don't mean in campuses. Baddies who may use child lawfare on Jenny E Holland because they don't like your 'parenting style' - a euphemism for not liking YOU. Your opinions.... Though of course really what it is for is to protect the simple ordinary legal norms applied to those without any 'voice' beyond a few instagram pretend friends. When for instance, as still happens, the parents tell the school they aren't sure if they wish their 5 year old to have a vaccination as they have read some seemingly intelligent material suggesting there are risks... shabby NAzi authority figures (unjustly) use child law to silence them...
Ohhh my ... even teachers will sometimes - maybe often, go into 'dangerous parent' mode and threaten decent parents with the very worst of futures... and the parents can't go public or even talk about it openly.
(the law i took forward was mainly aimed at protecting HETERODOX parents i knew and legally supported from mid 00s- i.e. the ones who think for themselves, often home school, and are in fact more thoughtful parents the system really does hate/fear)
Now thats the last time i mention all that except to explain why i nowadays despair. Many years speaking with ordinary people about 'freedom of speech' - what it was FOR; what i took public as test case protecting that basic need to have as last resort access to press, the last 6 or 7 years it now has been entirely lost in what you quite rightly call out the need to even offend (the precious) in an attempt to get to 'truth' yes about all sorts of mad woke stuff...
culture wars on "you can't say that" has DESTROYED all discourse on what FoS was REALLY necessary for.... protecting the small person against state (or big business) bad acts.....it is the real tragedy of this last decade the woke argument has diverted us all from that forever necessity.
Ohh yes as a demi-Norther irelander i have a secondary credential which is that in the 90s i owned a small bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, and one day an Irishman came in asking me if i could get him what he described as a 'banned book'... intrigued i bought a load of them and proudly sold in my shop the banned book
The Committee... https://books.
i already knew Pilger and Tariq Ali well - my mentors, but Mc Phillemy joined that group of real journalistic heroes as soon as i put my nose into his great book.
Years of lawfare by the state subtly destroying Sean i believe took a great toll on him. Only late last year did the final official exoneration come out - nobody even noticed, that his great book was 100% accurate
