Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

The boundless irony of #Henning’s actions…

Let me see if I can get this straight:

John Henning MP – a lawmaker – exploited parliamentary privilege – a legal loophole which he is both legally privileged and able to exploit – to share information which most of us knew anyway, and for this he is being excoriated as undermining “the rule of law” – by a bunch of people who are also saying that if a law – in this case a privilege – is undesirable, then it should be struck down by Parliament… and they are saying this in defence of due process and in respect of regards super-injunctions – unpopular laws and privileges – of which John Hemming – a parliamentarian – was essentially initiating the striking-down.

But of course it’s much more complex, than that. And he’s being a realist unorthodox.

And that’s unforgivably naughty.

⊞

Comments

One response to “The boundless irony of #Henning’s actions…”

  1. Simon

    I think he was abusing parliamentary privilege, so I agree with the article you link to, except where it mentioned Twitter.

    I don’t regard Twitter as publishing in the same sense as newspapers or even Parliament, in that there is no expectation of fact checking, and no editorial control. i.e. I see Twitter more as gossip or chattering, where as I have higher expectations of Parliamentary speeches and newspaper (except for the Daily Fail, and my expectations are often not fulfilled). That might be a naive view of Twitter legally, but I think that is yet to be decided, although I’m not sure how that distinction should be defined, but then that is what law does.

    It is abuse because he could have made any point he liked about the specific case without revealing the details, so it was clearly done mostly for publicity, which sounds like the worst reason to violate someone’s privacy.

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