The case of Max Mosley v The News of the World was heard by a judge sitting solo. The Judge found for Mosley.

The case could have been heard by judge and jury.

Perhaps the Screws, in defeat, feel that a jury might have come to another conclusion.

The Guardian, not a natural home for supporters of powerful motor-racing moguls conducted a poll among its readers, worded simply:

Max Mosley won his case against the News of the World today. The trial was held without a jury, so the decision rested solely with the judge, Mr Justice Eady. If there had been a jury do you think the outcome would have been the same?

The result:

Yes: 75.1%

No: 24.9%

Popularity: 1% [?]

Paul Dacre’s conference on Thursday, once the Max Mosley v News of the World judgment had been handed down, must have been as rambunctious as they come. He ordered an all-out 5-page, sixteen gun broadside against the judge in the case, Mr Justice Eady and all he stood for. The judge is to be the victim of a campaign that will see him intimidated and harried until he loses the urge to make judgments that don’t match the thinking of the Nation’s greatest middle-England organ, and the thoughts of Chairman Dacre.

Star scribbler, witty, biting Quentin Letts was told to lead the attack.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Max Mosley was awarded £60,000 in compensatory damages and £200,000 in costs in the High Court today. The News of the World were found by Mr Justice Eady to have breached his privacy by filming a private S&M session in a flat in Chelsea. The paper will also have to pay their own similar legal costs, leaving News International some £460,000 out of pocket.

It wasn’t a great result for the News of the World, but it could have been an awful lot worse. Max Mosley and his team were asking for punitive, exemplary damages which could have run to millions. For that to have succeeded, the judge would have to have deemed that the paper printed the story, with its embellishments, knowing them not to be true.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In 2003, needing a little edge in my life, I planned a walk from Sarajevo across two mountain ranges to Mostar, then on to Medjugorje. Very few, if any, had walked that whole route since spring ‘92, when the grisly tribal war broke out.

I’d been strongly discouraged from doing this by officials at the Bosnian Embassy in London. They said there were extensive uncleared mine fields and not much rule of law up in the mountains. I compromised by persuading my friend, ex-SAS Corporal Jimmy Collins to come with me.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Proposals for a revised, 80% elected House of Lords will be debated at the Labour policy forum in Warwick University next week. Since 1999, when Tony Blair’s government removed the majority of hereditary peers from the House, in line with his 1997 manifesto commitment, it has remained in a state of compromise and constitutional instability that might have been cooked up at Dayton, Ohio. Nevertheless, there’s no chance that any conclusions – good or bad – will come of next week’s gathering, in which the governing party is itself divided over which way to go.

Quite apart from widely held reservations (even among politicians) about law-making powers being bounced between two elected chambers, both claiming democratic legitimacy (the more so by a House of Lords elected by PR), how wise can it be to attempt to sell the public an upper chamber filled by elected politicians, at a time when elected politicians are about as low as they’ve ever been in the public’s trustworthiness scale. Not that this perception is justified; politicians are no more or less trustworthy than they were 20, 50 or 100 years ago, given the characteristics required of those prepared to put themselves through the essentially duplicitous process of trying to appeal to as many people as possible at (and between) election times.

Popularity: 1% [?]