If the current judicially imposed arrangement on privacy were enacted into the statute law, but with the burden of proof in libel actions placed on the plaintiff, then who could object to that? And why?
Making the privacy law statutory as the price of reversing the burden of proof in libel actions. That would be the deal.
But if you libellously accused someone of a criminal offence, then, in addition to damages and costs, the court ought also to be able to impose a sentence up to the maximum for that offence.
Thus, if this ridiculous Eccles non-journalist on the Mail, who did not even know where St Helena and Ascension Island were, had named individuals (most unlikely, since she was making the whole thing up), then she would now be facing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a probable sentence of several years.
As would Paul Dacre.
What with the recess, there cannot be an Eary Day Motion in defence of St Helena, or questions in the House, or whatever.
But that just makes the Mail lucky. We certainly have people on the case. The Overseas Territories have very loyal and very powerful friends.
As, come to that, has the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which the Mail has certainly traduced and possibly libelled, seriously damaging its work on St Helena and Ascension Island.
Nothing in any of the Sunday papers, nothing on the BBC, this "story" is dead. Well done, Mr. Lindsay. You are a very great man.
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