This is correct. He had to show that there were grounds to believe that his conviction was unsafe. That was not upheld, and so leave to appeal was not granted. His appeal that his sentence was manifestly excessive was also dismissed.
It's not something I would personally defend, far from it and I don't think I did defend that particular action, rather I had intended to question our response to it. How do we decide what is acceptable and who does the deciding hence the Michael Ignatieff quote? Is the only response to further erode our freedoms?
I don't think we have to have our freedoms eroded, just think a bit more before we type, and remember that there are real people at the other end. Unless you take real care to limit your audience some of those people won't share your sense of humour or understand your tone, and some may use the information you put out in a way you never meant for it to be used. For example, I don't take Goonerhater's repeated comments about torching Guardianistas as anything more than hyperbole, but that could get him into shit elsewhere. It's also why I think people shouldn't take it personally when their threads get sunk or posts deleted - the site admins are legally responsible for "publishing" the guff we come out with here, and if we take things too far then there's a risk we lose the site completely one day.
It doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be consistency in terms of the way the law is applied at the moment though.
Comments
Edit: I see Sky Sports are reporting that he 'lost' his appeal. Personally I would go with the BBC being more accurate...
Judges also rejected Ched Evans's bid to cut his five-year jail sentence.
here, and if we take things too far then there's a risk we lose the site completely one day.
It doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be consistency in terms of the way the law is applied at the moment though.