Blog Posts by Ian Dunt

By Alex Dymock

An openly gay barrister, magistrate and alderman for the City of London has today been acquitted of possessing five images of 'extreme pornography' and one purportedly indecent image.  The jury at Kingston Crown Court returned a not-guilty verdict on all counts, clarifying the extent of what remains a confused and confusing piece of legislation.

The case of Simon Walsh raises new and important questions about the legal status of possessing images of consenting adults engaging in kinky sex acts, even if the acts themselves are legal to practice.  This landmark case also indicates you could be prosecuted for images found in your email that you neither requested nor opened. As kinky sex becomes ever more normalised, particularly in light of the huge commercial success of E.L. James's erotic trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, and the media storm around the novels, it seems a good time to reconsider whether sexual acts mentioned in the novel are publicly considered extreme or

Can David Cameron survive the by-election triggered by the departure of Louise Mensch?

Labour didn't waste any time Monday morning. Just hours after Louise Mensch announced she would step down as an MP, the party's prospective candidate for Corby and East Northamptonshire fired off a press release.

"Louise Mensch was obviously struggling to balance being an MP with her family and business commitments. I respect her for the honest way she talked about this and her decision to step down," Andy Sawford wrote. "Labour is now looking forward to the campaign ahead. During the by-election we will focus on the two wasted years of Tory policies that have taken the country back into recession and left Corby suffering job losses in both the public and private sector."

The opposition's eagerness reflects the value of the seat. Corby is a bell-weather constituency, with a mixed social composition, which could greatly strengthen Ed Miliband's claim to be on the road to Downing Street.

The former

Yesterday Nick Clegg confirmed Lords reform was dead — and pledged not to support the Tories' goal of boundary reviews in revenge. Here are six things we learned from his explosive statement
1) A Tory majority is now very unlikely

Clegg's announcement he would whip his MPs into voting against the boundaries review means it will almost certainly not pass. With Liberal Democrats and Labour united in opposing the motion, it will not secure a Commons majority.

The Tories were relying on their increased seats from the review — probably about 20 of them. Now they will need a lead of at least seven points to win an outright majority. Most polls currently put them at least ten points behind Labour.

Politics is unpredictable and Ed Miliband could easily have a highly embarrassing episode at the election - like Neil Kinnock's 'we're alright' - which changes his fortune. But as things stand, David Cameron looks unlikely to increase his share of the vote to the extent demanded by the current

In one evening Mo Farah did more for multiculturalism in this country than the rest of us do in a lifetime.

He did it with mental commitment and a glorious display of the potential of the human body. But more than anything he did at a press conference last night when some bright-spark journalist asked him if he would have preferred to win the medal for Somalia, a country he left under asylum when he was eight.

"Look mate, this is my country," he replied. "This is where I grew up, this is where I started life. This is my country and when I put on my Great Britain vest I'm proud."

The Daily Mail's pre-Games campaign focus on 'plastic Brits' — a dangerous and unpleasant phrase —seems like a bad dream now, an echo of a harsher, nastier time. Farah is a testament to the millions who came to this country - sometimes looking for work, sometimes escaping danger - and continue to believe in it despite the daily torrent of resentment churned out by tabloids and pub-bores.

Just before Farah

When Jeremy Paxman wrote his book 'The English', he asked playwright Alan Bennett to offer him some thoughts.

"I'm hopeless at this kind of thing," Bennett wrote back. "If I could put into words what I mean by Englishness (and what I love and detest abut it) I wouldn't write at all, as coming to terms with what it is what keeps me going."

On Friday night, Danny Boyle tried to define Britishness, whose complexities are even greater than Englishness, to the world. It will have been a baffling experience for them, because it is a subject the British are unable to explain even to themselves.

The political reaction has been predictable. Aidan Burley, the Tory MP who last entered the national consciousness by wearing a Nazi uniform, branded the ceremony "leftie multi-cultural crap". Labour MPs argued the inclusion of protest marches, the NHS and Doreen Lawrence provided a progressive Trojan Horse.

Similar things could be said for the right by Winston Churchill, whose statue waved on the

Right-wing US shock-jocks are not celebrated for their capacity for logic, but even on the lowest of expectations Rush Limbaugh's attack on The Dark Knight Rises was really weird. The conservative has decided that the villain of the piece — a drug-taking bruiser called Bane — was constructed to help Barack Obama's campaign. His name, apparently, seems awfully similar to 'Bain', the Mitt Romney venture capital firm the incumbent has been attacking in recent weeks.

"Do you think it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire-breathing, four-eyed whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?" he barked during his last show. "So this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there's discussion out there as to whether or not this was purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. The audience is going to be huge. A lot of people are going to see the movie. And it's a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop-culture crowd, and they're going to

John Terry shouted 'black c***' at Anton Ferdinand on October 23rd 2011 during Chelsea's game against Queen's Park Rangers. He eventually faced criminal charges and an FA investigation, lost the captain's armband and triggered the resignation of Fabio Capello, which is probably the only good thing to have come out of it.

He should never have gone to trial because the law used against him should not exist.

Terry was charged with a racially aggravated contravention of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which outlaws threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.

There are many people who want the law scrapped, not least former shadow home secretary David Davis and gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, both of whom supported the recent campaign against it. The list of insane arrests under the law barely needs repeating, but it includes an Oxford student who told a

It was a night which may mark the beginning of the end of the coalition. As the dust settled, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives were issuing explicit threats to each other on television, the prime minister was shouting at his own MPs in public and Tory rebels were being ordered to go home to avoid their furious whips.

The heightened emotional pitch of the evening was created over the weekend, when Richard Reeves, Clegg's former strategy director, gave an interview in which he said the Liberal Democrats would not support the Tories plans for a boundary review unless they got Lords reform in return.

There has been much talk of high principle recently, but the bare bones of the conflict come down to the fact that Conservatives need the extra seats the boundary review offers and the Lib Dems want the balance of power a proportionally elected second Chamber will give them.

"I don't think they have helped themselves with bloodcurdling threats about withdrawing support for other constitutional