Originally Posted by Skii
Only in the UK could someone of such important and respected standing be caught out in such an embarrassing and frankly laughable situation and come out of it wealthier.
Did he come out wealthier, though?
There have been plenty of stories about F1 sponsors threatening to pull out, about the German government not wanting to meet with him, and so on. I don't know how many of these are true, and we certainly don't don't what business or money-making opportunities he may have had have vanished because of this story, and may well stay vanished because of the 'no smoke without fire' principle.
Personally, I rather suspect he's far from wealthier because of this, and just because he's won the court case doesn't mean it's all okay now, either.
Personally, from what I read about him, and I don't mean this story, I don't like the man at all. But that doesn't mean he's fair game for newspaper attack dogs, which seems to be the inference of the judges ruling that there was no evidence of Nazi-ism. I mena, given what we've seen of the facts, you perhaps could put that interpretation on what was being done, but you could equally well put the prison guard interpretation on it. If it had been clear it was the latter interpretation, would it have been anything like the explosive story it was?
Would it, under the right to privacy in private life in the HRA, even have been publishable if it had been clear it was prison guards? I doubt it.
It seems, at least, 'convenient' that the very interpretation that makes this an explosive front-page story is the very one the newspaper chose to take when, from the judgement, there's no clear evidence it actually was that.
It suggests, re: the newspaper's motivation ... if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck ...... publish and be damned, regardless of the consequences to the individual.