British Press Banned from Reporting Parliament. Seriously.

by mtippett | October 12, 2009 at 07:08 pm

468 views | 60 Recommendations | 11 comments

Alex Massie reports that:

This time, perhaps even the lawyers have gone too far. It's hard to recall, even in the long history of appalling gagging orders, a more disgraceful injunction than this.

He then goes on to cite an article from the Guardian that outlines how the paper has been prevented from reporting on the political affairs of their country. It is truly shocking that this kind of restriction be applied to the press. According to Massie the twitterverse is up in arms about it so we've set up a SCAN.

That's hard to believe, especially in Great Britain

Shocking this doesn't surprise me at all.Never mind, we can vote the Government out.

I wonder if the O admin will consider this for Fox News?...(tongue in cheeck, of course)

The New Labour government (and I am afraid, it is one that is openly admired by the Naomi Klein clique, so be suspicious), is authoritarian and deceitful, and have become masters of information suppression. Watch the film In the Loop to see how they do it. Or for more laughs, The Thick of It.

The government has always had the right to issue a D notice to the press so that does not alarm me as many years ago I have seen such before.

I thought it would be nice to throw some light on this issue as I smell the vile smell elitist cover up.

Carter-Ruck's former firm, which bears his name, remains active in high-profile defamation

cases. In Sept, 2009, the Guardian claimed that Carter-Ruck had recently demanded it delete

published articles relating to the Trafigura toxic oil disaster, saying it was "gravely defamatory"

and "untrue" to say that Trafigura's waste had been dumped cheaply and could have caused

deaths and serious injuries. The Guardian claimed that, later, Trafigura agreed to pay

compensation to 31,000 west African victims. The Guardian also alleged that other media outlets

in Holland and Norway were also threatened with gagging actions. [6]

In October 2009, The Guardian reported that it was forbidden to report in a parliamentary

matter, being "forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time

in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve

proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only

fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck." The

paper further claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free

speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights".[7]

Blogger Paul Staines has speculated that the question subject to the gagging order would appear

to be from Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme:-[8][9]
“ To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the

effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the

injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009

on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and

(ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton

report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

”

Now I bet that Members of the British Parliment and in the house of Lords are involved in this discusting business and we are talking about both of the main political parties not just the New Labour party.

The Trafigura scandal is just one of thousands of cases of the rich world’s fly-tipping

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 22nd September 2009

It was revolting, monstrous, inhumane – and scarcely different from what happens in Africa almost every day. The oil trading company Trafigura has just agreed to pay compensation to 31,000 people in Cote d’Ivoire, after the Guardian and the BBC’s Newsnight obtained emails sent by its traders(1). They reveal that Trafigura knew that the oil slops it sent there in 2006 were contaminated with toxic waste(2). But the Ivorian contractor it employed to pump out the hold of its tanker dumped them around inhabited areas in the capital city and the countryside. Tens of thousands of people fell ill and 15 died(3). It is one of the world’s worst cases of chemical exposure since the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. But in all other respects the Trafigura case is unremarkable. It’s just another instance of the rich world’s global fly-tipping.

On the day that the Guardian published the company’s emails, it also carried a story about a shipwreck discovered in 480 metres of water off the Italian coast(4). Detectives found the ship after a tip-off from a mafioso. It appears to have been carrying drums of nuclear waste when the mafia used explosives to scuttle it. The informant, Francesco Fonti, said that his clan had been paid £100,000 to get rid of it. What makes this story interesting is that the waste appears to be Norwegian. Norway is famous for its tough environmental laws, but a shipload of nuclear waste doesn’t go missing without someone high up looking the other way.

This action does not stop other news media sources from publishing fact and I think your find all will be leaked out shortly. Funny enough after reading the between the lines the pirates look like the are hero's or nearly so... Its certainly given food for thought..

First I have heard of this Bob. Thanks. I bet Berlusconi is involved in this.They were angry about a garbage crisis not to long ago in Naples.

I wonder is it possible for the Press to ban the Government? Seems to me it is a two way street, even though Brits drive on the wrong side of the road.

Rev

I have knowledge of a situation back in 2005 when The Guardian was not quite so interested in opposing press self-censorship as it is today. It is described on a wiki whose URL is:

http://zerzetzen.wikispaces.com

You only have to look at what happened when my wife and I visited The Guardian’s offices in Manchester back in 2005 to complain about the government cover-up and human rights abuse that we write about (years of defamation, intimidation, death threats by MI5/6 being covered-up by government).

2 hours after we left The Guardian’s office, my wife and I were threatened in the name of HRH. The following weekend my eldest son, then living in Birmingham, received a number of telephone death threats which he recorded and a vehicle was smashed into my apartment then in Didsbury, Manchester. The Guardian subsequently “lost” all the correspondence I had handed them as evidence (it alleges then Minister Hazel Blears’ involvement with the cover-up – and copies of some of it are on the wiki – including a confirmatory letter to me from The Guardian’s Editor). A month later in the middle of the night my son was woken up by a helicopter that was hovering right beside his bedroom window, and a year later shots were fired at him in front of witnesses. You can imagine what having her children threatened for 10 years has done to his mother. Now The Guardian had every right not to publish my story, but it seems to me that The Guardian was on the side of the abusers since these little threatening incidents were clearly meant to punish us for going to the Guardian. I had booked my appointment at The Guardian in person, and unless we were followed to The Guardian’s offices, nobody except the paper’s staff new we had met with them. It has been suggested that MI5 / MI6 have penetrated the UK press, and everything I have experienced would suggest that this is true. Roderick Russell

Now to find evidence that Tony Blair killed Dr. David Kelly.

The Rev

What an outrageous gag!It shows the extent of effort to put out freedom of the press and speech - incredible - right in the British Parliament!

Those responsible must be out of their senses - mad to think and do what they did.

They should be arrested,fined and thrown into jail for breaking the law,viz,Parliamentary Privilege For Truthful Reporting and Fair Comment and Access to Parliament and its proceedings traditionally accorded to the Press.

Britain and its proud Parliament and people deserve more than insane gag by crazy stooges!