From the Guardian:

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Reading The Spectator and The Third Estate it seems this is the question that The Guardian is being prevented from reporting:

61 N: Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This would seem to be the report that Carter-Ruck are trying to supress.

It’s hard to belive that we, in the UK, still live in a democracy and not some kind of Orwellian state controlled not by Big Brother, but by Big Business.

But it’s also pleasing to see how quickly and widely this story has spread through the ‘blogosphere’, and that as of writing the top trends on Twitter currently include: Guardian, Cart-Ruck, Trafigura and #carterruck.

Maybe Carter-Ruck will think twice before slinging injunctions around next time…

Odd and yet strangely cool; the balloon scratching is genius.

Virgin Media, a UK ISP, have a new CEO Neil Berkett, who in an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine attacked the net neutrality and went as far as to state

“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” and that companies that didn’t pay Virgin would be put into internet “bus lanes”.

I’m stunned that any business person would openly state this as an intention and would do so in such a loutish and belligerent manner.

I pay my ISP for a connection to the internet; I expect to be connected to all of the internet equally – I don’t expect them to throttle or accelerate different sites.

If you have an account with Virgin may I humbly suggest you look at moving to another ISP. If you are with another ISP that starts to act in this way publicise it in any way you can and then move to another ISP.

The only way to hurt companies like this is to vote with your feet and kick them in the bottom line.

However, I decided that I’d switch it on just to use British Airways online check-in for my return flight. So there I sat on La Rambla with a cold beer and a warm iPhone and checked in. It was a little slow with no EDGE of WiFi but I managed to get a good exit seat.

I’ve just had my bill from O2 and two things have surprised me: the first is that to accomplish this simple task required almost 3Mb of data and the second that those 3Mb of data cost me £16.90.

Holy expensive data Batman.

So my fellow iPhone users remember; data roaming – Just Say No.

Dear BA – please build an iPhone interface for ba.com.

Dear European Commission – please hurry up and sort of this roaming charge racket.

In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost in a series of small fires.

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued… and won.

In delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer “held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire” and was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the rare cigars lost in the “fires”.

Now for the best part…

After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson.

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

This is a true story and was the First Place winner in the recent Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.