I've been a newspaper reporter a long time and thought years ago that I had come across all human foibles and perversions. On Wednesday, a 55-year-old man presented me with a new one. His fancy was to spy on his wife when she was in the bath. He installed a secret camera in the ceiling, linked it to a television in the bedroom and derived "sexual gratification" from watching her take her clothes off.
His wife realized there was covert surveillance in her home when she turned on the TV one afternoon and, instead of seeing daytime TV, saw pictures of her husband taking a bath. She confronted him and cried that she wanted a divorce, which wasn't such a surprise, and then called the police, which was.
Instead of saying there was nothing they could do and the couple should settle their own differences, the officers arrested the husband. He was convicted of three counts of voyeurism by magistrates at Yate near Bristol, in the west of England, last week. To protect the abused wife's privacy, the court ordered that the couple couldn't be identified.
There's now't so queer as folk, I suppose, but the behavior of the law is queerer still. Why is it a criminal offence for a man to spy on his wife in his own home and not show what he is seeing to anyone else, but perfectly acceptable for the media to spy on celebrities, politicians and anyone else they take against and reveal their findings to millions?
On 23 April this year, English high court judge, Justice Langley, allowed the former nanny employed by England and Real Madrid soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria to tell (and sell) her story to the UK Sunday tabloid newspaper the News of the World, even though the UK Human Rights Act includes the right to privacy and even though the nanny had signed a contract promising to keep confidential information confidential.
With Langley's blessing, Abbie Gibson exposed every inch of the Beckhams' private life. It was a vicious and malevolent piece of work which was designed to smash the marriage into pieces. He screamed "you fucking bitch" at her when she was pregnant and had a fling with a beautician, Gibson alleged. She wept and said he was going to abandon her. And so it went on over six lip-smacking pages, with more promised.
The motives of the paper and its informant were camouflaged with a thick layer of sanctimonious humbug. Talking of the alleged affair, Gibson simpered: "Victoria badly wanted to believe David ... but I knew the truth. For her sake, she should now know it too."
For her sake?
Langley didn't explain why it was in the public interest for the Beckhams' marriage to be shredded in public. Perhaps he's a thoroughly modern and emotionally literate judge who believed that Victoria Beckham's private life should be stripped bare -- "for her sake." Perhaps he believed the revelations that she was wretched and he had shouted at her had a wider significance and explained her singing and his corner kicks.
Media lawyers said the Beckhams had made money by posing as a clean-living couple and the judge may have thought that the law's first duty is to punish hypocrisy. If this is true, the courts will collapse under the weight of prosecutions.
My best guess is that the judge was just following his superiors' rulings. In 2002, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, decided that the London-based People newspaper was entitled to expose the love life of an obscure footballer, Gary Flitcroft, because "footballers are role models for young people and undesirable behavior on their part can set an unfortunate example."
Even by the standards of the judiciary, his ruling was peculiar. If it's true that footballers are role models, as the judges with their wide experience of working-class life believe, surely the courts should suppress dirty stories about them for fear they will inspire impressionable boys to try dogging on the school bus? But the courts rarely follow the logic of their arguments and often hold that the media's right to freedom of speech takes precedence over privacy.
Freedom of speech is a magnificent ideal. But in Britain, it means the freedom of papers such as the News of the World to set up honey traps and spend hundreds of thousands sterling on bribing callous ex-lovers and sly servants.
It's easy to decry the gutter press, but high-minded society is little better. In his new book, The Strange Death of Tory England (Penguin), Geoffrey Wheatcroft says that Britain's new establishment has a culture of sickly revelation which triumphed over the old ruling class's culture of restraint in the demented days after the death of Diana Spencer.
"Well before that September", he writes, "the Prince and Princess of Wales had demonstrated how much the old values had faded when they were separately interviewed on television to talk about their failed marriage, just like any other Hollywood celebrities, and in the process illustrated Auden's phrase: The trouble with nowadays is that people have forgotten the difference between their friends and stran-gers. Love and sex, adultery and divorce were things people in civilized societies had always discussed with relish, but in private."
Just so. The distinction between private gossip about acquaintances and the public exposure of strangers has collapsed, along with a more subtle distinction between private and public statements.The British novelist Martin Amis noticed that had gone when he reviewed a biography of Philip Larkin, who was a family friend and a great writer, by Britain's present Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, who is neither.
The chaste Motion was shocked to discover that Larkin had had affairs and liked pornography. In his letters and conversation, he displayed a hatred of blacks and trade unionists which came naturally to the son of an admirer of Hitler.
None of the prejudices showed through in Larkin's work. The racism and sexism in his letters and conversation were private thoughts spat out in a hurry. Amis said that Motion couldn't see that "a word in a letter is never your last word on any subject."
Biographers "helplessly insist" on the dependence of the public on the private. "They have to. Or what are they about? What the hell are they doing day after day, year after year [gossiping? ringing the changes in the Zeitgeist?], if the life doesn't somehow account for the art?"
Motion was hardly alone. Biography was the dominant literary genre of the late 20th century and fitted in neatly with a therapeutic society which held that it was healthy to expose yourself or have the News of the World do the exposing for you. There's a huge financial interest behind it. Britain must remain a safe place for peeping Toms because tabloids and, increasingly, tabloid TV depend for their revenue on the invasion of other people's privacy.
Politicians from all parties privately acknowledge that the abuse of the citizen by the media is out of control. If they were to pass a privacy law, they would find most serious journalists would be with them if a relaxation of libel laws, which prevent genuine investigative journalism, was offered as compensation.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry