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I learn that Fine Cell Work, a charity which trains prisoners to create beautiful embroidery, is planning a fundraising auction. Somewhere secret. That sets the tone for the day.
Freedom of information boffins are fixated on Kennedy v The Charity Commission. Are a public authority’s inquiry documents exempt from disclosure for 30 years under the Freedom of Information Act 2000? If so, does this interfere with Times journalist Dominic Kennedy’s human rights?
Kennedy wants to see documents from the Charity Commission’s inquiry into an appeal launched by George Galloway and –
Pause. That cat moment with Rula Lenska. I’ve never watched Celebrity Big Brother, but because of the way certain gobbets of information are hurled around like custard pies that image appears, unbidden.
Talking of prison embroidery, more unwelcome information is ricocheting off the walls down at the Old Bailey in the trial about hacks hacking. Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson.
Meanwhile, over at the High Court, the Naked Rambler Stephen Gough is losing his appeal. Is nudity too much information? I don’t mind him. How could I, having been naked myself in public (sort of) over the summer, modelling for a very select life class. But today Lord Justice Leveson says people would be ‘alarmed’ by him. Here’s a sketch of Lord Leveson I did earlier – at his inquiry last year which was prompted by phone hacking (see above).
In the Court of Appeal, cameras are rolling for the first time. Transparent justice or slithering towards the lower courts and sensation? Which judge over here will be the first to be multiplied into a dance troupe, as happened during the O. J. Simpson trial? Oh go on, waste some time on YouTube with the Dancing Itos.
Back to the Supreme Court, and I’m not reporting the inadvertent double-entendre concerning Sugar.
When the hearing is over, lawyers go into a post-match huddle: ‘It was very amusing how we managed to garrotte him on ….’
But I won’t tell you who said it.
There is information.
There is truth. Somewhere.
And there is enlightenment.
Here is an Enlightenment figure, the blind magistrate Sir John Fielding, his elegant hands resting on a book called ‘The LAW’. This portrait by Nathaniel Hone hangs in Court 1, today’s arena.
I head for a concert given by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and things start to fall into place.
More pictures if you scroll down.
