Imogen Thomas’s Married Lover Finally Exposed — Footballer Ryan Giggs

[Nye Bevan]

Ryan Giggs is allegedly the footballer who requested a super-injunction to guard his secret affair with model Imogen Thomas. The legal orders put in place by the British courts cannot be enforced outside of the UK and foreign media sources have discovered and released the famous footballer’s name.

Imogen has been inundated with nasty tweets and has made a plea for it to stop stating, “Can the haters stop writing me? Don’t you think I have suffered enough?” The pretty reality star was formerly Miss Wales and appeared on the show “Big Brother.” Together the pair had an affair for a reported six-month period. Imogen could not afford a protection order and her name has been spoken with criticism since the story broke, but the super-injunction protected Ryan Giggs for a while. He plays midfielder for Manchester United from the Premier League.

http://wakeywakeynews.com/60823/imogen-thomass-married-lover-finally-exposed-footballer-ryan-giggs

I have never heard of either of these people but find the whole concept of "super-injunctions" to be abhorrent.

[T_i_B]

1. Giggs is also taking legal action against Twitter....

....to get them to disclose the details of all the people who've named him as having an affair.

The trouble is that half of the UK Twittersphere has already mentioned that he's the footballer who can't keep his trousers on and has taken out the superinjunction. Even on a footballers vastly overinflated salary, he does not have the resources to take legal action against everyone who's broken the superinjunction.

And what's more, the more he gets his lawyers out on everyone who's mentioned his name the more people tweet about who he's been shagging so it's pretty counterproductive really. I'd be amazed if his missus does not already know that he's been shagging around.

[Hopeless Romantic]

6. I heard this from a bloke in the pub. Now I hear he's suing the brewery

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. This was more or less said on Have I Got News For You about 2 weeks ago

They were talking about "footballer? Goes to lots of rock concerts?".

And Private Eye also did it last week - under 'Me And My Spoon - Superinjuncted Public Figure XMC' they had 'Next Week: Ryan Giggs - Me And My Gigs'.

Having said that, the link you give now goes to 'site unavailable'. I wonder if it's had to be taken down (or maybe just exceeded bandwidth).

I'm sure they can't remove it from all websites by now; but I guess they want to get whoever first put it there fined or otherwise punished.

[fedsron2us]

4. The farce is that if you Google the word Twitter

and the alleged litigants name you get 4,970,000 hits. In fact Google 'Twitter' alone and you get the word 'footballer' as a possible search refinement. The only way to stop people finding out who is involved would be to set up Chinese style censorship reducing internet access to fewer sites. That may be just about achievable for the CCP who have an economy based on manufacturing but web restrictions would be death to many UK based businesses reliant on open IT networks. The truth is that British politicians need to get off their arses and to introduce some decent legal guidelines rather than leaving it to the British judiciary who clearly have been usurping the role of Parliament here. The Fred Goodwin case highlights the dangers of the current situation since press coverage of his relationship with a business colleague would clearly in the public interest as it may have impacted directly on his decision making in the run up to the banking crisis that required the British taxpayer to rescue RBS. For what its worth my personal view is that the more you trade and profit from your public image the less entitled you are to the protection of privacy laws. At the very least all civil litigants need to be publically named so we can get away from the ludicrous situation where anonymous is apparently trying to sue anonymous.

[fedsron2us]

3. Streisand Syndrome

The more you sue those spreadng rumours on the web the wider the circulation becomes.

Normally the private lives of Premier League footballers would not even rate a passing mention on this forum. Now its got its own thread

On a more serious note I doubt that many of our US cousins can even begin to imagine the Kafkaesque world that British lawyers and judges have been trying to create with Super Injunctions where not only is the name of the litigants secret but also the very existence of the order itself. You then wind up with the situation where an individual could be sued for breaching an injunction he did not know existed.

Of course it is now rapidly disappearing up its own fundament when faced with the reality of the internet where for good or bad most of the major social networking sites operate from the US under the the tenets of its law.

By making this case a 'freedom of speech' issue the parties in the UK are now attracting the attention of the US media who naturally have had little compunction about naming those involved

All I can say to whoever has been dumb enough to throw his or her money away on this case is onto a loser.

British judges may delude themselves that they are all powerful but the reality is that their writ runs no further than the UK borders.

Twitter is based in the US and protected by the US First Amendment so the chances of winning a court case there are nil.

It is possible that Twitter might divulge the identity of the posters but that may not help the plaintiff since it seems likely that the tweets originated via a UK media outlet who almost certainly knew enough to cover their tracks or even may be using a foreign national to do the posting. If it is the latter and the person turns out to be a US citizen then again the legal process would fail. The only alternative would be to take a civil case in the US but that would by its very nature out the individual concerned since they would have no right of anonymity in a US court.

The UK courts might try to bar Twitter from being accessed in the UK but that would be a massive own goal for the UK as a place in which to undertake any sort of international social network based IT activity.

In the last resort Celebs exist so that their private lives can be smeared across the papers to divert the masses from considering more serious political and economic matters.The fact that they do not realise that is the only reason for their existence shows how deluded they have become. For that reason alone super injunctions are doomed eventually to fail.

[T_i_B]

7. There was also the Trafigura / Carter Ruck affair

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=191x28287

I wonder if Ryan Giggs lawyers are just angling for getting some ££££££ out of a test case regarding superinjunctions.

[Nye Bevan]

5. Spanish Press Out Ryan Giggs as Player Who Had Affair with Imogen Thomas

Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs was named by the Spanish press and other outlets as the married soccer player who had a longstanding affair with model Imogen Thomas, a revelation that a judge in the United Kingdom had barred from publication.

Unfortunately for Giggs, that provision doesn’t extend to publications in other countries.


http://www.mediabistro.com/sportsnewser/spanish-press-out-ryan-giggs-as-player-who-had-affair-with-imogen-thomas_b8836

The whole concept of "not being allowed to publish in the UK" is absolutely laughable in 2011.

[fedsron2us]

8. Not often I agree with a Daily Telegraph comment piece

but I am afraid they are on the money here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/8531766/Human-Rights-Act-behind-privacy-farce.html

It is little short of tragic that ideas designed to protect people from totalitarian regimes has been debased by
randy footballers and a grasping, over creative legal system into a bedroom farce .

[LeftishBrit]

9. IMO it's not all quite that simple...

Overpaid arrogant footballers who use their money to buy 'super-injunctions' and act as though they have more rights than others are very unlikeable characters, and I can't muster much sympathy for the individuals involved.

BUT the right-wing press are all onto this because (a) they want unlimited rights to invade *everyone's* privacy (remember the News of the World hacking scandal!) and (b) right-wingers HATE the Human Rights Act.

Here's an article by Polly Toynbee giving the other side:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/24/rightwing-media-makes-political-personal

Not sure that I agree with all she's saying, but she makes a point. I don't thing that letting the rich pay for 'super-injunctions' is the answer; but I think that the ethics of much of the press need to be cleaned up. Sometimes it's a totally unsympathetic character like Giggs - but sometimes it's a vulnerable person whose privacy is invaded for a 'human interest' story, or a comparatively left-wing politician or activist who is 'swiftboated' to give more power to the Right.

[fedsron2us]

10. On a freedom of speech issues the Guardian has no balls.

When the crunch comes it always kowtows to the authorities, Nothing has changed since Peter Preston grassed up Sarah Tisdall to the Thatcher government. Toynbees piece is part of the long and dishonourable history of that paper pimping for the establishment.

As one comment on the article said

It's depressing, but I guess not surprising, to find the Guardian backing the transfer of legislative power away from elected representatives to unelected judges. I suppose the feeling is the judiciary are more "their kind of people".

I agree that the tabloids often abuse the privacy of the vulnerable in the pusuit of a human interest story but since most of these victims dont have a cool £50,000 to pay for a super injunction they have hardly been protected by the creative rulings of Judge Eady and his ilk

The truth is that if you make a living and profit by your public name then you are never going to enjoy the same level of privacy as other individuals. Celebs who want the fame and the money but dont like the prying eyes of the media have not really chosen the correct profession. The two are inextricably linked and the law needs to recognise that fact.

There is something fundamentally wrong when Human Rights legislation starts getting prostituted to protect adulterers from the consequences of their actions. As the UK has a rich history of libel law suits the rich and the powerful have plenty of redress against unfounded claims. Why should they be given additional protection when the accusations appear to be correct A legal system that is dedicated to suppressing the truth and protecting lies is the bed rock of all forms of totalitarianism. If Toynbee can not recognise the fact that suppressing free speech on this matter sets a dangerous precedent then she is clearly no friend of liberty.