Booker, Hemming and the “forced caesarian” case: a masterclass in Flat Earth news

In his excellent book, Nick Davies explains what he means by “Flat Earth news”: A story appears to be true. It is widely accepted as true. It becomes a heresy to suggest that it is not true – even if it is riddled with falsehood, distortion and propaganda. The process of Flat Earth news making […]

John Hemming’s judicial conduct complaint against Sir Nicholas Wall

I must write about something other than John Hemming MP and his causes soon, or else I’ll become an obsessed man, and start suing everyone, or something. But before leaving the subject, I must pick up on something written by Christopher Booker on the Telegraph website over the weekend, in a piece critical of Sir […]

John Hemming’s extraordinary defence

John Hemming MP wrote an extraordinary article in the Huffington Post last week, defending his actions in the Vicky Haigh case. First I want to address one of the legal points he raises in the piece. This one’s on American constitutional law. He says: In the USA it would be clearly unconstitutional to apply to jail […]

John Hemming MP, Vicky Haigh, and her supporters

In April I wrote about John Hemming’s use of Parliamentary privilege to name a woman involved in a family law dispute with a local authority. I concluded: since this appears to be a family case involving a local authority, it’s reasonable to suspect it’s a child care case in which section 1(1) of the Children Act […]

Hemming does his worst

As I think readers will surely know by now, John Hemming MP used Parliamentary privilege today to name the footballer whose anonymity is protected in this privacy case by an injunction, which the High Court decided earlier today to maintain in force. Since then, first Sky News and now the BBC have named the footballer […]

John Hemming, sub judice and the public interest: “no abuse of parliamentary procedure”?

Yesterday afternoon there was speculation that John Hemming MP was planning to “break a superinjunction” in the House under cover of Parliamentary privilege. Then, not long after 5 o’clock, John Hemming made a point of order in the Commons [update: hyperlink removed – see comment 12 below], naming a woman, and a local authority, who […]

ZAM v CFW & TFW: has John Hemming changed his mind?

I posted recently about last month’s High Court judgment in this case, in which Mr Justice Tugendhat granted an injunction to stop allegations which were not even defended as true, and which Tugendhat J thought could involve an attempt at blackmail. The judge also granted anonymity to the claimant, ZAM. Here’s what John Hemming MP […]

John Hemming MP: is the detail “a little bit more complex”?

Following my post last week about John Hemming MP, and the interesting exchange with him in comments over the last few days, I’m interested to see that on his own blog he’s posted videos of his speech to a meeting of the Freedom Association last Monday about his claims that courts are preventing people from […]

John Hemming MP: abuse of power, and privilege

Last week John Hemming MP secured a debate in Westminster Hall about the role of Parliament in dealing with all grievances and the importance of freedom of communication between constituents and Members. Here’s the debate in Hansard, and here’s the video of the debate. He raised a number of very serious issues: the main issue […]

Grieve: Contempt of Court Act “fit for purpose”

This evening the Attorney General Dominic Grieve has been speaking at City University on the subject “Contempt – a balancing act”. Here’s the draft text of his speech – it differed only slightly in delivery. In the document viewer below you’ll find my note of the most important additions and changed he made, and some […]