Public resources
How much does it cost to set up and maintain a Twitter account again?
Oh, fuck all.
Yes, it was a silly thing of Boris's team to do, but hardly squandering public funds.
Boris Johnson came under fire yesterday after his minions changed the name of the official Mayor of London Twitter account – which has around 250,000 followers – to promote his campaign to win another term at City Hall. However, BoJo was forced into an embarrassing U-turn on what was the first day of his bid to be re-elected …
It costs money because someone has to be paid to monitor it, respond and post information.
As a government post it means that person(s) is paid for by the taxpayer
As an individuals publicity machine to try and get themselves elected/re-elected that person(s) should be paid from the campaign funds
Using taxpayers money to fund an election campaign is fraud. Using an official information channel to promote an individuals campaign takes away the impartiality of that channel and should be classed as electoral fraud.
This is why those that actually understand what the problem is do think it is a big deal.
Boris has claimed that the only person monitoring, responding and posting information on that twitter account was him, making it a personal account.
I think he was trying to do the right thing - he didn't want to be tweeting as @MayorOfLondon whilst doing campaign things, so renamed the account - but he fucked up the execution, it should have been a new account, which he should have announced on the @Mayor account.
Which is what he has now done. Storm in a tea cup, as opposed to what Ken's cronies like Lutfur Rahman get up to.
it's a sensitive issue in any democratic system, because if a strict leash isn't kept on things, any incumbent can obviously gain a _huge_ advantage over any challenger by taking advantage of all the facilities available to them as part of the machinery of the government / civil service.
so even very minor occurrences of someone stepping 'over the line' have to be treated as a big deal, in order to make sure the line remains a very clearly drawn and important line. otherwise you end up with it getting chipped away at.
The key thing here is the followers.
You can reasonably assume that the intent of people who followed @MayorOfLondon was to follow the Mayor of London. To then let the incumbent mayor be able to use the same people for marketing during the election is clearly unfair to other candidates.
It's quarter of a million people, so not insignificant in voting terms.
The original account was @BorisJohnson but was changed to @MayorOfLondon when he won! and last time I checked , you dont actually have to spend money to work a twitter account or have I misssed something?
Maybe people trying to deflect attension from Ken being seen as a massive hypocrite over his tax affairs, and a massive liar?
Except he doesn't. Ken meanwhile...Silveta is not he first company he has set up and used int his way. Plus he has admitted to having Silveta fund his new mayoral bid...in contravention of electoral law . Bad Ken.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100144767/ken-livingstone-will-need-a-better-defence-against-hmrc-investigation-than-this/
Note to Ken. Mwahahahah