On the one hand, the News of the World is a scumbag newspaper full of scumbag stories, owned by a scumbag, written by scumbags and read by scumbags. Their respect for privacy is a national disgrace, and watching media types bemoaning their apparent new-found inability to pry into people’s lives this morning has been pathetic.

It was pretty clear that the Nazi angle of the story was exaggerated somewhat by the News of the World, even if it was perhaps not totally unfounded. Thinking back to the original story, around half of it or maybe even more reflected on his family background rather than his wrongdoings in the bedroom department. The attempt to connect Max Mosley to fascism on the flimsiest of grounds, on the basis of who his parents were, was disgusting. Max Mosley did not choose his parents.

Even so, in my view there has been no satisfactory explanation for the overtones that allowed the Nazi conclusions to be drawn. The recordings include German speaking. This was explained as being down to the fact that one of the prostitutes was German. However, what has not been explained is why they were speaking English in a German accent. Phrases such as “I sink she needs more of ze punishment” (uttered by Mosley himself) and “We are the Aryan race!” do not strike me as being part of just another S&M orgy.

Max Mosley apparently had a sudden hearing loss during the phase of the conversation. Mr Justice Eady concedes that this sounds like a rather tall story, but says that it doesn’t matter because it was “clear… that the remark was unscripted”. He seems to think it was as though they were discussing whether an episode of EastEnders had Nazi overtones.

I also find it incredible that the judge has decided there was no public interest in the story. Oh really? The Crown Prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, was interested. King Juan Carlos of Spain was interested. Prince Albert of Monaco was interested. Galeb Majadle, Israel’s minister for sport was interested. BMW, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota were all interested. Bernie Ecclestone was interested.

The fact is, no matter how disgusting I think it is that the News of the World should invade people’s private lives, once the world had the knowledge that he indulges in that kind of behaviour it affected his ability to do his job. That in itself surely demonstrates sufficient public interest in any sense that would be meaningful to anybody not sitting in an ivory tower.

There were a lot of people who scratched their heads about the huge £100 million fine handed down to McLaren by Max Mosley last year. I think a lot of people have a feeling that they now know it is because Max Mosley gets a sexual thrill out of inflicting a harsh punishment. The next time the FIA has to hand down a punishment to someone, it will be an open goal for easy jibes. This puts Formula 1 and the FIA itself into disrepute. It ability to govern the sport properly has been diminished.

It would be bad enough if Max Mosley was just the “boss of Formula 1″ or the “head of motor sport” as the media constantly referred to him as. This probably made the public at large a lot more sympathetic towards Max Mosley than they otherwise would have been. The fact is that the FIA has a huge responsibility not just for sport but for the motor industry as a whole.

The FIA has a huge amount of weight and influence when it comes to aspects like road safety and green technologies. The FIA works together with the United Nations and the European Union among other organisations to make things happen. The FIA was pivotal in the formation of Euro NCAP, the European car safety assessment organisation.

Max Mosley is so much more than just an F1 man or motorsport president. He is responsible for cars full stop. This gives him a huge amount of power — probably more than most British politicians can dream to have.

I think the public saw this as quite a jokey story. Yet if we were talking about a cabinet minister or the CEO of a multinational company he would never have lasted this long. It might well have been a different story if the public realised just how much power Max Mosley has.

Do we really want someone who gets his sexual kicks out of inflicting pain to have so much responsibility over road safety? Do we want someone whose judgement is so questionable that he would regularly cheat on his wife and lie to his family to have such responsibilities?

As I have said countless times, Max Mosley should have done the honourable thing and resigned months ago. But we know from years of experience that Mosley is not an honourable man. Had he resigned, I would have fully supported him in his court case today.

However, his behaviour since the revelations have demonstrated that he does lack judgement and that he does have too much power. The FIA General Assembly vote simply demonstrated that it is a rotten borough, and the FIA is filled to the brim with Max Mosley lackeys.

Ideally, Max Mosley would have resigned and News Group Newspapers would have lost its court case. As it is, Max Mosley will go to bed tonight feeling vindicated. And that makes me angry.

But today that injunction was refused and the newspapers has hit back with a double-whammy. In addition to republishing the original video, the newspaper has uploaded two audio clips that depict Max Mosley speaking English in a mock German accent. One of these is the already infamous quote, “Zey need more of ze punishment I sink.”

The purpose behind publishing the new audio clips is to counter Max Mosley’s claims that the only reason he spoke German during the session was because some of the prostitutes themselves were German. This is at the heart of Mosley’s attempts to disprove claims that the session had a Nazi theme. But it does not explain why Mosley would be speaking English in a fake German accent.

It is very interesting that, as Pitpass noted last week, Max Mosley is not suing the News of the World for libel. You would think that if the allegations were false then Mosley would have little difficulty in winning a case against a newspaper which has put forward such over-the-top and cartoon-like allegations. This would particularly be the case in the UK which has famously strict libel laws. The fact that he is not suing for libel makes Mosley’s denials seem pretty empty.

Max Mosley appears mostly to be concerned about the invasion of privacy which the FIA has described as “apparently illegal”. It is worth remembering that less than a year ago such apparent illegalities were of no concern to Max Mosley as long as it assisted him in his personal vendetta against Ron Dennis.

As Grandprix.com reminds us, the World Motor Sport Council met in September to discuss a list of text messages and phone calls between Mike Coughlan and Nigel Stepney. The validity of the evidence was brought into question. Here was Mosley’s response:

The World Council’s only concern is whether that list is accurate and truthful. We are not concerned with whether there are issues over how that is obtained. Unless there is evidence that it is forged or inaccurate, we will take it on its face value. We do not enter a debate about Italian law; we have neither the time nor the skills for that.

Funny how he sings a different tune today. Max Mosley’s defence appears to be crumbling.

Today’s events, however, represent a real legal stumbling block for Max Mosley. The injunction was refused on the basis that the video is already in the public domain and you cannot reasonably expect to remove it from the public domain. This is the same argument that has been used by those who are arguing for Max Mosley to resign. It is a good point.

However, as Craigblog points out, it is nevertheless surprising that this ruling went against Max Mosley. Had the injunction been granted, it would have sent out a strong message to everyone about the use of this video.

Now, media outlets have effectively been given absolute free reign to use it. As we have seen, the News of the World has now taken the opportunity to upload new clips. And at lunchtime today I was amazed to hear the original video clip being played in full on BBC Radio 5 Live. If the video was in the public domain in the first place, today it is in the public domain deluxe.

Meanwhile, it has been announced today that the FIA General Assembly will now meet on 3rd June. This will include a confidence vote which will be held as a secret ballot. I would be amazed if Max Mosley were to win the vote. Meanwhile, the FIA will be lumbered with a lame duck President for almost two more months.