Thread: UKIP candidate uses blog to libel the dead!

Sad, but true. Read about it here.

Paul Wesson, Independent candidate, Witney constituency

You can't libel the dead.

Aldington was a sh*tbag. I wouldn't worry on his account.

He's probably too busy with demons shoving white hot pokers up his jacksy to care overmuch.

Originally Posted by Consider Dudley

You can't libel the dead.

Under English law you can't be sued for libelling the dead, but of course that is the point. Tolstoy has taken an opportunity to spread lies about a person who he libelled in life. Tolstoy is using the political process to attack the good reputation of a man who can no longer defend himself. Aldington did not perjure himself as the courts have established. Tolstoy should have let it go. It's over. Aldington is dead. Would you want to be represented by a person who will devote his time and energy to slagging off the dead rather than trying to do some good for the people of his constituency.

No, I wouldn't. I was just pointing out that it is not legally possible to libel the dead.

Originally Posted by Consider Dudley

No, I wouldn't. I was just pointing out that it is not legally possible to libel the dead.

Good point well made, at least in common law countries. IIRC the Chinese allow libel to go back 2 or 3 generations.

BTW, someone has posted a link to my blog from Login

Obviously I can't access the site as I don't have a password, but if a kindly chap (or chappess) could PM me with what has been posted it would be much appreciated. How odd that someone, a moral coward I suppose, should post about me on a private access only site, when everything I have to say is open for public consumption.

Please, please, please read the rest of this blog as well:

UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY-WITNEY: March 2010

It is so, so funny:

A CHEERY MOMENT

If the weather's getting you down, here's a glimpse of our daughter Alexandra, shopping in Paris. I don't know what the glamorous Baroness Ashton would think.

The people of Witney, mired in recession and debt (less so than most to be fair), really need to see their candidate's daughter spending a lotta dosh in Paris. That will cheer up the people I live amongst no end. I'm getting them to read the blog.

Jean Simmons? Appealing to the extremely grey voters I would guess.

The one, however, which really proves that Tolstoy changes historical fact to suit himself was posted a few minutes ago.

Thursday, 18 March 2010
DISTRESSED APPEAL

On Wednesday, March 17th, the Witney Gazette published a letter from the Liberal, Labour and Green prospective party candidates, urging the electorate to register for voting.

UKIP received no invitation to support this appeal, nor (it is to be presumed) did the Conservative Party.

Clearly the letter is designed to boost the failing fortunes of the minority parties, who were so sadly driven back towards to the starting post at the last Election.

Could we please have more encouragement on these lines?

This is what we call a lie.

The letter is here:

Register to vote
6:50am Thursday 18th March 2010

Print Email Share Comments(0)

Sir – According to the Electoral Commission, 3.5 million people in the UK are entitled, but not registered, to vote.

While we may disagree with each other in politics, we are agreed that the right to vote is paramount. It cannot be exercised without registration. A general election is imminent. We all have an interest in ensuring that those who are entitled to vote are registered to vote. The registration form requires little more than name, address and signature, and is available online from the Electoral Commission — About My Vote, produced by The Electoral Commission — or by post from Electoral Services, West Oxfordshire District Council, Council Offices, Woodgreen, Witney, Oxon OX28 1NB (phone 01993 861410).

Dawn Barnes, Liberal Democrat Party, Joe Goldberg, Labour Party, Stuart Macdonald, Green Party Paul Wesson, Independent

Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for the Witney Constituency

It was published in the Oxford Mail on 10th March and can be seen at:

Register to vote (From thisisoxfordshire)

(I think it will be in tomorrow's Oxford Times)

and the Witney Gazette at:

Many people are not registered to vote (From Witney Gazette)

As can be seen, both electronically and in the printed newspapers, I was a co-signatory on those letters. Tolstoy conveniently makes no mention of that fact. If it suits the historian and writer Nikolai Tolstoy to distort the facts over a simple letter can you really believe that he didn't get his facts wrong on something so complex as the location of a particular Brigadier on a certain day of the war?

Clearly the letter is designed to boost the failing fortunes of the minority parties, who were so sadly driven back towards to the starting post at the last Election

I've news for Nikolai, he is the minority.

Wantage 2005, 5th out of 6 (beat Eng Dem by 152 votes) 798 votes, 1.5%
Wantage 2001, 5th out of 5, 941 votes, 1.9%
Wantage 1997, 6th out of 6, 465, 0.8%
Barnsley East by-election 1996, 5th out of 6, 378, 2.1%

How the man who has achieved these results can refer to other parties as minorities beats me. This historian is good on rhetoric, but short on attention to detail.

David Cameron and Alan Howling Laud Hope were invited to add their signatures to the letter, but I don't think Stuart Macdonald had Tolstoy's e-mail.

Thanks to those who contacted me with the post from the UKIP Forum:

"Has Paul left UKIP. I only ask because it seems he is standing as an Independent Candidate in Witney and is using his blog and BDF to 'slag off' UKIP's candidate, accusing him of libelling someone whose dead.

I find this quite bizarre because my many previous exchanges with Paul over legal issues usually results in the dummy and the pram scenario by him pointing out he trained as a Barrister. Now you do not have to be a legal eagle to know you cannot libel someone whose dead

Had Bob Feal-Martinez read my blog he would have noticed that I did clarify the point:

Ignoring the slagging off of the judge, the allegation of perjury would, were Lord Aldington to be alive, have earned Tolstoy another libel writ and possibly severe treatment in the courts.

The point of the blog post was to emphasise how Tolstoy took advantage of Lord Aldington's death to kick him whilst he was very much down. I know you cannot libel the dead in common law countries, but the post, like so many on my blog, is designed to use irony, wit and other linguistic forms unfamiliar to Bob FM, like spelling and grammar. In fact, as we are discovering, Internet libel is a growing form of legal tourism with people choosing the jurisdiction where the law is most favourable to sue, often the UK. I doubt the Low family will be trailing off to China to see if they can have another pot at Tolstoy who is notorious for trying to avoid paying legal costs.

As Bob FM knows I left UKIP years ago and would not rejoin if you paid me. I do not wish to ever associate again with the 'freemen' under c61 of a non-existent law, nor the idiots who think Common Purpose is a conspiracy against them and most definitely I would not want to share a party with people who would seek to try the dead for non-existent treason, let alone the living (they are in Witney Branch). Only a complete moron, IMHO, would walk into a police station with a bunch of old documents and ask the desk sergeant to investigate a crime which is the remit of the Attorney General. Several senior UKIP activists and members have done so. As for the various 'corrupt' practices frequently exposed and referred to here and other fora, words fail me.

Try this e-mail from the UKIP candidate for Witney:

It's good to exchange views frankly like this - it gets us into practice for responding to the enemy!

The Open Europe Blog is surely not suggesting that 'judges, lawyers, and other experts' do not have an important (indeed vital) part to play in the proper functioning of government, but merely that the increasing slide in Britain towards judge-initiated rather than judge-interpreted law is very dangerous. The press was strangely reticent on Justice Eedie's squalid record as a regular suppressor of free speech in his court, but readers of Private Eye will be well aware of his primary role in ensuring that Britain becomes the libel centre of the world, with his judgments almost invariably issued in favour of suppression of free speech.

I too have occasionally heard UKIP speakers 'use legalistic words in such a sloppy fashion that you cannot possibly know what they mean - murder, treason, democracy', but equally it is surely wise to avoid extreme pedantry. Such words have dictionary definitions as well as legal ones, and 'democracy' in particular means quite different things in different countries and historical eras.

The most misused word in my experience is 'treason', but only when (as is indeed too often the case) used in a purely legal sense. Neither of the two principal Treason Acts (1661 and 1848) covers moves to surrender the sovereignty of this country, save in the case of its being attempted by force of arms. However a succession of unrepealed Acts of Parliament has prohibited acceptance (or advocacy of acceptance) of the authority of a foreign power over the English and British legislatures. These include the Statutes of Praemunire of 1353 and 1393, and an Act of Parliament of 1533.
Most important in this context is the 1689 Bill of Rights, which provided in the Statutory Oath of Allegiance 'That noe Forreigne Prince Person prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme'.
In addition the 1701 Act of Settlement confirmed that 'the Laws of England are the Birthright of the People thereof'.

On this basis it seems to me legitimate to describe transfer of national sovereignty to an external power as 'treason'. The OED definition of 'treason' is after all 'The action of betraying; betrayal of the trust undertaken by or reposed in any one; breach of faith, treachery'. This seems a fair enough description of the EU lobby and its adherents, as the Bill of Rights and Act of Settlement prohibit activities consonant with the dictionary definition.

Dr Johnson defined 'pension' as 'An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country'. Plainly the great lexicographer was not suggesting that government pensioners were plotting the death of the monarch (from whom many received their pensions!), but that their base actions were directed towards damaging the constitution.

So far as I know 'democracy' is not defined by statute law and may indeed mean many things to different people, extending from the right of most (though not all: e.g. children and lunatics) citizens to the franchise, to humane and civilized administration of authority.

'Murder' also covers a wide spectrum of definitions of unlawful killing, and the dictionary definition is valid in circumstances not necessarily in accordance with the law. We all say, and are entitled to say outside the context of a judicial verdict, that 'x murdered y', though it may be that a court finds the crime to have been manslaughter.

Generally the context makes the nature of the usage obvious, so I don't see we have a great deal to worry about.

I further believe that Johnson's dictum above applies all too aptly to many of the extravagantly paid beneficiaries of current quangos to an extent not envisaged in the 18th century. Does any rational person really see a need for a British Potato Council, Human Tissue Authority, or Home-Grown Cereals Authority?

Of course modern Britain is a complex society, but that scarcely provides valid pretext for making it vastly more complex, which is what much of our grossly excessive governance aims at doing. True freedom involves a considerable degree of individual risk-taking, and UKIP is surely not for advocates of Hayek's Road to Serfdom.

That is the biggest load of drivel I have read. The laws referred to have largely been repealed and Tolstoy doesn't know the difference between the oath of supremacy and the oath of allegiance. Like twizzel and Noakes, Tolstoy hasn't read the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which abolished misprisions as wll as repealed the Statute of Praemunire. The only statutes left from 1533 relate to Henry VIII's transfer of the church from Rome to England. The 1661 Treason Act, if it ever existed, is long gone.

Anyway, the key point was to get people to read my blog. My numbers had been down a bit of late as I've not been posting regularly. The research on the Tolstoy v Aldington thing was done ages ago and there is a lot more stored. The man is outrageous. I'll leave him alone now until the election, I have so many more important things to do.

Sorry to post again, but can someone make the point on the UKIP forum that Bob FM has attacked me in a place where he knows I cannot respond. I know it's an underhand trick as we would expect from the sage of Swindon, but we couldn't expect Bob to post here lest I respond to him and tell him a few facts. My blog has received 12 visits where the UKIP website is cited as the entry source including one from the European Parliament (one of 3 visits from that ISP).