Footballer sues Twitter

A BED HOPPING FOOTBALLER is suing Twitter, and possibly 'teh interwebs', in a bid to keep his name out of the red top tabloids.

The footballer, who has been named on the internet, in a Spanish newspaper and pictured in the Scottish Sunday Herald, is hoping to stop people from talking about his affairs, if you will excuse the pun.

We can't name the footballer - strictly speaking we could, but we don't much like porridge, so we will pass. Others, however, have taken that risk

This has been most obvious on Twitter where the names of the footballer and a host of other super injunction-wielding public figures have appeared, leading to much controversy. It is perhaps because of this that the unnamed but well-known footballer has wound up a lawyer and fired a lawsuit at the social notworking service.

We think that the super injunctions scandals have shown just how silly the law is, particularly in this modern digital age.

Under their weight journalists, politicians, even your dog, are expected to keep quiet about cases, just because someone has enough money to demand it and regardless of whether the reporting of facts is in the public interest or not.

Witness the smashing of Sir Fred Goodwin's super injunction. The head of the giant banking firm RBS had tried to hush up stories that suggested that he was bed-hopping when he should have been running one of the country's biggest financial institutions. Did the public and parliament have a right to know about this? Well yes, they probably did.

Whether super injunctions are fair or not is moot, as a law that prevents UK citizens from knowing or thinking about something does not carry much weight overseas or in the virtual world of the internet, which of course is notoriously difficult to police. Like it or lump it, the truth is out there, and no amount of money will bury it. The good news, unless you are a wayward footballer, is that the times might be a changing.