7 Comments

• Jo 23rd Jan '10 - 10:22am

  Indeed this is a very scary story and bloggers must bear this in mind when posting political smears against their opponents.

• Niklas Smith 23rd Jan '10 - 10:57am

  Not that I have much sympathy for someone who smears people’s private lives, but what on earth is he being arrested for? Sending offensive e-mails to someone? Surely that would be harrassment?

  Apparently, “The requirement which is found in English law [for a breach of the peace to have been committed], that there should be harm or a threat of harm to person or property, is not part of the law of Scotland.” Instead, “…what is required to constitute the crime is conduct severe enough to cause alarm to ordinary people and threaten serious disturbance to the community.” (All quotes from Smith v Donnelly, §16, 17.)

  Surely e-mails sent to one person, no matter how offensive, cannot “threaten serious disturbance to the community” because they are only sent to one person. The judgement in Smith v Donnelly argues that “breach of the peace” is a sufficiently well-defined crime to be aligned with the ECHR’s requirement that charges must define what the limits of acceptable are. But if the charge is used in such a catch-all way, can we really believe that?

• Mark MacLachlan 23rd Jan '10 - 11:40am

  Hi there a Lib Dem friend directed me here. (Yes I do have cross party pals) If you look closely you’ll see the blog has been opened since the 13th of December and there is nothing in the way of smear about it. Selective comments skewed through the News of the World prism do not an attack blog make. The latest take from our wonderful media is that it is a blog which ‘criticised politicians’.

  The breach of the peace charge is the wishy washiest of charges, which the Procurator Fiscal in all likelihood will not forward to trial. The police have merely passed the buck. It has been suggested to me that this is possibly a ploy to hinder an Unfair Dismissal tribunal, where comments made there me be regarded ass subjudice.

  regards

  Mark MacLachlan

  PS If memory serves me well I don’t think I ever mocked the Scottish Lib Dems other than Malcolm Bruce and his bizarre expenses claims.

  http://the-universality-of-cheese.blogspot.com/

• Andrew Suffield 23rd Jan '10 - 12:59pm

  The fact that he happens to have a blog is largely irrelevant; it’s why he got fired, but this charge appears to be about some emails which we have not seen. We can’t pass judgement without seeing them.

• Alec 23rd Jan '10 - 7:10pm

  Here it can be seen that this probably relates to allegations of veiled threats MacLachlan made in e-mails to Russell. If these are accurate, I can think of better causes to endorse.

  None of this changes, though, questions of Russell’s original involvement.

  Mark, seriously, take a vow of silence on this.

• Alec 23rd Jan '10 - 8:09pm

  This is pathetic… someone I have no doubt is Mark has found my blog.

  http://efrafandays.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/blogger-mark-maclachlan-arrested/

  If he has been charged, this strikes as seriously stupid behaviour.

  PS Sorry about the ealier double post.

• Alec 23rd Jan '10 - 10:38pm

  Check out Fitaloon’s new friend:

  http://diack.co.uk/fitaloon/2010/01/big-cheese-arrested