A note for slanderers, libellers, satirists, drunks, angry and bitter critics, parties with an urgent need for anti-social expression.

The Draft Defamation Bill was in committee last night, with regard to website operators.

The Government aren’t seeking to make website operators liable for comments posted under on-line articles.

That’s good for Guido, or we’d be in jail by now. There’s no telling where some of you would be.

However, readers wanting to complain will be able to make representations, and the offending comments can be taken down without penalty by the operator.

Or the operator may choose to contact the poster and ask him or her to take them down. The poster may decide to stand by those comments and the matter would go through the courts in the usual way.

The website owner, as a distributor, would not be liable, as long as the processes, the procedures, the regulatory catechisms are adhered to.

Not much news here, then. And that’s good news.

But is that the result of climate change? Evan Davies will let us know in due course.