16th July 2008

Television, newspapers (and possibly radio with the exception of the Concert programme) have given blanket coverage of the fact that Television Sports presenter, Tony Veitch thumped up his former girlfriend 2 years ago putting her in hospital and then paid her off to the tune of 160 grand to keep quiet about it. She kept her part of the bargain, but someone has finally snitched to the media and a feeding frenzy has resulted.
Now the disclaimers!
Now I'm not a Veitch fan, he's a smarmy little bugger, cock sure of himself and it's hard to feel any sympathy for his predicament. Someone disliked him enough to stick the knife in by leaking details of the story and there were probably many Brutus' standing behind he or she ready to plunge their daggers in should the first blow not prove fatal.
I do not condone physical violence whether it be between opposite sex or same sex persons. I don't even like Boxing or Wrestling and the act he is accused of is inexcusable.

What does disturb me though is how the media whip up the blood lust by trotting out every spokesperson for NGO's such as Battered Housewives, Rape Crisis and many others championing women's issues and Causes. They all get to have their 60 seconds of fame in endless News sound bites (plus get a plug for their cause). The incident happened 2 years ago for Gods sake! The victim settled out of court for much more than she would have received if she'd laid charges against him and has obviously moved on with her life. She made a contract and kept to the bargain. End of story!

Society seems to think the have the right to butt into other peoples lives, make pronouncements and judgments especially if they are well known and seem to take pleasure when they are proved fallible . It's the mob at the scaffold syndrome and it's not pretty to watch.

The premise of my argument is that if two people want to contract out of laws of the State, where no third party is involved and there is no coercion to accept the settlement, they should be allowed to do so. The laws are there to protect the injured party not the readers of newspapers and the victim can press charges should vengeance or justice be their desire. The Police perhaps should investigate to satisfy themselves that no pressure to accept compensation and not press charges was applied, but other than that they should have no further interest. That includes every other Tom, Dick or Harriet including the media.

I know many will disagree with me and will counter about one law for the rich and another for the poor. Egalitarianism is a myth. The privileged always have had the best deal in life and it will stay that way humans being what they are

TC