Tuesday 8 September 2009

Thanet District Council’s draft protocol on blogging


12 comments:

  1. What a waste of tax payers money. Surely the council and a senior officer have more important things to spend their time and effort on. Do councilors realy need such things as the difference between slander and libel spelt out to them. This document is an insult to their intelegence. But then this is the secretive Thanet council who believed that the Euroferries service would be up and running by now, who can see no problems in appointing an offshore developer for the Royal Sand development, who think that Ramsgate's water supply will always run pure and also think that Manston in capable of supporting night flights without affecting the health and well being of 15,000 Ramsgate residents. Its no good them promoting Thanet as a good place for business men to decamp to because of high speed trains and then subjecting them to noise and the water risks.

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  2. Anon, high speed trains are also going to affect the health & well-being of Ramsgate residents as well as thousands of other other people near the line! This is why we urge everyone to support Stop High-Speed 1 Trains a.k.a. S.H.1.T.!

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  3. this item 2.8
    Failure to comply the Code may result in a complaint to the Standard Committee, investigation by the Monitoring Officer and referral to the Adjudication Panel for England or the Standard Hearings Sub-Committee for a hearing. In one case, the Adjudication Panel disqualified a member from holding public office for three years as a result of a course of conduct that included the making of untrue defamatory statements about other members and an officer. In relation to this, the Adjudication Panel found that the member had brought his office into disrepute and had compromised the officers’ impartiality in breach of Paragraphs 3(2) (d) and 5 of the Code

    by my reconing our council leader and his deputy are due a three year ban from holding office

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  4. taken fRom item 3
    3. Distinction between Libel and Slander



    The law of defamation covers libel and slander. A defamatory spoken word or gesture will usually amount to a slander whereas a libel may be contained in a written or printed statement, or in a painting, talking film, caricature, advertisement or any disparaging object. Reading out a defamatory document in Council, the Cabinet or a Committee meeting would not be slander, but the publication of a libel. The dictation a defamatory letter to a secretary would be slander put the publication of the letter would be libel. A defamatory statement broadcast on radio, television or the theatre is treated as the publication of a libel and not slander.



    The only significance of the distinction is that libel is in more permanent form and is always actionable without proof of “special damage” whereas a slander is transient and will only be actionable without proof of special damage if it:-

    - Imputes guilt of a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment;

    - Imputes unchastity in a woman

    - Imputes a disease that would cause a person to be shunned or avoided

    - Injures a person in his office, profession or trade;

    why is coucil leader still in his position he has been seen to commit each of theese and had just a slapped wrist from zthe standards committee is anone able to answer this for me .Simon I expect you will be reading this please comment on your leader

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  5. Don I must have missed that one were all four committed against the same person? It’s the stuff about unchased women with infectious diseases that I am sure I would have remembered what with being injured in the office and called a criminal it sounds more like stuff for The News of the World than the local blogs.

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  6. Is this the blogging protocol that Cllr Moores denied existed? How strange for a cabinet member to be so un-informed.

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  7. Oh dear, I have read the draft, spoken to the monitoring officer, and I have to say, have no problem with this draft, other than it needs to refer to other forum on the internet. As citizens we all have responsibilities re libel/slander/defamation, et all. As councillors we must accept that we are , a regulated by these laws, and 2, have a responsibility to behave like what we are, representatives of the folk we represent, ie behave properly, dress properly, and also listen to all sides in an argument.

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  8. Since no libel has been proven why are the servants of the council drawing up a code of control over their masters ?

    I wonder if the council officers will be as quick to identify the council officers involved in a mail intercept at TDC confessed to by Cllr George Maison in front of a former Chief Executive ?

    Of course tory Cllr Maison has been found guilty of libel by High Court. He has also been exposed as a liar under HM Coroner cross examination at an inquest.

    Even if the above facts were incorrect it is difficult to see how he could mount an action as he first needs a reputation to lose.

    Or would this be the sort of officer questioning that the officers seek to gag ?

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  9. Ken I have no problem with it other than its a waste of time and money things aint changed cos of it and its been denied by Simon its a JOKE if it wasr for the date I would thin it April

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  10. Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t want people to start saying members of the Labour group have done things they haven’t but I am pretty sure that Simon said nothing of the sort and am getting a bit tired of defending the Conservative group when people say they have done things that they haven’t.

    Knock both sides here by all means but please stick to the things they have actually done to our detriment.

    Frankly most of the councillors seem to have got together to support many things that local people don’t seem to want and from where I am sitting there is plenty to complain about without going for individuals.

    As far as the draft protocol goes I did wonder about the bit about imputing unchastity in a women, if women councillors or bloggers are supposed to be chaste why not men?

    Please if you are even thinking of suggesting incontinence among the male councillors please don’t do so here.

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  11. Michael I got pretty tired asking about this potocol and having flat line answers from Simon at best he was obtuse in his answers about this and I am for one damned sure its been a waste of money nothinmng has changed because of it other than our cash strapped council have less money that they could have put towards something usefull or even safegaurded the fantasticc collection in Margate Museum

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.