King Canute judges and the internet tide

IT is beyond satire. Despite an injunction against naming them, the identity of the ‘prominent and successful sportsman’ who cheated on his future wife with a female celebrity is known to millions.

For, although a red-top newspaper has been banned from revealing their affair, its details have been circulated across the globe on social media and his former lover – famous for tawdry ‘kiss and tell’ stories – is even now taunting him on Twitter.

Mrs Justice Laing’s reason for granting the injunction – she declared that Britain is now such a Godless society that only the puritanical still believe that celebrities’ sexual affairs should be publicly exposed – is both offensive and misguided.

offensive because the millions of people who believe in their marriage vows will be shocked by such revelations, especially as the man won lucrative advertising contracts by promoting himself as a wholesome family man.

Misguided because it once again betrays t he j udiciary’s complete l ack of understanding that, in a digital age, such injunctions are worthless.

Canute- style, Lord Justice Leveson (remember him?) devoted just one page of his 1,987 report on media ethics to the internet – despite it being the most powerful medium for the dissemination of information the world has ever known.

It’s time for our privacy-obsessed judges – remember Justice eady exonerated the depraved Formula one chief Max Mosley after he was involved in a German-soldier themed orgy – to stop imposing their own

bien pensant values, and start putting free dom of expression and the transparency of justice ahead of the ‘human rights’ of wealthy celebrities to keep their infidelity hidden.