What did the law firm Schillings tell Ryan Giggs they would achieve for him? Did they tell him they would ensure his name would go around the world on Twitter as never before?*

Wasting their client’s money…

UPDATE: The floodgates have opened, mainstream US media is naming Giggs; Forbes Magazine and Conde Nast’s Ars Technica. US based Brit Nick Denton’s Gawker is mocking the injunction as well.

*Data from Trendistic.

Ed Balls’ right-hand man, Alex Belardinelli, is breaking parliamentary rules. Not by daily dripping poison into the ears of journalists by briefing against Ed Miliband (just as he did against Alan Johnson). His rule breaking results from him being a registered parliamentary passholder. If he is employed by the Labour Party and is failing to declare this interest in the Register Of Interests Of Members’ Secretaries And Research Assistants, he has broken the rules and failed to disclose a financial interest. Given Belardinelli emails party press releases from his parliamentary email account, signed off as ‘Political Adviser to the Shadow Chancellor’, this is not wise. In government it would be a resigning matter.

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If on the other hand he is employed by Parliament as a member of Mr Balls’ parliamentary staff he is breaking IPSA rules by conducting party political activities funded by the taxpayer. IPSA rules ban using parliamentary expenses for party political activities.

Belardinelli sends out party political materials from his parliamentary email address, effectively conducting taxpayer funded campaigning, which is against the rules. Admittedly these rules are widely broken, but they are the rules. If he is working for the Labour Party full time, then he should have declared as such in the register of interests:

‘In accordance with Resolutions made by the House of Commons on 17 December 1985 and 28 June 1993, holders of photo-identity passes as Members’ secretaries or research assistants are in essence required to register: Any occupation or employment for which they receive over £329 from the same source in the course of a calendar year, if that occupation or employment is in any way advantaged by the privileged access to Parliament afforded by their pass’

It is not as if he doesn’t have previous for doing this when he was a SpAd in government. So which is it? Is he breaking IPSA’s rules or Parliament’s rules?

Morley pocketed £30,428 by claiming for a phantom mortgage and inflating the amount he was previously paying. He filled out a total of 40 forms relating to payments for his home. In total, he claimed £16,800 on a phantom mortgage and £15,200 after inflating the amount he was previously paying, for which he should have been entitled to only £1,572. David Laws filled out the same forms and claimed some £56,000 to which he was not entitled…

Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, whose report on super-injunctions is out today, will help determine if Britain is to have a free press or not in the future.

Lakshmi Mittal is the richest man in Britain, he has given the Labour Party over £2 million in donations. Since 2008 it has been an offence punishable by imprisonment to even say he has a super-injunction. Why? What is it about? You shall not know. Editors fear his wealth and the wrath of judges. Do we really want a country where journalists fear imprisonment for writing the truth?

In 1948 Britain helped draft the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 declares:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

No judge should presume to dare to take away our rights in order to protect the privacy of the rich and powerful. If France had less stringent privacy laws and a less craven press, Dominique Strauss-Kahn might not have got away with doing what he has done for years. The freedom of the press is a check on the powerful and a restraint on them. This is not about Ryan Giggs’ sex-life, it is about knowing the truth about the powerful. Remember Lakshmi Mittal when privacy advocates attack “tittle-tattle”.

Simon Jenkins writes that loss of privacy…

“…is the tax that a free society imposes on celebrity. In the case of politicians it is an ordeal which they must undergo as the price of office.”