Anna Rowe

I think the Council monitoring officer is right. The purpose of the Code of Conduct is to cover people when they act as councillors not the whole of their lives. And running an anonymous Twitter account is not a crime.

You don’t think the Nolan Principles / standards of behaviour are compromised if one who has agreed to sign up for public service sends anonymous hate mail designed to intimidate, undermine or harass political opponents and/or members of the public?

Not seen the offending tweets so can't comment. If people believe an offence has been committed then report it to the police. And just being rude isn't yet an offence. Nolan principles apply to appointments not to elected people - we have an electorate to hold us to account.

I’m not referring to an individual or specific tweets. That isn’t the point nor story here, Simon, with respect. The story is about a large local authority stepping back from this. But I bow to your superior knowledge - sincerely - as I’m far from a legal expert in these matters.

The precedent was when Ken Livingstone was subject to a standards complaint about abusing a journalist outside a party. The court ruled that the code did not apply to politicians in their private lives and in my view that was the right decision.

But is it ‘private’ if the anonymous account is tweeting about official business and responding to people posing matters of an official nature?

A councillor making/using an anonymous account to 'speak his mind' with abusive/harassing comments on official business indicates they know it's wrong! to do (otherwise why hide?) & brings a public office into disrepute whether at work or not.

Exactly!!! If you feel you aren’t stepping over the line why on earth don’t you have the balls to ‘stand by your opinion’ in your own name! #disgrace #troll