Some weeks back, we dished about one Max Mosley:
An MI5 [the UK's CIA] officer has been forced to resign after admitting that his wife was a prostitute who took part in a notorious ‘Nazi-style orgy’ with Max Mosley, the Formula One racing chief.
The intelligence officer, who cannot be named for security reasons, left the service last month after it emerged that his wife was one of the five call girls who took part in the sadomasochistic sex session with Mosley. …
Okay, in today’s New York Times, John F. Burns (these days recovering from his long stint in Baghdad as NYT’s London bureau chief), reports:
LONDON — At moments, it seems like British satire at its whimsical, Monty Python-style best: a judge and a bank of lawyers, all stern-as-you-like in horsehair wigs, exploring the finer points of bottom-spanking with an aging multimillionaire and several young women who joined him in a Chelsea flat last winter, for a $5,000 fee, for what was described as five hours of sadomasochistic ‘fantasy’ play.
The Victorian Gothic edifice in central London that is home to the Royal Courts of Justice has witnessed many bizarre trials in its 126-year history, but the one now under way amid the rich oak paneling and stone-arched windows of Court 13 — the case of Max Mosley versus The News of the World — would have a claim on any list of the most unusual. …
Neither Burns’ story nor the one in The Daily Mail, the London tabloid covering this trial at least as fervently as we do Scruggsiana, today mentions the MI5 connection.
But at the bottom of the Mail‘s story is a sentence that just goes to show how different some national approaches to public discourse can be: “No comments are permitted on this story as legal proceedings are underway.”
Zowie, good thing we don’t observe that rule, innit? Maybe Rodney Cole will ‘appen along and explain it to us . . .
Lotus, are you an Anglophile like me? You might enjoy this blog site, http://www.rozcawley.typepad.com , “Autumn Cottage Diarist: Days in the life of an English Country Woman.” Anytime I’m stressed, 10 minutes on this site is like the most delightful daydream that always puts a smile on my face. Once my kids are gone, I want to have this sweet lady’s life for a year!
In order to avoid forced internment at one of England’s ageing nuclear establishments (NITMO’s), having his car towed and crushed by local authority contractors, being electronically tagged by an American company or suffering any of a number of other 21st C sanctions under our increasingly invasive and restrictive legal system, Rodney has asked me to say that, although he would happily accept your kind invitation to comment on this most English of farces, he cannot as he has large numbers of dependents and a credit rating to protect.
If he did, however, he might say that one must bear in mind the main story here is about two very rich, very powerful and ruthless men, not one sad old man burdened by his Nazi family and five rented prostitutes.
The News of The World (NOTW) is owned by the same man as the Fox channel, Rupert Murdoch. He has frequently and openly used his other english tabloid, the Sun, as a political voice. It’s inconceivable that NOTW could have run this story about the no.2 in world Formula One car racing without his approval. Murdoch has been successfully accused in the past by a member of the Scottish parliament of complicity with MI5 (like your CIA, but worse) in secret filming of him.
Which would bring this theoretical comment to one of those LOL places;
Ms. E, concrete cows, suburban dungeons, bra-cam and The Spy Who Spanked Me. And a Lord of course.
Ms. E is one of the five women present in the very expensive apartment on the day of the beating, the others being A,B,C and D as named by the High Court.
She filmed the event using a bra cam supplied by NOTW. She didn’t know the other four women apart from Mosley’s regular party organiser, Mistress Switch, known in court far less evocatively as A.
In fact, Ms’s A,B,C and D were close enough to have raised over $20,000 for a cancer charity as “Bums on the Run”. Really.
Anyway, Ms E lives in Milton Keynes, a hour or so north of London, which is a rare thing in England, a “new town”, constructed on farm land with a grid system just off the M1 motorway and so featureless as to inspire the local council to have cows made of concrete to stand in the sterile fields.
She also had an S&M dungeon in her house, where she lived with her “spy” husband who she allegedly met at a spank-in. And sublet to Ms. Switch; the dungeon, that is, not the husband.
After she had downloaded her bra to the NOTW and thence to the internet, Mosley had her tracked down by goons from Lord Stevens’ (the ex London Police Chief) new retirement project security firm. They followed her husband to work at the MI5′s not-so-secret HQ on the banks of the river Thames in central London where some people would have you believe there was nearly an OK corral shootout between the Men in Black and the Men in Tweed.
The hubbie got the sack.
In the High Court Ms’s A,B,C and D all positively denied any Nazi connotations saying it was merely a standard “vice anglais” scenario, whilst NOTW played up the fact that Mosley had to have a band aid applied to his bum after a thrashing counted out in german. According to them, that meant that Mosley was commissioning a criminal act of assault although he was the willing victim.
So, now we get the crucial testimony of E, the outsider, the bra filmmaker, the spy’s wife, the callous career sadomasochist pro who has gone against the unwritten code of honour of trust and discretion that apparently prevails in these circles.
Oh no we don’t, she is in such a state of emotional and mental stress that she is incapable of giving evidence!
NOTW have taken this on the chin and continue to maintain that publication is in the public interest because of the Nazi theme and Mosley’s high profile.
They could have picked a better judge as this one apparently subscribes strongly to the increasingly fashionable belief that the richer you are the more privacy you are allowed.
If Rodney had asked friends/relatives about their views on this case, he would probably have got a similar reaction to that had you asked random americans about Scruggs. A lot would have heard nothing about it.
People that had might have said that it was typical of this sort of person, or obviously the witnesses had been tampered with (!), or he’s being targeted because he’s successful, he deserves what he gets etc.etc.
Others, fighting a very real rearguard action against daily “terrorist threat” justified incursions into the remnants of our private lives, will say this is the thin end of the stick and what happens between consenting adults in private is their business and no one else’s.
As far as commenting on a case when it is still being heard, yes, there’s a huge difference between our countries. We still have “artist’s impressions” of the courtroom scenes as no TV is allowed, all seemingly done by the same appalling artist in wax crayon. Even the stenographer looks guilty.
I- oops- Rodney does find it truly amazing the way in which your media almost begs for retrial or dismissal on the basis of publically prejudical statements being made during the course of trials by just about everyone involved.
I served on a jury as is my right and obligation 30 years ago in Knightsbridge Crown Court (pop round the back next time you’re in Harrods and have a look, it’s a lovely building).
We weren’t allowed to talk to anyone about anything to do with the case. Including each other. Unfortunately this extended to the jury room and we frustrated our judge by spending 16 hours on a shoplifting charge to come up with a hung jury.
In the end, we will all get our comeuppance at the Pearly Gates, is that not so?
Run along upstairs, dear Not/Rodney, and collect your party-favo[u]r.
> ^o^ <
ceegee, Roz is a FIND! And headed straight to our blogroll — thank you very much.
And a partridge in a pear tree ….
You might consider limiting the length of posts.
See, this is why I’m an Anglophile!!!!!!
Don’t you just love Roz and her cats, Lotus? I hope you enjoy!
slim 6, if you don’t enjoy an exquisite read, maybe you’re on the wrong blog. Not/Rodney put every word here to excellent use. (And that exclamation point — oh!)
ceegee 7, you betcha — AND I’ve spread it around to others similarly situated, who all thank you too.