In 1729 Jonathan Swift wrote, what is to this day, one of my favourite pieces of satire – A Modest Proposal. In it he describes a solution for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country. This was not a proposal that Swift ever thought would be taken literally and, although it has been held up by great minds as one of the best examples of satirical writing, his suggestion was never put in to practice. As his suggestion was to eat the 1 year old children of poor people this is probably for the best.
This blog is not, nor will it ever be held up to be, one of the greatest examples of satirical writing. I also doubt that my suggestion will ever be put in to practice by those who stand to benefit the most from it. However, like Swift, I have a solution to a problem and I feel a need to tell the world – or at the very least the handful of people who read my blog.
Currently in the UK there is a lot of debate over the superinjunctions that wealthy people are taking out to protect their dirty little secrets. These superinjunctions, which the courts impose, not only prevent the party from discussing the event, they also prevent the party from even talking about the existence of the superinjunction. To quote a joke my wife told me: the first rule of superinjunction club is, you don’t talk about superinjunction club.
I said that these are only being taken out by wealthy people, this is not entirely true. Superinjunctions are also being taken out by wealthy corporations. We simply don’t know how many superinjunctions are in place in the UK because by their very nature they are secret. The problem is the wealthy part. Each superinjunction is a costly process and thus excludes the poor. This, in my mind, has developed a two-tiered privacy law in which the wealthy have access to legal tools that the majority of people don’t.
I don’t think the press should be excluded from discussing anything however if a multinational mining company can have a superinjunction excluding discussion of their polluting and environmental destruction then I see no reason why a dodgy landlord shouldn’t be able to get a superinjunction to prevent discussion about their unwillingness to fix the boiler.
If everyone has the same right to the legal protection of their privacy then let’s start seeing the legal-aid funded superinjunction hearings… maybe they have already happened and we just can’t talk about it. A world where anyone could take out a superinjunction to prevent discussion about anything that would cause people to think less about them would be a strange and unworkable world.
With the exception of a few multinational corporations these superinjunctions are mostly being taken out by celebrities (primarily, it seems, footballers) who don’t want details of their affairs becoming public knowledge. So here is my modest proposal – stop doing things that will make us think less of you.
Companies should stop exploiting cheap labour markets, stop polluting, stop being dicks. And celebrities, here’s a crazy idea, if you’re married – STOP FUCKING OTHER PEOPLE!!!
I can’t stand reading about the footballer that didn’t want a kiss and tell story about his affair because he’s married and it would be awful for his wife and children. Well you shouldn’t have had the affair in the first place. You know that football fans like to shout from the stands, but their tendency to do that doesn’t entitle you to extra legal protection when you cheat on your wife.
Personally I don’t think it’s anyone’s business and I couldn’t care less but since you hold yourself out as a morally superior family man then you have no right to hide behind a superinjunction to prevent people from finding out that you’re actually a bit of an asshole.
I’m a stand up comedian and I know that when I go to work the audience judge me. Not with the same scrutiny as a tabloid paper, granted. Still, I hold myself up for that judgment and I take it into account when I decide what topics I’m going to talk about and even when deciding what I’m going to wear on stage. My personal life is my own business and of limited interest to anyone who reads a newspaper but I don’t do things that I’m not willing to own up to and then deal with the consequences. There are obviously things I’ve done in my life that I would prefer you not know about, but since I’ve never had sex with someone who had a gossip columnist on speed dial you will probably never find out about them.
I don’t know what it would be like to live with the level of scrutiny that celebrities face at the hands of the British tabloid media. I will contest that there are a lot of footballers that are happily married with children and they don’t have the same need for superinjunctions. They, of course, didn’t cheat on their wives. They didn’t destroy a small African village. They didn’t do anything morally objectionable and as such the media doesn’t bother them in the slightest.
So I conclude my suggestion of modesty with the idea that the law is there to protect you from unjust harm. It shouldn’t be there to protect you from the harm that you willingly brought upon yourself.
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