Who is CTB?

And is Google UK keeping it from me?

The whole saga of Twitter vs. Superinjunctions rumbles on with some footballer referred to as CTB is suing Twitter. Unfortunately, because the imperial government is afraid of Twitter, I can’t go nosing there about to find out who this person is. When I try searching for CTB via Google, I merely get links to the Telegraph and the Mail. However, a little perseverance leads me to Kashmir Hill on the Forbes website and an article entitled He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named (In The UK) Sues Twitter Over A User Naming Him.

Our D-list-celeb-boffing footballer is Ryan Giggs, who’s famous enough for me to have heard of him, and footballer enough for me to know next to nothing about him. He may be overpaid, oversexed and over there, but he’s not a Player in my world and thus inconsequential.

Also, these superinjunctions are like the apple in the garden of Eden or alcohol in prohibition America. You may not care who Imogen Thomas’s friend is, but the moment something like this pops up, you just have to know. You feel the itch and have to scratch it, which leaves a large red mark everyone then notices when, if it’d been left alone, no one much would’ve paid attention to it.

Superinjunctions sound a little too extreme and a bit too draconian. They sound like the sort of thing you’d expect here in this authoritarian paradise if the imperial government wasn’t so frightened of free speech. At the same time, I’m no real fan of the papers scrutinising the lives of public figures to expose peccadilloes to increase their circulation even if that comes into conflict with the all-too-human interest in gossip. I’m also not impressed by the implicit belief of papers like The Sun that the public is quite as prudish and prurient as it thinks it is. Perhaps, though, I’m wrong on this point and the public really is this prudish.

Do I need to know that Ryan Giggs was playing hide-the-sausage with Imogen Thomas? Not really. Am I outraged by his behaviour? Not at all. Our semi-evolved simian (as Douglas Adams put it) is doing what some semi-evolved simians do from time to time and ought not to be condemned for being human. His wife, on the other hand, was probably inclined to be judge, jury, and executioner.

Meanwhile, an original Jane Austen manuscript is up for auction according to this article in The Guardian. Apparently Austen liked to cross things out a lot when she was writing and a original manuscript would give some insight into the development of the story. These days, though, with writing being done on computers, there aren’t going to be record like these unless authors save v. 1, v. 2, etc. as separate files or leave secondary evidence.

This entry has subsequently been edited as a consequence of parliamentary privilege.