Broadcaster and business writer Guy Browning, who was speaking locally, had an unequivocal view of social networking sites such as Twitter, the online medium that outed Ryan Giggs as the footballer covered by a privacy injunction.

It is, he said, the human equivalent of dogs sniffing each other’s behind.

Well, possibly, but with a claimed 200m. users, it is certainly a well-sniffed rump and, judging from the desire of various dictators across the globe to silence it, a pretty powerful one.

It also went where the UK media could not and named names in the increasingly discredited use of super-injunctions which enable the rich, powerful and famous to avoid the consequences of their own shabby behaviour.

In the case of Giggs, a kindly judge appeared to want to spare him from boos and cruel chants at Premiership games were details of his alleged extra-marital affairs to become known.

At that stage, of course, anyone with a PC or smartphone or access to a mate at the pub knew that a footballer whose name sounded rather like Brian Biggs was probably not on the best of terms with his missus.

What the episode – and the naming of Sir Fred Goodwin as the man whose own super-injunction prevented him from even being named as a banker – highlights is the uneasy fit between freedom of expression and the right to privacy, especially when those seeking anonymity behave badly.

Such injunctions would have effect here only if the individual applied to the Royal Court for one as well as in Britain which, as far as we know, has not happened. But it does raise the issue of what happens if a deputy wanted to use parliamentary privilege, as did Lord Oakeshott in the Lords last week, to draw attention to it in the local context.

If the Bailiff or Deputy Bailiff had sat on the case, they would have to deal, as presiding officer of the Assembly, with a States member seeking to flout a court order they had made but having every right to do so – and in the same chamber.

It is, thankfully, unlikely to happen.

But it does illustrate the degree to which government and the Royal Court remain linked, even today.