1 June (Part 1) - Demanding, menacing, threatening
If you Google the words “The Nasty Party” you will be rewarded by about
400 million web pages many of them referring directly or indirectly to Theresa May’s
infamous remarks at the 2002 Conservative Party Conference. As Google suggests
anyone can repeat her words pretty much with impunity.
Recent events have shown you cannot link similar words to members of the local
Labour Party. If, while complaining that they have no idea about police
corruption the words “the lefty lot are entitled to their view but infested
with some very nasty people” are added you might find yourself referred to the
police four times over. One of the occasional blog edits changed the words to
“plagued with very unpleasant people" but the general drift was the same.
The threats came to nothing but eight months down the line, up the subject comes again.
I now have a lovely letter from a local Labour source, never named on Bonkers,
threatening me with dire consequences if the words are not removed. It goes
further and demands the removal of every blog that reported on a variety of
decisions by Bexley Council’s Code of Conduct Committee and fights picked with @bexleynews.
I am commanded never to mention unwarranted Code of Conduct complaints on Bonkers however
newsworthy they might be, ever again.
There is more…
Enquiries and their responses confirm that the threats were not orchestrated by any
person whose name may be known to Bonkers’ readers - so please don’t blame anyone whose
name has ever appeared here.
3 June - Demanding, menacing, threatening - Episode 2
The menacing letter didn’t simply arrive courtesy of a second class stamp and a local postmark it came from a City solicitor with an EC3 address.
As implied on Tuesday there are some decent people in Bexley Labour so I was tipped off about its likely arrival a week earlier.
A site search revealed that the complainant had never merited a reference here until I was
verbally attacked for my opinion of the Metropolitan Police but was
additionally associated, and publicly admitted to being so, with a frivolous
complaint against Councillor Read and later against Councillor Hackett. @bexleynews
came in for on-line criticism alleging that they were
content to see school children go hungry during half term.
Never named because the complainant prefers to hide behind Twitter anonymity.
I referred every BiB reference to a libel lawyer who reported back that what was published here got
“nowhere near the threshold for being libellous or defamatory” and I additionally dug out
my correspondence with Bexley police which advised that in reporting news “as a
journalist” I could not be held liable for harassment unless my comments were “racist or very extreme”.
Thus reassured I went back to sleep for a week.
8 June - Demanding, menacing, threatening - Episode 3
I have wondered what the point is of writing about someone who makes news but
claims the right to have it suppressed when that someone is unknown to almost
everyone reading these words. But it is an important point, little enough Council news
is reported already and the right to put a ban on some of it cannot be accepted.
Let’s get this over with as briefly as possible…
When the letter finally arrived I found that some facts had been stood on their head and someone whose first ever contact was a
Twitter attack on me for having “no respect for the police whatsoever” was behind the solicitor’s letter. Someone whose
name has never been mentioned here and won’t be (I wasn’t sure of it until recently) was said to
be distressed by my publication of the aforesaid antagonistic Tweet and some
follow-ups. The same someone who admitted accusing Councillor Philip Read of making racist comments
and who Councillor Hackett later revealed was behind complaints against him.
Apparently I should have known that the anonymous Tweeter would be distressed by
the reappearance of their Tweets on BiB and I was therefore guilty of harassment.
Would someone stressed by seeing their own ‘critical of all and sundry’ Tweets featured here continue to send them or stop
or even let me know? Surely everyone must know by now that messages of that type sent to me are likely to appear on-line?
I passed the letter to my libel lawyer who had already said that I had no reason
to fear a libel claim and he responded by saying it was “waffle” and solicitors
have no business sending out such nonsense just because a client asks them to do so. That is fleecing the gullible.
He kindly drafted me a letter of complaint to the Solicitor’s Regulation
Authority and a set of notes that could form a basis for reporting the solicitor and her
client to the police for issuing menacing threats. I now have a Crime Number in respect of the
solicitor but not her client. I felt that reporting the client to the
police for what my solicitor said amounted to bribery was sinking to the same level as that client.
Maybe I am just too nice. 😄
9 June (Part 2) - Demanding, menacing, threatening, censoring - Episode 4
The threat from the solicitor was that if I didn’t remove eleven old blogs in
their entirety her client would report me to the police for harassment not
withstanding the fact that the blogs merely reported the client’s publicly available
Tweets and highlighted a certain amount of double standards. Others were simple news items relating to
Bexley’s Code of Conduct Committee meetings.
I asked
the Labour personality who tipped me off about the likelihood of a letter if he
could get his activist to explain why she was being so aggressive and why she
had waited a whole eight months after I had responded
to her initial Twitter attack to launch another.
After two such requests I received an email from the aggressor herself. It
revealed that the delay was related to the appointment of a new Labour Leader
and the opportunity to jump in quickly
before the newcomer had time to get his feet under the table.
The email was titled “Removal of 11 blogs” and I was commanded not only to
remove the eleven blogs but also “to desist from
referencing me or my Twitter account in the future”. There was a direct
reference to the Harassment Act 1997 and an equally direct threat to use it.
So I was not to be allowed to report the outcome of the complainant’s
appeal against the rejection of her most recent complaint against Councillor
Danny Hackett. I don’t think that is how news reporting works.
If Danny reveals the outcome to me he can expect to see it reported here.
10 June (Part 1) - Demanding, menacing, threatening, censoring - Episode 5
I am going make this the last of these short reports on how an
anonymous Labour activist who regularly makes news by complaining about
Councillors is insisting that news never becomes public. It is all a bit
pointless when almost no one knows who she is, but news makers cannot dictate what happens to the news they make.
My dilemma was should I delete the blogs
as demanded with menacing threats or carry on and face six months of
police interrogation until they write to tell me I had done nothing wrong. It
has happened before so I have a pretty good idea of where the lines are drawn and what the police will say.
If the complainer had contacted me after the first of several attacking Tweets
was published here and expressed some sort of regret for starting the unnecessary argument I
would certainly have modified the blogs in some way; it wouldn’t be the first
time. No one actually notices when old blogs are modified. It is no big deal if
it makes someone happy and remains truthful.
So for the sake of a quiet life and against the advice of a few supporters who
knew what was going on I searched the site for references to the complainant’s
Twitter handle (her real name had never been used) and rewrote eight blogs as if the arch-complainer did not
exist. The occasional Tweet was Photoshopped so that it became anonymous and all eight blogs lost
what impact they may have once had.
But the solicitor listed eleven blogs not eight. One of the three was
this one which doesn’t mention the
complainant so it was not surprising my own search didn’t find it.
Then there was this one in which
the complainant thanks Councillor Andy Dourmoush for not blocking her on Twitter
(I am blocked by the complainant) and the one where the Conservatives’ propaganda channel @bexleynews
took issue with the same complainer. Do
you think they will have had threats made against them too?
The blogs were all rewritten on the afternoon of Thursday 27th May. I told no
one. On the following Saturday morning the complainant emailed to thank me for the changes
made but demanded more. “Thank you for the changes, just a few more and we’re all good.”
I could barely believe the cheek of it. There has been no correspondence since then.
In closing this subject I would like to thank the three Labour names known to
all regular readers - and Independent Councillor Hackett - all of whom offered support and sympathy
for an unwarranted attack on local news reporting. No Councillors should be
blamed for recent events but it does perhaps illustrate the lengths to which
some of their supporters go to further their cause - whatever that may be.