Are you angry about bin collections? Potty about potholes? Incandescent about the behaviour of your local council or councillors? Well whatever you do, don’t post disparaging things about them on the internet. Unless you want a visit from the police, that is.
Yes, saying critical things about your elected local representatives is the latest thing that can get you in trouble with Britain’s speech police, if the experience of Helen Jones in Stockport is anything to go by. She was paid a visit by Greater Manchester Police last week, after she called on a local councillor to resign.
The local councillor is Labour’s David Sedgwick, who has been implicated in the infamous ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ scandal – the WhatsApp group in which now-ousted health minister Andrew Gwynne and other Labourites in Greater Manchester shared off-colour jokes, many of them about their constituents.
On Facebook, Jones posted: ‘Let’s hope [Sedgwick] does the decent thing and resigns.
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