Super Junk

There’s a lot of talk in the papers and on the TV at the moment about super injunctions. I have to say that I haven’t read any of it nor listened to any of it – apart from a few gags about it on Have I Got News For You. Gags being the operative word, of course.

There’s a reason for my lack of interest which will become clear later.

Now, it strikes me that the whole situation is like finding a knot that someone has tied in a length of poo and then spending an unfathomable amount of time trying to unravel it.

Why bother? Why does anyone want to get their hands dirty with it?

Because, on the whole, there is very little moral high ground to be seen no matter which angle you approach the subject from.

I’ve heard lots of guff about freedom of the press and freedom of the individual to a private life. Which do you discern as being of greater value? We are all of us – celebs and Royals included – entitled to privacy. It is a basic human need. A basic human right.

But if some celebrity moral arbiter is then caught doing as he does rather than as he says, don’t we have a right to know about it?

We do. But that rather implies a moral imperative behind the exposé – and, let’s be honest, the only imperative behind most news stories these days (especially those that feature celebrities) is to sell more copy and make more money. There is nothing moral or edifying about that.

So then we have injunctions and super injunctions. Small, insidious cogs inserted into the gross machinery of the law to enable individuals to protect their interests / privacy from the rapacious, undiscerning appetites of the press.

I think I’d be more inclined to see these as a tool for individual human rights if they were freely available to everyone. They don’t appear to be. They seem only to be available to the super rich or the super influential. The superfluous man on the street can go and take a running jump.

At least, that’s how it appears. I don’t know. I haven’t read much into it or researched it.

Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think much to the press and I don’t think much of the politicians and the celebs they orbit. All of them have too much money – money that they all screw out of us one way or another – and too much say on things that matter to us more than it does to them.

I’d quite happily hang the lot of them.

Hence, I am exercising a super injunction of my own and am avoiding all news stories and articles about super injunctions. I don’t want to think, critique or in any way talk about them. They are off limits. Verboten. And if you feel the same way I will understand why you have bailed out of this post before this point.

Because even just talking about them is a waste of time, energy and money.

Super injunctions are the thief of time; the media wait for a court order from no man...