Friday 20 May 2011

Quotes of the Week: From privacy to the departure of a woolly mammoth from the Daily Telegraph


John Lichfield in the Independent on the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn:
"The French media and French justice systems have an extravagant definition of the extents of 'privacy' for public figures. Consensual extramarital affairs are one thing. Sexual harassment, bordering on assault is another.The British media may be guilty of being too prurient about the private activities of politicians; the French media is too supine."

Janet Street-Porter in the Independent: "The high-profile people who complain about 'loss of privacy' are the same souls who use carefully timed press releases and television appearances whenever they've got something to flog or a bit of character rebranding to do. If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen. Put simply – shut up!"

Peter Preston in the Observer: "What do you do if you value your privacy? Forget nights on the razzle. Stay quietly at home. And if that seems a puritan step too far, try phoning the despised, derided PCC (just like Kate's family Middleton). No wonder my learned friends don't like quick, cheap and influential. No wonder they want harsher penalties and more sonorous hearings: because that's the only thing that keeps them involved."

Matthew Norman in the Independent on the French press:
"Whatever the infidelities elsewhere, the one lover with whom the French politician remains forever faithful is the French press. Into this cosy lovefest between twin elites, neither partner would dream of admitting anything so common and insignificant as the electorate."

Roy Greenslade in the Evening Standard: "The editors' public crusade against a privacy law is bogus. They are already compromising their supposed right to intrude into people's privacy through the offices of the PCC. Judges - please note - editors are engaging in a form of prior constraint voluntarily. "

The Sun on Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, who suggested a Privacy Law may be needed:
"Ken Clarke - the confused old dinosaur who barely knows how to use his mobile but bumbles on about regulating Twitter. He probably thinks online is where where his shirts are hung out to dry. It's high time he was hung out to dry with them."

Stephen Glover in the Independent on Simon Heffer's departure from the Telegraph: "Now that he has gone I feel, if I may be allowed to change my image, as our human ancestors must have done when the last woolly mammoth stomped off over the horizon to extinction. They would have gazed out almost nostalgically across the bleak Siberian plains, where not long before, this wondrous beast had crashed around, flattening hapless victims under his fearsome feet."

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