Bad Max: He’s Back

March 12, 2009

max-and-michael.jpg

It’s been a while since Blade has thought about Max Mosley, but, like a bad penny, the Formula 1 man has an unerring knack of popping up just when you had forgotten he even existed.

This week, Mosley has been giving evidence before the House of Commons Culture Select Committee about privacy law. He says we need one, media lawyers who know their onions say we’ve already got one, the Daily Mail says Mosley isn’t very nice and, in the midst of the storm, MPs appear to gasp reverentially at Mosley’s every word. Meanwhile, Mr Justice Eady, the man castigated by the Mail’s editor, Paul Dacre, for having introduced a privacy law, looks on and makes no sound.

There is no doubt that Mosley is a remarkable man. Anyone who can cheerfully admit to having enjoyed S&M orgies for 45 years without telling his wife has got to be worth listening to. But is he right when he says that judges should determine what is published, or not published, by newspapers? Or, as Stephen Glover has it in the Mail: “If a bishop were keeping a mistress, or a top athlete taking drugs, said Mr Mosley, ‘a sensible society would not publish the fact that a role model’s done something he shouldn’t’.”

It is, to be sure, a conundrum. Many of the fourth estate’s most eloquent practitioners would look every bit as ludicrous as Mosley were their sex lives, which are not always models of monogamy, revealed. That’s the thing about sex – it can be somewhat undignified. But did we need to know about Mosley’s basement antics?

Probably not. Mosley may be a deviant, deceitful old cove but knowledge of his activities has neither enriched the world nor made a blind bit of difference to his status as a so-called “role model”. Here, though, is where he is badly wrong. When role models, such as athletes, take drugs and cheat, there is every justification for exposing their wrongdoing. Likewise, a supposed exemplar of moral rectitude, such as a bishop, if he takes a mistress.

Our privacy law is developed enough to deal with all of these scenarios, and, thanks to Eady J, we know that the courts are likely to take a dim view of the exposure of sexual matters for the sheer salaciousness of doing so. But this should be after the event, with a claimant having a remedy in damages. The idea of a judge arbitrating on a story pre-publication, as a matter of course, is a nonsense.

Pictured courtesy of Ferrarifan1956: Michael Schumacher looks perplexed as Max Mosley tells him that there is more to life than winning races.

 

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When a lawyer’s son is before the law

September 8, 2010

A lawyer of Swordplay’s acquaintance finds himself in a fix.

“My teenage son is to be interviewed by the local constable,” he tells us. “He is alleged to have committed an offence.”

We gasp, for such seems the appropriate response, and then ask: is it serious?

“No, it is not,” our troubled legal friend tells us. “In the great scheme of things, my son’s alleged transgression is about as de minimis as they get.”

For a split second, we wonder if said teenage son is cognisant of lawyerly terms of art such as de minimis, but rapidly conclude that the answer to this question is not a sine qua non of further discourse. And so we press on. That sounds good, we say, relatively speaking, at least.

“Yes,” says the lawyer, “but I am at a loss as to what to do with him. Do I come down hard and ground him, or do I play the liberal card, or do I find a compromise?”

That depends, we aver.

“On what?” asks our man.

On whether you would prefer to deal with your son’s alleged offence as a lawyer, or as a father, or as a father who is a lawyer, or maybe even as a lawyer who is a father.

“I see your point,” says the lawyer. And then, as if to prove that there is no cure for recidivism, he says: “The offence is, after all, de minimis.”

Without prejudice, we add.

Pictured: something out of Kafka. Now there was a man who knew about the law. And had a tough old father, too.

Max Mosley and Wayne Rooney: bedfellows?

September 6, 2010

We rarely enjoy pondering Max Mosley – the man, the sins, the legal action, what he stands for – but confess to a degree of grudging admiration for his tenacity in trying to change the law of privacy. As this story from the Independent has it, Mosley has lodged a request with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg asking that, by law, journalists must inform the subject of a story of the private details they intend to print, prior to publication.

We suspect the motor racing man would never have thought it, but he would appear to have an unlikely bedfellow in a certain England footballer. Step forward, Wayne Rooney, who would presumably put his name to Mosley’s petition.

Pictured courtesy of NashvilleScene: some bedfellows are stranger than fiction.


Memo to Freelance Writers: return that editor’s call quickly

September 3, 2010

Woe betide those who freelance and fail to return a call.

We say this upon hearing of a normally prolific freelance journalist who picked up a voicemail from an editor at one of the nationals on Tuesday afternoon. Please call us, was the message, and it could mean just one thing – a commission.

Our hero’s habitual practice is to return such calls as soon as is reasonably practicable, as m’learned friends might put it. In practice, that would habitually mean within a couple of hours. Most atypically, and for reasons we have yet to fathom, our man failed to call back for a full 24 hours.

By then, said editor had looked elsewhere. One of our man’s competitors had the gig, an interesting piece about cricket and the law, one which might just be in The Times today and which, we assume, asks whether the Pakistan cricket team have been caught out (in the legal sense, you understand).

We make no judgement on the no ball scandal, save to say that it is a scandal, but in another sense the moral is clear: in the fast-paced world of modern media, he who hesitates is lost.

Pictured courtesy of PrintedClothing.com: a fast-selling shirt.