Napier’s mayor to quit social media
Napier Mayor Bill Dalton is quitting social media because of a barrage of ‘‘abusive’’ comments aimed at his family by ‘‘brainless’’ locals.
Yesterday, Dalton said ‘‘some of the idiots in our society’’ felt they could ‘‘abuse’’ him using social media, and he was better off without it.
Abusive comments were recently posted about Dalton on Napier City Council’s Facebook page, however many of those remarks were later moderated out.
‘‘I’ve got broad shoulders and I accept in my role that I’ll come in for criticism, I accept that entirely. There’s an enormous difference between criticism of the role you are playing and personal abuse.’’
The comments on the council’s Facebook page were ‘‘absolute personal’’ ones, and he recently came home from his office to find his wife Shirley in tears over it, he said.
‘‘One of the worst offenders then thought that gave him the right to personally abuse my wife after a council meeting. I decided enough is enough.’’
Dalton confirmed the meeting in question was Monday’s, where the name ‘‘Napier War Memorial Centre’’ was narrowly adopted as the city conference centre’s permanent title.
Security lined the doors of the meeting, and many members of the crowd jeered when Dalton spoke on the issue.
He argued the word ‘‘conference’’ should be kept in the centre’s name but his motion was thrown out by a vote of 7-6.
The subject is a sensitive one for some Napier residents, who believe the council had neglected its responsibility to honour veterans’ memories.
Napier City Council spokeswoman Fiona Fraser said there were inappropriate and offensive comments left on the council’s Facebook page ‘‘with regularity’’.
‘‘This is nothing new. We take the good with the bad but we do moderate as per the rules.’’
Some of the rules included not posting comments that were offensive, defamatory, threatening, bullying or discriminatory.
Dalton said he would not give abusive commenters the right to interact with him.
‘‘Most of these people are so gutless the only way they interact is by sitting at home on their keyboard or their phone.
‘‘When they started personal abuse on the Napier City Council site I thought the easiest thing was just to get out of it altogether.’’
Dalton was deleting all social media accounts yesterday, and would ‘‘certainly’’ not be back while he was in the public eye.
‘‘Everything that happens, they personalise it and blame me. At the end of the day, I do not make any decisions that don’t go through council.’’