UK Politics - Not a Special Relationship

[maarsen]

4 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Were you? It seems more like you were just using the opportunity to take a dig at Meghan and Harry.

Nasty foreigners coming over and ruining the culture of the Royal Family, eh?

The nasty foreigners being Meghan and Harry ruining LeBron James' hot tub idyll?

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

How can you be sued for libel for stuff you've made up in a fictional TV show even if it is based on real people and mostly real events? it is fiction, that is surely a strict defence against libel? If it was a documentary and it was full of made up shite, sure then libel comes into it. The law must give pretty wide latitude for fictionalising TV series like these or they would never be made and dramatised where controversial and highly emotive events are involved.

5 seasons is the norm for Netflix.

You can’t defend yourself from libel by saying “but I made it up, I said it was fiction!” That would give you free rein to libel anyone you wanted to under the guise of fiction. What’s more important are the libel rules in your country, some jurisdictions allow you to say a lot of things before it crosses the line into libel. 

[Heartofice]

32 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Were you? It seems more like you were just using the opportunity to take a dig at Meghan and Harry.

Nasty foreigners coming over and ruining the culture of the Royal Family, eh?

I mean yeah, I’m happy to find any excuse to have a go at Meghan and Harry to be honest. Insufferable.

[Hereward]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

How can you be sued for libel for stuff you've made up in a fictional TV show even if it is based on real people and mostly real events? it is fiction, that is surely a strict defence against libel? If it was a documentary and it was full of made up shite, sure then libel comes into it. The law must give pretty wide latitude for fictionalising TV series like these or they would never be made and dramatised where controversial and highly emotive events are involved.

5 seasons is the norm for Netflix.

As Fragile Bird said, claiming a work is fiction is no defence whatsoever if you use real people, or people that the complainant can convincingly argue are intended to be you, or could be construed as being you. Unless you can prove that what you are portraying them as saying is something they actually said, or that it’s fair comment for comedic purposes. The only reason The Crown has got away with it so far is that the Royal Family traditionally don’t sue. With Harry and Meghan, that’s not going to fly.

[Fragile Bird]

There was a famous UK libel suit, brought by a doctor against Leon Uris and his publisher, for a brief passage in the novel Exodus. Uris listed the names of doctors and the horrible things they did to prisoners in the concentration camps, using the name of the plaintiff doctor but adding one letter to his name, saying he operated on 13,000 prisoners without using anesthetic. I remember reading that paragraph and being truly horrified.

The Polish doctor, having immigrated and who was then working in London, sued for libel, saying he had actually only operated on 130 people and that he had been forced to do so by the Germans. He “won”. The court awarded him the smallest coin of the realm, a halfpenny, in damages, and ordered him to pay the court costs of both his lawyer and the the lawyers for the defendants, a sum of about 20,000 pounds.  When I was first told about the lawsuit, in first-year Journalism school, it was suggested that the court didn’t care that it was only 130 people, but apparently the publisher had already apologized to him and paid him 1,500 pounds in damages, and the court was not happen that he sued anyway.

Anyway, the doctor was identifiable and could sue, even though it was in a work of fiction. Not the result he was expecting.

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Hereward said:

As Fragile Bird said, claiming a work is fiction is no defence whatsoever if you use real people, or people that the complainant can convincingly argue are intended to be you, or could be construed as being you. Unless you can prove that what you are portraying them as saying is something they actually said, or that it’s fair comment for comedic purposes. The only reason The Crown has got away with it so far is that the Royal Family traditionally don’t sue. With Harry and Meghan, that’s not going to fly.

Indeed, FB's reply sent me to Google and I read a semi-scholarly article about it (for once I didn't use Wikipedia). It is a defence, but it is only somewhat protective and there have been both successful and unsuccessful cases, according to this article.

As you say, 'The Windsors' is fully protected because it is satire. Serious dramatic fiction, like 'The Crown', is on ice of varying degrees of thickness.

You still have to show actual harm, which is harder to do when everyone knows it's fiction, so simply because a thing is untrue in an unpleasant way in a fictional work doesn't make it potentially libelous. Harry and Meghan can't sue merely because their story is in the show (if it goes that long), they still have to show that something untrue was asserted and that it has caused harm. I guess that means Netflix/Sony is on notice and if they go there they will need to make sure they colour well inside the lines.

[Crixus]

It's going to be 6 seasons, not 5: https://ew.com/tv/the-crown-six-seasons/ 

[BigFatCoward]

No pay rise. Nurses and doctors will be looked after (even tories acknowledge that would have been harsh). 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

No pay rise. Nurses and doctors will be looked after (even tories acknowledge that would have been harsh). 

Don't worry, if no other pandemic comes along, they won't be better off than your coppers. And the bonus they get now, will beheld against them.

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Sorry for double post.

But in somewhat unrelated news.

Barnier has taken a page from the Brexiters playbook. However, his threat to walk away from the talks carries a bit more weight than the UK's bluster. Altho, I think, he should have asked Dr. Rashford for his support first.

[BigFatCoward]

Of course the website for looking up your postcode to know which tier you are in has crashed. 

My immediate family is in Newcastle and Manchester so not be having any visits there any time soon. 

[Werthead]

39 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Of course the website for looking up your postcode to know which tier you are in has crashed. 

My immediate family is in Newcastle and Manchester so not be having any visits there any time soon. 

The BBC was listing them by region. All of Essex is in Tier 2, which is clear enough. In fact, only three areas are in Tier 1: Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and Isle of Wight (less than 800,000 people).

I think this ignores the key problem that a lot of people simply tune out at the tier stuff. We're either in lockdown and under strict measures (and even this second lockdown seems to have been much more widely ignored or tested than the first) or we're not in lockdown and it's business as usual. It's not really going to help the situation. What could be more effective is not having the tier system and instead promoting much more heavily the rules everyone can follow on mask-wearing and social distancing, but the government seems really reluctant to push that idea, perhaps because they spent so much time dismissing mask-wearing as a useful approach at the start of the pandemic.

[lessthanluke]

London in a lower tier than most of the North West despite having a higher R no and higher growth makes total sense as per usual. 

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think this ignores the key problem that a lot of people simply tune out at the tier stuff. We're either in lockdown and under strict measures (and even this second lockdown seems to have been much more widely ignored or tested than the first) or we're not in lockdown and it's business as usual. It's not really going to help the situation. What could be more effective is not having the tier system and instead promoting much more heavily the rules everyone can follow on mask-wearing and social distancing, but the government seems really reluctant to push that idea, perhaps because they spent so much time dismissing mask-wearing as a useful approach at the start of the pandemic.

It's probably not going to help public understanding that the rules for the different tiers now aren't the same as the tiers before Lockdown 2 despite being called the same thing.

[Which Tyler]

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

It's probably not going to help public understanding that the rules for the different tiers now aren't the same as the tiers before Lockdown 2 despite being called the same thing.

Yeah but the tiers last time weren't the same as the 5 tiers from July (?), despite being called the same thing

 

Mind you, the 3 tier system from October wasn't even the same as the tier system from OOctobe. What with tier 3 meant different things in different towns.

 

Of course, it's our fault for being confused, not the government's

 

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

London in a lower tier than most of the North West despite having a higher R no and higher growth makes total sense as per usual. 

Apparently London's higher R and growth rate is down to a couple of the boroughs where things are really bad, and all the other boroughs are showing much healthier signs of a decline. So they asked Khan if London was going to be split up so those higher boroughs don't reinfect the rest when lockdown ends and he said, "No." Because of London's interconnected transport system they can't do that.

That to me suggests that all of London should stay in Tier 3 until they get the pandemic under control in the whole city, but apparently they're going to do it the other way instead. That just suggests to me that the virus will spread through London and the city will have to go into Tier 3 or an even more stringent lockdown further down the line anyway.

Fairly nonsensical.

[Which Tyler]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

Fairly nonsensical.

Yay, we've found a coherent, consistent theme to HMG's pandemic response!

[Zorral]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/28/scottish-independence-never-been-so-certain-sturgeon-to-tell-snp

That against the back ground of this:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/28/last-ditch-brexit-deal-talks-resume-amid-growing-eu-scepticism

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

If there is another referendum, the Unionists will have a hard time of it! 
Last time they could say it would mean Scotland leaving thr EU; already happened.

More powers for devolved government; those promises were made last time, and no one believes anything Johnson says.

And the government now makes Cameron’s back in 2014 look almost competent.

So yeah, bit of an uphill struggle.

[Spockydog]

Are there any Scots here who are still in favour of the union? Having lived in London for the past forty years, I guess I won't get a say in the next referendum. But I do look forward to going home after we gain independence.