A stalker was jailed after writing an online story about raping and murdering a woman he had been harassing in real life for two years.

Greg Downing detailed the imagined attack on children's author Katharine Quarmby in an online novel.

He had bombarded Quarmby with phone calls and e-mails since they met through an online dating site in 2008. He was convicted of stalking her on three separate occasions before she found the blog online after typing her name into the internet search engine Google.

The 29-page piece, titled A Novel: Katharine Quarmby, is about a man stalking the writer, burgling her home, raping and finally murdering her.

Judge Deva Pillay sentenced Downing to six months in jail. He said: This can only be described as a campaign of harassment. It is clear that your harassment of Miss Quarmby has been deliberate and premeditated so as to cause her and her family the maximum discomfort, embarrassment and fear.

We have recently received a legal threat that we feel deserves attention and airing for a variety of reasons.

...2. The threats are quite incredible, demanding that we shut down the entire site of Techdirt, due to a comment (or, potentially, comments) that the client did not like.

...5. Most importantly, this threat is coming from the UK, and the lawyers insist that they will take it to court in the UK. This makes it rather timely and newsworthy for an entirely different reason. Just a few weeks ago we wrote about the new SPEECH Act that was passed into law to protect against libel tourism. As the Congressional record shows, the law was specifically designed to protect US businesses from libel judgments that violate Section 230 -- and the bill's backers explicitly call out libel judgments made in the UK. In other words, the SPEECH Act explicitly protects us from exactly the sort of threat that these lawyers and their client are making against us:

...

Given the newsworthy nature of an example of where the brand new law (thankfully) protects us, as well as the fact that we do not feel it is decent or right for anyone to demand we shut down our entire site or be sued halfway around the world, because he does not appreciate a comment someone made about him, we are publishing the letter that was sent to us.

Thanks in part to the new law, we have no obligation to respond to Mr. Morris, his friend or the lawyers at Addlestone Keane, who (one would hope) will better advise their clients not to pursue such fruitless legal threats in the future.

...Read the full article

A Dorset man has been sentenced after pleading guilty to 11 counts of possessing extreme pornography depicting pain being inflicted.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard how David Hill had been arrested after police searched his mother's home and another property in Christchurch.

Prosecutor Desmond Duffy said two computers had been seized and examined by experts who found three movies and 26 still images featuring scenes of violence: When interviewed in January this year Mr Hill admitted downloading the material because he was participating in bondage acts,  He accepted that what he had downloaded was extreme in nature, acknowledging participants were likely to be experiencing severe pain and risking injury as a result.

Duffy added that Hill had wanted to assess if he felt able to participate in that kind of activity himself.

Defending, Robert Gray said his client was a professional man of previous good character who had received treatment for his interest in this kind of material.

The court heard how Hill had been suspended from his job, on full pay, pending the outcome of legal proceedings.

Imposing a two-year community order and three-month curfew, Judge Samuel Wiggs told Hill: It is extremely sad that you should be in this court. You have substantial qualifications in the career which you follow. Hill was ordered to pay £1,350 prosecution costs.

And a reminder of the law

Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008

Section 63 Possession of extreme pornographic images

...

(7) An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following—

(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,

...

Calls for Waterstone's to cancel a book signing by Tony Blair have been met with a Voltaire response counter-call.

Iain Banks, AL Kennedy, Moazzem Begg, Andrew Burgin, Ben Griffin, Lindsey German, Dr Felicity Arbuthnot, Tanya Tier, John Pilger, Michael Nyman, Andrew Murray wrote to the Guardian

We urge Waterstone's to reconsider its decision to host a book-signing on 8 September for Tony Blair to launch the publication of his memoirs. We believe this event will be deeply offensive to most people in Britain. A large majority of the British public say Mr Blair told lies and fabricated evidence to take Britain into a war with Iraq that he knew to be illegal under international law. According to a recent poll, 25% believe Mr Blair should be indicted for war crimes.

In April 2002, Mr Blair gave a secret commitment to George Bush that Britain would join the US in an attack on Iraq, as has been revealed by leaked documents and witness statements to the Iraq inquiry. He then deceived parliament and the country to achieve this. The consequences for the Iraqi people has been hundreds of thousands of killed, 4 million more driven from their homes and the destruction of their country. In Britain, this illegal war was a prime motivation for the perpetrators of the London bombing atrocities on 7 July 2005, as confirmed by Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of the British secret service, in her evidence to the Chilcot committee. We believe Waterstone's will seriously harm its own reputation as a respectable bookseller by helping him promote his book.

In today's Guardian, Index editor Jo Glanville, Article 19 trustee Dr Evan Harris and Jonathan Heawood, director, English PEN responded.

We respect the writers of yesterday's letter (18 August) and share their view on the illegality of the Iraq war and Tony Blair's nefarious role in engineering this country's participation in it. But we can not share their call for Waterstone's to desist from promoting it on the grounds that the event will be deeply offensive to most people in Britain, even if that were the case.

When it comes to literature, drama, journalism, artistic expression and scientific publication we must be consistent in our support for free speech. How can we defend the right of the Birmingham Repertory to put on and advertise a play like Behzti, despite it being deemed offensive to some Sikhs, and then call on a bookseller not to promote one of its books – or a library not to stock it — on the grounds of offence? The answer, in a liberal society, is to not read the book if it offends you, and to not buy a copy if you don't wish royalties to go to the author.

While Iain Banks and colleagues say Waterstone's will seriously harm its own reputation as a respectable bookseller by helping him [Blair] promote his book, we think its reputation would now be harmed by caving in to this sort of pressure.

A self proclaimed holy man who tried to sue The Sikh Times and its journalist which said he was an impostor is to renew his appeal application after a decision to strike out his claim.

Justice Eady struck out his Holiness Sant Baba Jeet Singh Ji Maharaj's libel claim in May and refused permission to appeal the decision.

However, an application to renew the appeal before the Court of Appeal remained open.

He had attempted to sue journalist Hardeep Singh and Eastern Media Group over an article which appeared in The Sikh Times in August 2007.

The libel claim suggested that the article alleged he was the leader of a cult and an impostor who had disturbed the peace in the Sikh community of High Wycombe and promoted blasphemy and the sexual exploitation and abuse of women.

Justice Eady struck the case out on 17th May 2010 accepting submissions on behalf of Singh that the courts could not deal with the case because of the well established principle of English law that the court will not attempt to rule on doctrinal issues or intervene in the regulation of governance of religious groups.

The judge said it would appear that issues of a religious or doctrinal nature permeated the pleadings in the case.

Nick Collins, head of litigation at Leeds-based law firm Ford and Warren, which is representing the claimant, said the application was being renewed, and would be dealt with at an oral hearing at the Court of Appeal in October.

An exhibition of nude paintings in an art gallery at a council office was taken down after just one hour - because prudish staff were offended by the pictures.

Artist John Vesty spent three months painting his 22 paintings and had arranged to display them for four weeks at the North Norfolk District Council offices in Cromer.

He was left baffled, irritated and disappointed when his conventional life studies were immediately taken down by council officials after complaints that they were offensive and obscene. Complaints from staff at the council office in Cromer led to John Vesty's work being put in a cupboard.

All but one of his oil paintings in the exhibition called Figures in Light were of naked or semi-nude women.

Vesty and his supporters insisted that none of his paintings were erotic or pornographic. He said: All of them are standard life poses - the sort of work that artists have done for hundreds of years. There are no explicit full frontal poses or anything like that.

I felt disbelief that someone could object to paintings like this in this day and age and that the council should respond in such a politically correct way by removing them.

You think that this sort of thing only happens in the Middle East in places like Iran or Iraq rather than in a Norfolk seaside town. Gallery owner Nick Reynolds, seen above holding one of Vesty's pictures, agreed to display eight of the paintings at his gallery around half a mile from the council offices

Karl Read, the council's leisure and cultural 'services' manager, said the artwork had been displayed in an area used by many members of staff and the public. He said: In this case we received a number of complaints from members of staff and union representatives who found the paintings offensive. Whilst respecting the fact that art, by its very nature, is open to subjective interpretation, on this occasion the council made the decision to remove the paintings from display. This is not a case of political correctness...RATHER...it is a balanced reaction to some members of staff finding the artwork offensive.

Since joining the BBC a decade ago, the Polish-born meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker has outraged the Scots by describing the Outer Hebrides as nowheresville and collapsed into fits of giggles after predicting muddy shite for a rain-lashed Glastonbury.

Schafernaker's latest exploit on the rolling News Channel was yesterday earning him thousands of hits on the internet after he was caught delivering a one-fingered salute to the BBC news anchor Simon McCoy after McCoy's bantering ironic suggestion that his forecast would be 100 per cent accurate and provide you with all the details you could possibly want.

Schafernaker is seen flipping the presenter the bird and then appears to hide his hand in his mouth, as if trying to destroy the evidence, as McCoy's co-presenter Fiona Armstrong squeals in dismay. McCoy tries to gloss over the incident remarking: Every now and again there's always a mistake and that was it.

A BBC spokesman said the Corporation was sorry if anyone had been upset by the brief incident: Tomasz was not aware that he was on air, and whilst the gesture was only shown for a second, it was not acceptable. The News Channel presenter live in the studio acknowledged a mistake had been made, and we apologise for any offence caused.

Colin Montgomerie, the golfer, has become the latest sportsman to use an injunction to prevent the publication of a story about his private life.

The injunction relating to Montgomerie was granted by Mr Justice Eady last month, preventing a tabloid newspaper publishing the story. The matter was resolved out of court and there is no suggestion of any truth in the allegations.

Montgomerie, who is Europe's captain for the Ryder Cup in Wales in October, was at a press conference with his American counterpart in Wisconsin on Wednesday. I know a lot of you are having a lot of fun right now at my expense, he said. I apologise for this, that you have to bring this up, but at the same time no further comments from myself on that matter.

Montgomerie's life off the course was in the news in June when he admitted difficulties in his marriage to his second wife, Gaynor Knowles. He said he was very sorry for the hurt he had caused amid reports that he was seeing a former girlfriend.

President Barack Obama has signed the SPEECH Act into US law, a move designed to protect US writers and reporters from England's controversial defamation laws.

The Act, tabled by Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen, makes libel judgments against American writers in foreign territories unenforceable if they are perceived to counter the First Amendment right to free speech.

The Libel Reform Campaign has expressed concern that our reputation is being damaged internationally due to our restrictive, archaic and costly libel laws which cost 140 times the European equivalent.

The coalition government has said it will table a draft Bill to reform our libel laws in January 2011 after the campaign led by English PEN, Index on Censorship and Sense About Science. The campaign has 52,000 signatories to its petition and all three main political parties committed in their general election manifestos to libel reform.

Jo Glanville, Editor of Index on Censorship said:

The US's response to our libel laws has already played a key role in advancing the campaign for reform in the UK. I'm hopeful that the government's draft bill will address the issue of libel tourism, which has a clear chilling effect on freedom of speech, and make it harder for claimants from outside the EU to bully publishers, NGOs, bloggers and investigative journalists into silence.

Síle Lane, Public Liaison of Sense About Science said:

As other countries move to protect their citizens from the chilling effect of our libel laws we urge bloggers, science writers, NGOs and small publications facing threats and bankruptcy to keep up the pressure on the Government to ensure that the proposed draft libel bill brings the meaningful change that is so urgently needed.

A German doctor who killed a British patient is seeking an injunction across Europe to silence his victim's family. Daniel Ubani was providing out of hours care in the UK when he injected David Gray with ten times the recommended dose of a painkiller.

Nigerian-trained Ubani gave Gray, 70, a fatal dosage of diamorphine when he treated him for kidney stones at his home in Manea, Cambridgeshire, in February 2008.

He is now trying to silence Gray's sons using European human rights laws by claiming that their campaign to bring him to justice is stopping his right to practise.

Stuart and Rory Gray have spoken out repeatedly about how Ubani escaped punishment by refusing to return to Britain to face potential criminal-charges. Instead he cut a deal with German prosecutors which allowed him to avoid extradition and being struck off in Germany.

The brothers now plan to travel to Bavaria to fight the legal action. Stuart Gray, himself a doctor, said: I consider this a grave threat to free speech and we will fight it in every way possible.

Ubani has submitted papers to a Bavarian court calling for the brothers to be banned from talking publicly about the death.

Earlier this year they stood up and denounced him as a charlatan and a killer as he spoke at a medical conference.

Although he was struck off in Britain in his absence, Ubani's ability to continue practising general medicine and cosmetic surgery elsewhere was not affected.

Update: Case Heard

11th August 2010. See article from dailymail.co.uk

Rory Gray spoke at a court hearing as Daniel Ubani launched his legal bid to gag him and his brother to prevent them damaging his reputation in future.

Gray told the panel of three judges at the State Court in Kempten, Bavaria, that his statements were based on fact and not opinion. He spoke of the outstanding malpractice lawsuits still pending in Germany against Ubani who is seeking a European-wide injunction against him and his brother to prevent them damaging his reputation.

He is trying to use European human rights law by claiming that their campaign to bring him to justice is stopping his right to practise. But by the time the court reconvenes on August 25 to give its verdict in the case Ubani's career in Germany may be over.

Ubani, who has a doctor's surgery and cosmetic surgery practice in northern Germany, is facing a fitness to practise hearing on August 18.  He has indicated that he does not intend to attend the hearing where the German equivalent of the General Medical Council plans to make him sit a written exam to test his medical skills. This would trigger an application to a judge to suspend his licence to practise as a cosmetic surgeon which would, in turn, disqualify him from also practising as a GP.

If the gagging order is successful, Ubani wants the court to make the brothers pay £200,000 each time they breach it. He also demands that the brothers keep a minimum of 600ft away from him at all times.

A current affairs programme presented by Lauren Booth has been rapped by the broadcasting watchdog for breaching impartiality rules.

Booth fronted a programme on Press TV, the Iranian international news network, about the events during and after the May interception by Israeli military forces of a pro-Palestinian aid convoy, which resulted in nine deaths.

The programme, broadcast in June, started with a pro-Palestinian song set to anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian imagery. Comments made by Booth, who is Cherie Blair's half-sister, included: Israeli commandoes ... committed a massacre of innocent civilians sailing aid ships to the besieged Gaza Strip and this was obviously a barbarous attack on civilians.

The broadcaster said it had complied with impartiality requirements and that the intensity of the descriptions in the programme merely reflected the general atmosphere around the world.

But Ofcom ruled that the programme did not contain any alternative views. It said: Presenters or interviewers must ensure they are articulating alternative views in a duly objective manner or putting them to interviewees in a manner that achieves due impartiality.

It said: In summary ... we considered the broadcaster did not provide sufficient evidence of alternative views within the programme. Overall the programme gave a one-sided view on this matter of political controversy. Furthermore and importantly, the broadcaster did not provide any evidence of alternative views on this issue in a series of programmes taken as a whole.

The US senate has passed legislation to protect US journalists, writers and publishers from libel tourists — litigants who sue Americans in foreign jurisdictions which place a lower emphasis on free speech

The legislation was specifically designed to negate the threat of English laws, amid claims that the UK has became an international libel tribunal. One case in particular incensed US politicians, that of New York based academic Rachel Ehrenfeld who was sued in London despite only 23 copies of her book, on the financing of terrorism, being sold in the UK.

The bill, co-sponsored by Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republican Jeff Sessions has broad cross-party support. If passed, the proposal will prevent US courts from recognising foreign libel rulings that are inconsistent with the First Amendment.

The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Bill will now go before the House of Representatives.

Update: Passed by the House of Representatives

29th July 2010. Based on article from todayonline.com

The United States House of Representatives passed a Bill aimed at shielding US journalists, authors and publishers from libel tourists who file suit in countries where they expect to get the most favourable ruling.

Lawmakers approved the measure, which now goes to President Barack Obama to sign into law.

The bill had such widespread support from Democrats and Republicans that it was passed on a voice vote in Congress.

Based on article from telegraph.co.uk

The legislation will prevent US federal courts from recognising or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation that is inconsistent with the first amendment and will bar foreign parties from targeting the American assets of an American author, journalist, or publisher as part of any damages.

Campaigners for more liberal libel law in Britain said they hoped the new law would influence the Government as it prepares a draft reform bill for publication in January.

Padraig Reidy, a spokesman for the Index on Censorship, said: It's a vindication of our argument that English libel laws in their current state do not encourage or protect free expression. The fact that Britain's best ally feels the need to protect itself from the English libel courts demonstrates the need for reform.

Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Congressman who drafted the bill, said it was vital that Americans' rights are never undermined by foreign judgments.

The UK government is to put the fashion industry under pressure to stop promoting unrealistic body images and clamp down on airbrushed photographs in magazines and adverts.

Lynne Featherstone, the inequalities minister, who has long campaigned against size-zero photoshoots, will convene a series of discussions this autumn with the fashion industry, including magazine editors and advertising executives, to discuss how to promote body confidence among young people.

The first will focus on airbrushing, which Featherstone argues is contributing to the dreadful pressure that young people, girls and women come under to conform to completely unachievable body stereotypes.

She will push for a Kitemark or health warning on airbrushed photographs, warning viewers that they are not real. I am very keen that children and young women should be informed about airbrushing, so they don't fall victim to looking at an image and thinking that anyone can have a 12in waist. It is so not possible, she told the Sunday Times.

The minister wants to see more women of different shapes and sizes used in magazine photoshoots, including curvaceous role models such as Christina Hendricks, who plays vivacious office manager Joan Holloway in Mad Men, the US TV series about the 1960s advertising industry.

Christina Hendricks is absolutely fabulous. We need more of those role models, she said. Instead, young girls and women were continually confronted with false images of incredibly thin women, which could create lifelong psychological damage. [Perhaps we'll then get a generation of girls feeling inferior over an impossible dream of boobs like Hendricks].

She is trying to convince magazine editors and advertisers to stop using digitally altered photographs and underweight models. Advertisers and magazine editors have a right to publish what they choose...BUT...women and girls also have the right to be comfortable in their own bodies. At the moment, they are being denied that, she said.

Magazines that do retouch pictures run the risk of breaking their own code of conduct, which states they should not publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, she added. Magazines regularly mislead their readers by publishing distorted images that have been secretly airbrushed and altered.

She also called the actions of the advertising industry into question. Likewise, the advertising standards code says no advert should place children at risk of mental, physical or moral harm, but adverts do contain airbrushed images of unattainable beauty in magazines aimed at young teenagers.

MoreHorror.com sources attending the San Diego Comic-Con have a report about the upcoming Adam Green release of Hatchet II.

Dark Sky Films are stating that they plan to have the film released in theaters entirely in its UNRATED format. Green told the audience at the convention that the MPAA has (yet again) asked that entire scenes be removed from the movie because they are too violent!

It seems however that won't be a factor anymore since an unnamed theater chain has been confirmed to allow the entire version to run in theaters this coming October.

Update: AMC

27th August 2010. Based on article from cinematical.com

AMC Theaters will be showing the unrated cut of the film as part of its AMC Independent program. This means the uncut version of Hatchet II will be shown theatrically in the top 20 markets in the United States.

Saw 3D, the upcoming 7th movie in the Saw franchise, will be the last one according to producers who say, It's time to stop. We have told the story we wanted to tell, and this is going to be a great farewell.

The 3D movie will have 11 booby traps, almost double compared to the previous films, and it was submitted 6 times to the MPAA before bringing it down from an NC-17 to an R rating!

Producer Mark Burg reveals: I'm surprised we got it. It's more violent than any of them. But it's in 3-D, it answers all the questions, it comes full circle. We have the good on this one.

As for critics of the franchise, star Tobin Bell says: It's a free country. If people don't want to look at certain things, they shouldn't go. The people who don't go to films were more upset than the horror fans. You can say what you want about it, but Saw fans have loved and supported it every year. We must have been doing something right.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that, if enacted, will prohibit the sale of crush videos and other filmed acts of animal cruelty including burning, suffocating, drowning and impaling live animals. The bill, sponsored by Representative Elton Gallegly, passed by a margin of 416 to 3. It now goes to the Senate, which is expected to pass it.

In April, the Supreme Court overturned a Virginia man's conviction for selling videos that depicted dogfighting on free-speech grounds. Chief Justice John Roberts said the existing law that criminalized the sale of such videos was too broad and could be used to prosecute sellers of hunting videos.

Gallegly responded by crafting a narrowly written law designed specifically to prohibit the sale or distribution of obscene visual depictions of animal cruelty. He became involved in the issue in 1999, when a local district attorney had difficulty prosecuting a Thousand Oaks man for selling a video depicting animal cruelty over the Internet.

Puppeteer Daniel Liversidge has been ordered to tone down his Punch and Judy act after organisers claimed the traditional show could be deemed offensive.

Liversidge has been told his upcoming Mr Marvels Punch and Judy performance at Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower cannot include any scenes with Punch hitting Judy.

As a result, the puppet has ditched his whacking stick for a more benign fluffy mop.

Liversidge, who has been performing his act for 21 years, said: We have had to change the show a few times over the last six or seven years to reflect modern tastes. You always get people asking for the traditional stick to come back but you have to move with the times. At the end of the day I am a children's entertainer and my job is to keep children happy. Mr Punch is still a rascal and still has a variety of weapons in his arsenal but they are more socially appropriate like a feather duster or a tickling stick.

Liversidge added: Punch no longer throws the baby out of the bath instead he puts him to bed.

Paul Mahy, commercial manager at the Spinnaker Tower, said: We think some people could be offended by the traditional Punch and Judy story, especially at our family friendly attraction. We have agreed that many aspects of the traditional script had to be omitted. For example, Judy was originally put through a mangle and that is how sausages were made, obviously we cannot do this anymore.

Hate legislation removes an increasing quantity of matters traditionally dealt with in civil society to the domain of the state and the courts. In a new report from the independent think tank Civitas, A New Inquisition: religious persecution in Britain today, Jon Gower Davies, formerly the Head of Religious Studies at Newcastle University, reveals the bizarre and oppressive nature of judicial attempts to prosecute individuals for religious hatred - this new legal concept has resulted in some singularly worrying court cases.

Blasphemy Law by the Backdoor

The Blasphemy Law was abolished in 2008, but has re-emerged in a new and radically augmented guise. Today, individuals are not charged with blasphemy, but with causing religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress under the Public Order Act. Jon Davies argues that the growth in accusations of hate crime threatens freedom of speech because they destroy the possibility and practice of open, sociable and critical discussion of religion.

Hatred in the legal sphere

Whilst the total number of racial and religious hate crimes fell from 13,201 in 2006-7 to 11,845 in 2008-9, the volume of hate legislation has rapidly expanded. Yet legal definitions of hatred are elusive. A government action plan states: A (religious) hate crime is a criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a persons religion or perceived religion.

In addition, hatred is not only presented as an offence on its own account, but can also be seen as something which aggravates ordinary public order offences. When an ordinary offence is aggravated by hatred based on race, religion, gender, or age, then the sentence too is aggravated (i.e. increased).

Judges become theologians!

Jon Davies argues that these definitions are without substance, and inevitably result in confusion and silliness in their application. The attempt to define a hate Incident in terms of hostility results in perilous imprecision: it is not possible to know when individuals have been hated - or, indeed, when they have themselves been hating! - and for how long and to what depth and to what effect. The essence of the criminal justice system should be justice and impartiality, but turning religious hatred into a criminal offence turns police, the Crown Prosecution Service and judges into surrogate theologians - a kind of theocracy (an uncomfortable theocracy at that) by the backdoor.

Are judges, even judges giving the "right" verdict, so qualified in theology that they feel able to offer doctrinal guidance? Is the Crown Prosecution Service so prudent in its understanding of "religious hatred" that it should be free, with no penalty for error, to mobilise the power and resources of the state against ordinary citizens who make comments about religion?

A danger to freedom of speech

One of the great triumphs of liberalism has been to separate the discovery of factual truth from the assertion of religious doctrine. And yet, when Judge Richard Clancy dismissed the case against the hoteliers, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, in December 2009, he commented that it might be best for individuals not to engage in discussions about religion! As a result: It becomes "wise" to "be careful", to restrict the compass of what we say about what we believe, or do not believe, or about what others believe or do not or should not believe, and to turn what were once vigorous public conversations into a frightened, if safe, if amiable and fundamentally humourless chat about small and dwindling things. (p.49)

Because freedom of speech is the prevailing view in Britain, we are not as alert to the risk of its overthrow as we should be. The freedom to speak our minds without fear or favour is worth fighting for. In A New Inquisition, Jon Davies shows why the liberal majority needs to reassert the convention that the law should be used not as a weapon to suppress unpopular opinions, but rather as the protector of free speech.

The British government has removed from its website a petition protesting Pope Benedict XVI's Sept. 16-19 visit to England and Scotland.

The petition had urged the British prime minister to dissociate the government from the pope's intolerant views and not to support the state visit financially. The secularist coalition Protest the Pope sponsored the petition, which had attracted more than 12,300 signatures.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who drafted the petition, said July 16 that the government had removed the petition three months before it was due to close, and that it had not allowed signatures since April.

This looks like an attempt to prevent the petition from embarrassing the government by gaining a large number of signatures in the run-up to Pope Benedict's visit, Tatchell said in a statement.

The Protest the Pope petition had criticized Pope Benedict for his alleged intolerant opposition to women's rights, gay equality, embryonic stem-cell research and condom use to prevent the spread of HIV.

It urged the prime minister to rebuke the pope for allegedly covering up the clerical sex abuse of children and, according to the petition, his rehabilitation of the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson, and his plan to make a saint of Hitler's pope, Pius XII, who refused to publicly condemn the Holocaust.

In its response, posted on the prime minister's website, the government explained it would fund only the state aspects of the visit, with the Catholic Church meeting the costs of pastoral events.

There are issues on which we disagree with the Catholic Church, the statement said. However, we believe that Pope Benedict's visit will provide an opportunity to strengthen and build on our relationship with the Holy See in areas where we share interests and goals and to discuss those issues on which our positions differ.

The Protest the Pope coalition is planning a march and rally in London to coincide with the pope's Sept. 18 prayer vigil in London's Hyde Park.

Lord Taylor of Warwick is the sixth parliamentarian to face charges over the expenses scandal. He is facing charges in relation to claims of £11,000.

It follows disclosures in December that he had allegedly registered a house in Oxford belonging to the partner of his stepbrother's son, without his knowledge or consent.

The peer is accused of declaring the property owned as his primary residence in order to claim second home expenses. Taylor has lived in Ealing, West London, since 1995. Peers who live outside the capital can claim £174 a night tax-free to cover the cost of a hotel or a second home.

The 57-year-old peer resigned from the Conservative Party hours after the Crown Prosecution Service revealed that he was facing six charges of false accounting in relation to claims for overnight subsistence and car mileage between March 2006 and October 2007. He will appear before Westminster Magistrates Court next month.

John Taylor was Vice President of the BBFC for 10 years until retiring in November 2008.

The Expendables is a 2010 US action film by Sylvester Stallone

The BBFC cut 2s for a 15 rating for the 2010 cinema release. The company chose to remove one shot, showing a hero sadistically twisting a knife into a guard's neck, in order to obtain a 15 classification. An uncut 18 classification was available.

Britain's theatre community comes out against oppression and censorship in Belarus, the last dictatorship of Europe.

Sir Tom Stoppard and actor/director Sam West Has led a protest of high-profile theatre practitioners outside the Belarussian Embassy in London.

They presented an open letter to President Alyaksander Lukashenko of Belarus calling for greater democratic freedom and for an end to censorship of the Internet.

Other signatories include Mark Ravenhill, Howard Brenton, Alan Rickman, Laura Wade, Caryl Churchill, Henry Goodman, Henry Porter, Simon McBurney, Simon Stephens and Lyndsey Turner.

We urge you to allow the people of Belarus the right to express and share their opinions freely, whether this is on the internet or not. We urge you to use your powers to prevent any further repression of citizens who hold alternative, and oppositional, beliefs to you. We urge that the practice of physical abuse and intimidation against any citizen, including those who dare to hold alternative and oppositional points of view, be stopped. Finally, we urge you to protect the right to freedom of assembly in accordance with Article 21 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights to which Belarus is a state party, – the letter says.

Sam West performed an extract of Generation Jeans, a play from the multi-award winning Belarus Free Theatre.

Generation Jeans charts one man's journey as an activist. It captures all of the courage, the humour and the foolhardy determination that you need to resist a totalitarian regime, which makes it perfect for our protest today, says director Clare Lizzimore, co-organiser of the protest.

On Thursday 1st July a new Presidential decree on the Internet comes into force. It gives the authorities greater powers to monitor usage and will enable the Government to restrict or block access to websites that offer independent and alternative sources of information. It has been described as a step in the wrong direction by the European Union. The decree is a clear attempt to curb the freedom of speech and the right to self-expression.

Playwright and co-organiser of the protest, Alexandra Wood says: The internet is a vital tool in communication and should be available to all. Lukashenko's law, imposing censorship on the Internet, particularly affects those in Belarus who oppose his regime, who want to offer the Belarusian people an alternative, which is of course, his intention.

Actor Sam West says: The purpose of theatre and the purpose of the internet is the same: to connect people, to bring them together as a collective entity, an audience, a world. Repressive regimes are rightly frightened of the internet for its ability to put free thinkers in touch with one another and give them inspiration and strength; it's not us and them out there, it's all us. We must oppose any withdrawal of these freedoms as anti-thought, anti-freedom, anti-human.

The protest was in support of the Belarus Free Theatre and is in conjunction with the Global Artistic Campaign in Solidarity with Belarus, founded by playwright, Sir Tom Stoppard.