h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well... post 204 refers to the case Laurence Godfrey v. Demon Internet Limited [1999] EWHC 175 (26th March, 1999) - Case No: 1998-G-No 30, yes? [I could provide a link to that case... but as we all know that would be very evil of me] That case is concerned with the English Defamation Act of 1996. And only that act, if I skim-read correctly.
You referred to "European rulings" (post 214, the one I referred to)- I took that to mean a ruling of a European court or at least concerned with European law (maybe an electronic equlivallent of the Shevill case). As the Gofrey case does not say anything about jurisdiction (both plaintiff and defendant being English), it does not really help the BBC other than in England, IMHO.
I'm of pretty much the same opinion as you regarding the Mods and stuff, so please don't take this personal

bare with me and i'll find the post that refers to the euro rulimg.

Maybe, Happy Dude. That might happen. But right now I'm not going to change anything, it's been hard enough to introduce the current system, I'm changing nothing right now. So let's move onto another subject, live with the moderation for a while and come back to it, say in three months time, when we can all look it a bit more subjectively, okay?

Last week I spoke at a conference. It was the after-dinner part of the conference, when people get down to the business of networking. It's hard and vital work. I've seen many a conference delegate late at night so utterly networked that he's had to be helped to bed. I had been asked to speak about something to do with marketing and the media and I used to work in the media. I only worked on newspapers because I couldn't think of anything else to do but that didn't seem to bother the organisers. And anyway, as I say, it was an after-dinner speech so I didn't have to know stuff, and besides the bloke who rang me begged me not to be too serious. Inject a little levity, he said. I said I'd try.

When I got the letter confirming the engagement. It told me that instead of a fee I'd be getting an honorarium, which was exciting because I'd never had one before. Then it went on to tell me what the expected outcomes of my speech would be. Now I've had a bit of experience with outcomes. When I was at university - where I worked hard on my networking but on little else - the authorities were fond of outcomes. Outcomes were the opposite of inputs. The teaching staff made inputs and the students came away with outcomes. Of course teaching doesn't work even remotely like that but those in the business of teaching students have to pretend that it does in order to suggest that they know what they're doing. But any teacher talking of outcomes is usually talking rubbish.

And the same is true of speeches. I recall, for example, being asked to speak at a fund-raising function in aid of a rural tennis club. The expected outcome was polite applause and a richer tennis club. Quite how it happened that the outcome was me hurling frozen chickens at the audience in the hope of braining a fat man at the back; and that most of the chickens were intercepted in mid-air by an athletic contingent on a social outing organised by the society for the partially deaf, and that in response to the barrage of frozen chickens I was subjected to a reciprocal barrage of beer glasses; and that I put the chicken box on top of my head and ran from the stage peering through the handles in the box while glasses thudded against its sides, and that a woman in the kitchen wiped the chicken blood from the shoulders of my pin-stripe and then thrust me into a cupboard and shut the door; and that the whole of the rural community was involved in a dust-up which continued cheerfully into the small hours as a direct consequence of my speech, would take too long to describe.

All I will say is that it made me perpetually suspicious of outcomes. Such talk presumes that the world is consistent and humanity predictable. That neither statement is true I for one give thanks (though on the Night of the Frozen Chickens my views might have differed).

So much for outcomes. But the letter of engagement was not yet done. Here's the fourth paragraph in full: "Please give consideration to Treaty of Waitangi [treaty between Maori and the British Crown signed in 1840 guaranteeing Maori certain rights] and gender equity issues when you are preparing your presentation."

Now I don't wish to appear ungrateful but I do want to ask why this request was made. In one sense that is an easy question to answer. The conference was partly funded by a quasi governmental organisation, and I presume it must pay lip-service to the orthodoxy's of the age before it dishes out the honorariums. And to be frank I doubt if the author of the letter expected me to attend to the request. Her paragraph had all the force of meaning of a 'yours sincerely'.

And of course I gave no consideration to the Treaty of Waitangi nor to gender equity nor to any issues whatsoever when I prepared my presentation. Indeed I didn't do much preparing at all. All I did was to try to make the audience laugh. And they laughed because I said something true. Truth always makes people laugh. And at the same time truth makes all the vapid language of the bureaucratic world seem as hollow as it is. The world will not be tamed by pieties. The world indeed will not be tamed at all, not by me, nor by the politicians, nor by moderators on websites, nor by any platitudes intended to ensure that the takers of umbrage can find none to take. For that, I think, is all these words exist to try to do.

And I prefer to act by sterner judgements of what's right and wrong to say. If what I say is right the audience will laugh. And if I get it wrong the chickens fly.

Ok slight change of direction. Despite the new rules not allowing external pictures (which I'm not complaining about) I have managed to put a picture of myself on my user page, so I'm feeling pretty smug at the moment, go admire it :-). Can I also draw everyone's attention to http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F47963?thread=103328&skip=0&show=20 , The Campaign for a BubbleFish� Gadget.

*hurls a chicken at Loonytunes while laughing* FOOD FIGHT!!!!!

Brilliant, Looney. Just brilliant.

I'm pleased you're pleased