Following ip on Bexley councils approach to democracy and as we’ve got mayoral elections coming up here in Londonshire – I thought I’d try and get in touch with the various mayoral candidates to ask their opinion on Bexley Council gagging a resident from writing about them. This was an enlightening expereince in itself, all of the candidate websites had quite eay to find links to send them money or register support but very few had anyway to get in touch to actually ask a question. Such as in this case should “Councils stop their electorate talking about them?”
For my MP, MEP(s) and Council assembly members I used the excellent form over at Write to them, but trying to contact our would be mayors was a different problem.
- UKIP – no contact details at all
- BNP – Link to national party site only
- Labout/Ken – Hard to find contact form which insisted on being given a phone number, with links for the media and to invite ken to events (hard to tell if the form works)
- Conservatives/Boris – Hard to find contact form, with links for the media
- LibDems/Brian – Contact form that insisted on being given a phone number
- Greens – email address for campaign office
- Siobhan Benita – seemingly direct email adress
Anyway the letter I sent them all was pretty much as below, tweaked slightly for suitable honorifics, I shall report back on any and all responses I get, and on any misuses of that phone number I had to give.
“Dear Great and good,
I’m not sure if you are aware of the recent news that a Bexley resident and blogger faces jail time due to sending an offensive text about an apparently unnamed local councillor, as reported in the mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130346/Blogger-used-letter-term-councillor-Twitter-facing-jail-offensive-tweet.html
amongst other places. Obviously I don’t expect you to be able to comment on individual cases. However it is reported that Bexley Council sought and gained a restraining order that amongst other things required that he:
Not to own, operate or write on a website or social media any criticisms of Bexley Council
Not to write directly or indirectly about Bexley Councillors on any site
So I was wondering if you think it is ever appropriate that a local Council seek to prevent one of their constituents from writing about them in any form?
Yours Sincerely
A Voter
Londonshire”
Due to being distracted with other things, I rather missed the appalling news from Greenwich court and the bunch of useless cunts that form my local council. It seems long term blogger 
