Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: On youthful indiscretions, in reply to Kumara Republic,
A lawsuit would come across as rather Colin Craig-ish – suing not for actual libel, but for butt-hurt.
No, Red. Sorry, but this is really starting to sound like an elaborate game of "when did you stop beating your wife while high on cocaine and with gravy on your knob, Prime Minister?"
I've had one of Kiwibog's hand-reared trolls post comments about me that were clearly and actionably defamatory. I didn't sue because I didn't have 1) a large amount of money to contribute to some lawyer's new Beamer fund, 2) years to spend up to my armpits in someone else's slime, and 3) a grasp on the reality of how defamation law works in the real world. You can "win" and still lose unless years of debt and humiliation are a turn on.
A wise head not a million miles from here also made this salient point: "What the hell do you care about the good opinion of people who'd read that shit anyway?"
OK, I get plenty of people around here will believe there's no depravity Cameron is incapable of and there's nothing I can say to change anyone's mind. But let's stop playing this game of not suing is effectively an admission of guilt, because I promise you won't like where that ends up.
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Hard News: On youthful indiscretions, in reply to Alfie,
While Ashcroft has deep pockets, if the pig story was really just an elaborate fabrication, the libel payout would be enormous. Do you really think the good Lord and his publishers would set themselves up in that way?
I think Ashcroft is no fool -- and he know exactly how British libel law works. Very very slowly, and at ruinous expense. If anyone is being naive, Alfie, I think it's you in underestimating the entitlement and malice of both Ashcroft and Paul Dacre who hasn't made any secret of his utter contempt for anything resembling an ethical compass. (He's still unapologetic for his shameful hit job on Ralph Miliband -- after all, the dead can't sue.)
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Hard News: On youthful indiscretions, in reply to Alfie,
The business with the pig may well have political overtones and be motivated by revenge, but Cameron certainly hasn’t denied it.
And when did you stop beating your wife, Alfie? Helen Clark never denied the insane crap Ian Wishart and his scabby organ threw at her and her husband with monotonous regularity. She never dignified it with any response whatsoever. Don’t think she made a bad call there, and there’s no sane reason why Cameron should do Ashcroft or the Daily Mail any favours either.
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Even though the claim is thinly-sourced and malciously intended, it’s only human to respond with porcine puns
Up to a point, Russell. But it’s more than a little eyebrow-raising seeing it on Twitter from people who’d be a lot more sceptical if The Daily Mail was publishing allegations Jeremy Corbyn fucked his dinner at a union conference. Especially when the source was a Labour poo-bah with a well-known (and admitted) axe to grind and bury in Corbyn’s head. Or, a little closer to home, every new round in The Herald's endless campaign to drive Len Brown's penis out of office.
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Whose fault was Everest ‘96? Why do people climb mountains anyway?
The film’s answers to those questions were respectively “dunno” and “piss off.” I reckon they’re appropriate.
Eh, it's a choice but I'm not sure it's an appropriate one. When you're billing your movie as a true story in which, you know, people died you can acknowledge "it's complicated and there's much that's unknowable until seances become a real thing" without saying it doesn't matter.
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golden age when Metro could afford to put writers on crime stories (and hence have them sit in court for a month).
And they did it, even when they couldn't really. Metro spent an awfully long time being marginally profitable, but no matter what else you think of Warwick Roger he had a very clear idea of what he wanted Metro to be, and proprietors willing to hang in there until it found an audience. It's not just a matter of "cheap and nasty is as cheap as nasty does" but the simple reality is that anyone getting into publishing for a quick and easy profit is a fucking fool.
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Legal Beagle: Into the River/Interim Restrictions, in reply to Emma Hart,
Everyone’s favourite, 50 Shades of Grey, was submitted for classification in 2012, and passed as unrestricted. A 13 year old can legally read that, but not Into the River. It’s absurd.
A thirteen year old can also legally read The Great Gatsby and watch Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation. Rewatching it last night, I'd forgotten how many times Joel Edgerton's Tom Buchanan hits women in the damn thing.
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The legal issues here are so far beyond my paygrade they've vanished over the horizon, but here's what I wrote over two years and I stand by every word.
One of the least remarked ironies of the editorial was it saw print a few days before the first anniversary of Margaret Mahy’s death. Mahy did “bright, stylish and subtle” like nobody’s business, but she also wrote a string of remarkable YA novels. I hope nobody tells The Herald that her (much under-rated) 1985 YA novel The Catalogue of the Universe contains a startling chapter where a teenage girl recounts almost being raped. They might also just want to avoid The Tricksters (1986) entirely, because Mahy certainly opened my eyes to the notion that teenage girls also think about sex, or at least the possibility of it, and find it terribly messy and confusing. And cringe-inducingly funny. And sometimes even as bright and stylish as the hem of a summer skirt fluttering in a warm breeze.
To say both novels were shocking, in the best sense of the word, to a teenage gay boy at a single-sex boarding school was a considerable understatement. So were Maurice Gee’s “children’s novels” – particularly the Halfmen of O trilogy, which also appeared in the mid-80’s to this SF/fantasy geek’s whole hearted approval – which worried away at the ambiguities and tensions of Godzone with all the spirited moral ferocity as his adult novels. And not without controversy either: “sordid” is an adjective that has hung around Gee his entire career, no matter who his intended audience is.
The Herald on Sunday may have as little faith in the discernment of teenagers as I have in that organ’s literary judgement, but that’s no reason why anyone else has to follow suit. Just makes sure to brush up on your Shakespeare, and the keep the latest front page atrocity on the Sunday newspapers away from the kids.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same. Shit.
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Hard News: Judicial caprice is no way to…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Once again, don’t inflate my argument. I’m talking about an issue for which the democratic process has so far simply not worked. And I’m sick of seeing some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our community persecuted for it – whilst some of the wealthiest and most privileged profit from it.
Well, yes... and many many years ago I did my time as not great court reporter and it was pretty hard to miss that if you got caught with a couple of joints on your person on Friday night would was much more likely to get discharged and who wasn't. (Hint: It really helped if you were a white university student.)
But you don't like the law, convince the legislature to change it but don't expect lawyers and judges to do that. Do you want the judiciary legislating from the bench or, vice versa, politicians and the media and lobbyists acting as self-appointed and unaccountable jurists? That strikes me as causing a lot more problems than it solves.