Cash-strapped council spending £250,000 of public money in U.S. courts to silence Twitter 'whistleblower' may have an awful lot to hide

Daily Mail
"For more than two years, South Tyneside Council has been trying to uncover the identity of an anonymous blogger known as Mr Monkey, who has mercilessly criticised and ridiculed Cllr Malcolm and his colleagues. .....Papers lodged at the Superior Court of California spell out, in black and white, their intention to seek an ‘award of money’ for ‘damage to their reputations’.

This, despite a 1993 Law Lords ruling that councils should not be allowed to take action for libel because of the ‘inhibiting effect on freedom of speech’. Individual councillors and employees can choose to do so, but not local authorities with taxpayers’ money.

Doesn’t the role of South Tyneside in this increasingly grubby tale — namely its decision, taken in secret, to fund the entire cost of these ill-judged proceedings — make a mockery of the Law Lord’s ruling?

For whoever Mr Monkey may be, surely the real scandal here is that taxpayers’ money is being used to defend the reputations of controversial politicians like councillors Iain Malcolm and David Potts."