Remember the attempts by Christian Voice to prosecute various people over Jerry Springer: The Opera? And the £90,000 costs awarded against CV’s Stephen Green? It seems Green is asking for some good old-fashioned Christian charity from the very people he tried to prosecute.

The money is due to be paid today, but Stephen Green doesn’t have it.

He has written to both Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday inviting them to waive their costs in the interests of goodwill and justice.

Apparently chasing him for legal costs would be “vindictive”. Media Watch Watch says:

Vindictive? Like Green’s relentless self-interested pursuit of the BBC and John Thoday, and his gloating over the dearth of royalties accruing to Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas as a result of his censorship campaign wasn’t vindictive?

While we hesitate to celebrate anyone’s financial ruin, it is hard to feel sympathy for the whingeing hypocrite as he begs Thompson and Thoday to waive their charges. And we seriously doubt it will shut him up.

Chicken Yoghurt is amused, while Richard Bartholomew points out that Green was solely responsible for the “adverse, grotesque costs” and that he targeted two individuals rather than a public body.

Green says:

It is outrageous that a public-spirited individual should be dissuaded from upholding standards of public decency in a public body because of the fear of adverse, grotesque costs orders.

Which is an interesting way of looking at it. As Bartholomew notes, there’s a reason why Green should pay up or face bankruptcy.

without the risk of losing money there would be many more enemies of free speech using the courts – and the very same threat of high costs – to silence ideas they didn’t like.