In the public interest...........

Or not? Hain 'arrogant' for naming Topshop boss

Now, let me be the very first to admit that I know naff all about the judicial process, and not an awful lot of respect for many of the judges that are within it, but the question still remains has Lord Hain overstepped the mark here?

I watched a wee bit of Question Time last night, and there was one woman on there getting herself a bit animated with the "yet again it is a cover-up to protect a man who has hurt a woman" angle - - and whilst that may 'technically' be correct, I am getting a wee bit sick of the hypocrisy that we are seeing at the moment, where it is those bad, bad men that are to blame and women are always trampled upon or disadvantaged (is that another thread?) - anyway, my view is that it is a cover-up, but that cover-up is to protect a very rich person, and to cover-up his abuse of a member of staff or other associate (sex of said person is irrelevant).

My own view is that these Non-Disclosure Agreements are being abused, and should only be there to prevent commercially sensitive information being passed on or made public, and NOT to prevent celebrities or the wealthy from gagging employees from speaking out about any sort of abuse; indeed, I would question their use to prevent publication of things like celebrities having affairs etc too, but that is a much less important feature than abuse. Besides, I am only interested in who I am waking up beside in the morning, and not who someone else is waking up next to - if you catch my drift.

In my opinion, therefore, Lord Hain did the right thing in as much that this sort of behaviour cannot, and should not ever go unreported or uninvestigated.

For clarity, Sir Philip Green denies the allegations, and they are NOT proven. However, if you have nothing to hide, why go to such expensive lengths to cover it up?

However, has that set a precedent? Are we now in a situation where judges can be over-ridden by one individual Lord? Or is this kind of thing is isolated to this sort of situation?

 

I find this a difficult subject.

On the one hand, I certainly think that gagging orders should not be used for this type of situation and that if he has been accused of an offense he should not be able to buy off the accuser. Although I don't think it's necessarily wrong to buy them off if the 'victim' is happy to do that but the courts should not be allowed to give a gagging order. I know this would lead to other complications.

On the other hand, I don't think parliamentarians should be able to use their privilege to overrule what the courts have decided. This should be done by a higher court and not an individual who has a privilege of sitting in parliament.

I can understand that he may just want to shut them up even if he's innocent. So going to those lengths isn't necessarily a sign of guilt.

Having said all that, I think that Phillip Green should not get away with shutting them up - if he's guilty. Just because I don't like his face doesn't mean he's guilty!

 

Oh, I completely agree that the 'not guilty until proven' should count in all cases. What puzzles me somewhat with this is that the gagging order was against the Telegraph (hardly a 'rag'?) and as yet, I have read no mention of whether the alleged victim(s) have said anything, even if that is to confirm they signed an NDA, be that under duress or not.

So my feeling that there is a couple of prongs to this is not wrong - there is the issue of the use of NDA's for things like this, and then there is the issue of parliamentary privilege being used to subvert the judicial process -- however, the other way to look at it, is that if he didn't use that privilege then we would not be discussing this now, and potentially more and more NDA's could be being forced upon people who are being builied or abused just to shut them up.

 

OK, just read a bit further - it seems that the victims do want to go public, and the gagging order that has been granted is to prevent that; presumably, this gagging order would become void in the event that there was a judgement against him. In the meantime, whilst he remains an innocent man, it appears that he might have taken the steps to prevent a media backlash, and a trial by media (as we often get nowadays), and to prevent damage to the businesses he is involved in.

Already there are people talking about boycotting the brands that he is involved in, but what they seem to fail to realise is that this will hurt the staff that work for those brands much harder, and much faster that it will hit Philip Green - indeed, it is not likely to hurt him much at all.

 

That's the difference nowadays. I remember, back in 1824, the Duke of Wellington said to one of the newspapers when they wanted payment not to print a story about him and Harriet Wilson (one of his lady friends) "Publish and be Damned!".

In the present time of trial by media it can do a lot of damage so it's best to try and avoid it at any cost.

I agree that the only people that will be really hurt are his employees.

If the gagging order was on the newspaper it still didn't stop the women from complaining to the police or going to court. I don't know whether the order would preclude the paper from financing the women's court costs.

It's still not an excuse for Hain to use a privilege, that I'm not sure is right for them to have, when parliament is recorded for public consumption.

I've always said that sitting on the fence is painful

 

The cheque's in the post

 

Things are a bit more complicated than that. Apparently, Hain is connected to the law firm that that's involved in this sorry mess!

If the 'victims' have accepted the enormous sums that are being spoken about it brings an ethical dilemma to the situation. The ethics of the whole situation are extremely twisted.

Unfortunately, as usual, we don't know the real facts and are unlikely to learn much at the moment.

 

They're now investigating Hain's use of privilege. Particularly as he's an advisor to the solicitors for the newspaper.