In a change to our scheduled broadcast

Anyone who has ever watch scheduled television knows how this works. The broadcaster advertises one program but then, usually for a completely innocuous reason like a minor technical fault, broadcasts another.

Yesterday I wrote 2 blog posts. And in 1 of those posts I said that today I would post a screen capture of a smoking gun and let you know exactly why I had to delete some of my recent blog posts and endure a temporary Twitter suspension.

After I wrote those blog posts I received a legal communication which has, and will, prevent me from discussing the matter any further.

Much as it pains me to say this, it would appear that speech isn’t free, and that very often the truth can be silenced simply by the weight of money.

For the rest of this blog post I’m going to have to dance around the specifics, and use hypothetical statements, for reasons which will hopefully become abundantly clear.

Let me just repeat that last statement a little louder just in case it isn’t absolutely clear to anyone hovering over more legal documents.

Everything contained in the rest of this blog post is hypothetical and does not refer to any specific situation, existing or otherwise.

UK law states that a libel case can be brought against anyone and, importantly and chillingly, the burden of proof is on the defendant. This means that if anyone in the UK takes out a libel action against a blogger, the blogger in question will have to respond and defend their position.

It doesn’t matter if what has been written is opinion, the truth, a joke, a parody, or anything else that could constitute a successful legal defense. A legal response and defense still has to be mounted.

That response and defense can cost a lot of money. A hell of a lot of money. And time. And heartache. You get the picture.

Usually, if something has been written on a blog, the situation can be rescinded by simply retracting what has been written as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, it is possible, if you have enough money, under UK law to have a court issue a conditional suppression order. Such an order could take the form of the following statement,

Stop talking about the subject in question. If you comply with and continue to abide by the terms of this order no action will be taken. If you do not comply or at any time in the future stop complying with this order legal proceedings will commence.

Continuing to poke and prod at a very volatile box of legal explosives is not in the best interests of me, my family, or anyone connected with me.

And now, we will return to business of running a successful blog.

Comments are open but any reference to anything that could result in that box of legal explosives being nudged won’t be approved.