Super-Injunctions Should Be Banned

Former Big Brother star Imogen Thomas has been barred from revealing the Premier League footballer she had an alleged affair with.

For a while now, people have been complaining about these 'super injunctions' granted to big TV personalities/footballers to protect their family man image in front of the public domain. Alas, last week when an anonymous citizen created a twitter account and allegedly tweeted several different stars who were given a super injunction, things got a little out of hand. Within hours the account had amassed tens of thousands of 'followers' and at the time of writing this, it holds more than 109,000 fans.

These 'super-injunctions' are a problem in this modern era. For those of you unaware of what a super-injunction is, it is a gagging order granted a judge that bars the media from exposing the details of the story as well as forbidding any mention of the story itself. Super injunctions have been in existence for years but yet they are only coming into the mainstream now.

The twitter user, which I cannot name for legal reasons, tweeted six times all within a 10-minute time frame about stories which had previously been prohibited from entering the public. John Terry is the biggest story to date who held a 'super-injunction' preventing the media publishing any details about his ex-teammates wife Vanessa Perroncel up to when it was decided that the injunction was dropped in late January 2010 as Terry had only sought to keep his sponsorships and kit deals instead of remaining as an iconic football family man.

I for one agree with the public that these super-injunctions should be brought into exile. Its showing favouritism to big stars in the sport and it once again arises the whole debate of how well known people are treated superiously to normal people. Big sports personalities have an image to protect and when they commit a cowardly act such as cheating on their wife with a mistress or something of the sorts, they have the chance of keeping that in the dark by means of this world renowned 'super-injunction'. Us 'less important citizens' are in danger of immediate circumstances if word gets out of our mistake as we don't have this privilege unless we fork out a load of dosh. Its only fair if we get the same chance as those footballers do or else all hell will break loose and the court system will implode quite stunningly.