Scrapbook for March 2019

05.03.2019 – Pete North: defiant to the end

Last August we noted that Pete North, the permanently angry son of the permanently angry Richard North [vide FoS passim] had written of the establishment figure Professor Anthony ('A.C.') Grayling that 'I'd bet good money that AC Grayling has a hard drive full of underage botty sex videos'. Grayling's politics were under discussion at the time, so the remark was just a drive-by smear. As we reported at the time, Pete ignored the admonitions of Grayling's solicitors and even doubled down on the libel.

The wheels of justice grind slowly, but thus more finely, so that now, six months after the fact, the case has come to the High Court and a judge not only spanked Pete's botty for 20,000 GBP but ordered him to pay Grayling's costs, which will probably amount to considerably more. Since Pete has no position in society worth mentioning, the best the Mail could come up with was to call him a 'a former Ukip candidate', which elegantly kills two birds with one stone.

Pete didn't turn up for the hearing – not wanting to give it legitimacy, as he puts it on his website (to which we are not linking on principle), so the judge could land an unhindered smack on Pete's exposed botty. Out of a confusing list of half-arguments and non-sequiturs, Pete's position is that he has no worldly goods and thus was always an inappropriate person to sue. His longstanding foes the bailiffs can do what they will.

The doctrine that the penniless can ipso facto slander the high and mighty with impunity is a novel one and an indicator of Pete's minimal mental capacities. Grayling may be politically deranged to a point approaching lunacy, but Pete has arrived at a point well beyond that.

We have some sympathy for Pete, however odious he seems. Having been brought up by the intemperate, permanently aggrieved, raging authoritarian Richard North, what hope could there have been for him to turn out even half-normal?