The Oncoming Legal Storm

I am sorry for the recent silence. When you are writing 16 hours per day on a book, there is not much lexical spare capacity. Anyway, the book is now done and I can return to blogging. I might even post some entries covering events of the last week such as attending the John Pilger première and one of my informant’s reports of Dame BS shenanigans.

Of course what I mean by 'the book is now done’ is that I have written the text for it, selected the pictures and emailed it my editor. The whole set of other processes have to be gone through before I can really say I have finished work on it. Amongst these jobs will be the inevitable discussions about tonality issues with my editor. I do not mind this. An editor who is at least thinking about the tone of a book beats some of the naff font jockeys I have worked with in the past.

I also do not mind sweating over the captions and acknowledgements. The one thing I am dreading is the oncoming legal storm. The turnip-headed legalists who plague my creative existence will no doubt make my life miserable once they see the text for the new Conspiracy Files.

Both the publisher’s in-house lawyers and the expensive libel specialists will display vast caution and a total lack of commonsense. I already know some of their emails will make me want to cry with frustration. We will clash about what constitutes fair comment. We will clash over whether we can call someone a ‘little Hitler’ given they have already lost a libel case over that phrase. Voices will be raised over how upset the Attorney General would really be if I mentioned the names of a two pathologists. Two weeks of my life will disappear in trying to resolve our differences.

However, until then I have a few days to recover the use of my atrophied muscles and find solutions to some pressing worries regarding Nanna. I will also be able to do some fun things before the tempest hits. Blogging and celebrating Surreal Girl’s birthday are top of the list.

Turnip-headed Twats

Lawyers are often the bane of writers. Generally speaking they are a pox upon the truth telling process and an anathema to communication. In particular, the current lawyers I am grappling with are turnip-headed twats whose dedication to over caution, not knowing the facts and failure to engage with fair comment is doing harmful things to my blood pressure.

I miss working for a ballsy, news organization that actually starts from the perspective of what can be said instead of what will not upset those being written about. The recurrent legal grief I get every time I try to tell truth in print is seriously making me consider taking a Masters in Media Law. I now certainly understand Heinlein’s Year They Hanged the Lawyers.

Come the ELF revolution, the lawyers will not be hanged or even put against a wall and shot, but most of them will be looking for a new profession. Possibly farming turnips.