A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an open letter to Piers Morgan and Jeremy Vine, asking them to comment on the sudden veil of silence drawn over their previously incontrovertibly strong vaccine zealotry, and to address the findings of their friend and colleague, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, that the vaccine can and does cause catastrophic harms.

This letter caught the attention of rather a lot of people, and was shared by thousands, including high-profile activists such as James Delingpole, Bev Turner, and Matt Le Tissier. So, suffice to say, Mssrs. Morgan and Vine, saw it.

Mr. Morgan, as his handlers would indubitably have advised, did not acknowledge it, but Vine - clearly off the leash for the weekend - issued a reply so fatuous, so vain, so utterly absurd, that even HE deleted it eventually. He said, in response to Mr. Le Tisser's share:

"Excuse me Matt but if this is a letter to me and Piers, WHY THE HELL is it illustrated with two halves of @piersmorgan's face? Have some bloody manners and get me on there... Disgusting."

To respond to this with "read the room, Jeremy", seems a bit of an understatement... He was inundated with criticism in response to his half-witted (actually, that's an insult to half-wits everywhere, clearly Vine is possessed of a much lower fraction of functioning grey matter than that) attempt at sarcasm and - staggeringly, given the gravity of the issues raised in the letter - humour. It was simply wildly inappropriate at every level, and irrevocably revealed Vine for what he is - a preening, shallow narcissist who dismisses the most grave issues of human suffering and life and death with glib and facile idiocy.

That is my opinion of the man, and I am happy to freely and publicly share it. He is a public figure, after all, who invites and incites extreme division and controversy by the wilfully provocative nature of his remarks, so he should, of course, expect to be scrutinised, and criticised - at length.

However, since I began directing my thoughts and queries towards Mr. Vine, a not inconsiderable number of individuals have expressed real concern that I could be endangering myself by so doing - that the famously litigious Vine could take me to court to shut me up. I genuinely appreciate all the concern people have expressed for me on this issue, but it also troubles me that people have this concern, so I want to be absolutely and abundantly clear on this, not just for this specific matter, but for free speech and its curtailment in general:

Nobody can take you to court simply because you issued an opinion about them that they didn't like. If this was a thing that was possible, free speech laws would have no purpose, because every time someone said something mean - which happens approximately 8746256950285658 a day - they'd be dragged to court, and so the entire court system would collapse within days.

Please remember that free speech laws are not there to protect nice, kind, and complimentary speech. They are there to protect speech that is challenging, critical, and controversial, and the UK just so happens to have some of the most robust free speech laws in the world. To quote from the Human Rights Act 1998: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority." 

I know at this point people will interject, "but what about Alex Belfield?". Well, according to the judge's closing comments, Belfield was on trial for stalking, and coordinated and direct campaigns of personal harassment - not making critical remarks about public figures on his blog. So, just in case there was any doubt, please let me be abundantly clear that I have absolutely no intention of personally harassing or stalking Jeremy Vine (I can't think of anything worse - I hate Surrey), nor do I have any desire to have any sort of private correspondence with the man - hence a public, open letter, requesting a public, open response.

While I didn't follow the Belfield trial very closely, I do certainly think that this trial, along with the recent Alex Jones trial, got quite so much publicity to fulfil a nefarious agenda which, sadly and inevitably, has been quite successful - to frighten people out of exercising their full free speech rights, by perpetuating the utterly false notion that it is possible for you to be sued for so doing.

Can you be sued for saying, ss Jones did, that Sandy Hook was a hoax? No. "Sandy Hook was a hoax". There, I said it, and I am quite confident I will remain blissfully untroubled by lawyer's letters as a result. A sly sleight of hand with the Alex Jones trial - a fact which was conveniently kept out of the papers - is that he was NOT on trial for saying Sandy Hook was a hoax (which is a perfectly legal position to hold), and he was not permitted to produce evidence in court to argue his case on this basis, which would have been a trial "on the merits".

Instead, he was found guilty before the trial had even begun on a technicality, and the entire purpose of the trial was simply to determine how much he would pay - which is known as a trial "on the damages". Of course, very few people outside of the law understand the difference, and so the trial was intentionally misrepresented to the public to scare them into silence regarding contradicting the "official line" - promoting the idea that Jones was on trial for contradicting the government on Sandy Hook, which is not true at all.

So too with the Belfield trial. He wasn't on trial for making critical comments about Jeremy Vine, because that isn't against the law. He was on trial for stalking and harassment, which is. Stalking and harassment do have clear legal definitions, and they are not "anyone saying anything about me I don't like".

I have certainly never stalked or harassed anyone, nor will I ever do so, but, as my responsibilities as a citizen journalist oblige me to do, I will continue to vigorously scrutinise, criticise, and hold to account high-profile public figures - especially where it comes to their disseminating extremely dangerous and reckless public health misinformation that has, and continues to, endanger millions of lives. I will not be intimidated into silence by their issuing baseless threats

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have had to reassure anxious readers that, honestly, someone being contradicted or having their ego bruised is not the basis for a court case, as, in 2021, an individual who will remain nameless - as she did the first time, making the whole thing even more farcical - threatened to sue me (and by 'threatened', I mean she wrote hysterical social media posts about it, not that she had actually engaged a lawyer to communicate with me), because I expressed an opinion on the London protests that she didn't like.

Bear in mind, having had at the time no idea this individual was even involved in these protests, I did not mention her by name or even allude to her, but she nevertheless declared publicly she would sue me for defamation and sent all her flying monkeys after me to say mean words. I thought this was the most ridiculous display I had ever seen in my life, but what really did trouble me was how many people privately contacted me to say, "oh my God, I'm really worried about you, it looks like she's really serious and is going to sue you!"

That made me angry then, because what this idiotic woman was doing was not simply being a nuisance towards me (I can certainly cope with that), but frightening many, many others into silence, not just about protests, but regarding a whole cornucopia of other issues, because she was making all these people believe you can be sued simply for saying something someone else doesn't like.

So, please, let me reassure you, one more time and for the record - you really can't. This is the whole point of free speech laws and why people have fought so hard over the years to vigorously defend them.

The powers that be are now strongly incentivised to conflate lawful free speech - such as, "Jeremy Vine is an idiot" or "Sandy Hook was a hoax" - with unlawful criminality, such as stalking and violent threats.

There is a huge chasm of difference, and the establishment knows all too well what it is, but they are doing everything they can to make sure you don't.

Bear in mind I have been running my website for two years, making such declarations as the UK Government is engaged in unrepentant genocide, politicians and "experts" are pathologically lying mass murderers, and I have yet to be the recipient of a single sentence from any lawyer telling me to stop.

The closest I got to this was, when I was doing some consultancy work for the Jonathan Lea Network last year, an aggrieved gentleman who saw my opinions online and didn't like them, contacted the eponymous Mr. Lea and stated that, as I was a "serious purveyor of misinformation", my engagement with the Lea Network should be terminated.

Can you honestly imagine what a snivelling little piece of human detritus you would have to be to try and get a complete stranger fired, because they held opinions that weren't yours and had the temerity to share them on their own social media page?

It obviously hadn't occurred to the sniveller in question that Jonathan Lea and I might share a number of views, and indeed that it was our shared views that had catalysed a connection in the first place... The point here is that the general public is so brainwashed by "I'm telling teacher" mind-control - the idea we are all indoctrinated with, starting at age four, that there is an all-powerful external authority who can control everything we say and do - that they actually believe, if they encounter an opinion they don't like, there's some "authority" they can run to to get that person chastised and their opinions silenced.

Whether their foot-stomping Veruca-Salt-esque tantrum takes the form of "I'm telling teacher", "I'm telling your boss", or "I'm telling my lawyer", the underlying mentality behind these sinister cry-bullies is always the same. They're so mentally deficient, so emotionally retarded, so psychically empty inside, that they can't respond to an opinion they disagree with with a carefully constructed counter-argument, reason, or facts - rather, all they can do is spit the dummy and scweam and scweam until they're sick (or their bank manager is, at the amount of money they've wasted having dead-end consultations with lawyers).

So, can Jeremy Vine sue me for writing him an open letter, asking him publicly to address it, and expressing the fact that I don't like him? No, he cannot. Because I haven't broken any laws (far from it).

The question is - as he is a broadcaster bound by certain standards of accuracy and integrity in reporting - can the same be said for Mr. Vine?

I suggest that those of us criticising Vine, and other highly visible public figures who have knowingly promoted life-threateningly wrong disinformation to audiences of millions (and they do know, as my letter verifies), should be far less worried about punitive legal action, than Vine and co themselves.

However, I am sure it will gratify Mr. Vine to see that I have, on this occasion at least, used a photo of him to accompany the article...

Thanks for reading! This site is 100% reader funded, with no advertisements or paywalls. If you would like to make a contribution, please do so through Patreon, BuyMeACoffee or bank transfer to: Nat West, a/c 30835984, s/c 54-10-27, account name FINCH MA. Your support is really appreciated. Thank you.