Council spells out the words workers will never read

‘VIAGRA’, ‘slapper’, and ‘nipple’ are just some of more than 100 words censored by Birmingham City Council servers, it has been revealed.

The council has revealed a list of 129 words which are blocked from reaching council employees after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Local Democracy Reporting Service this week.

The council has also admitted that it ‘quarantines’ thousands of emails every month due to their offensive nature, with one local councillor calling on providers to do more to tackle online abuse.

The full list of words includes a host of very offensive, racist, sexual and sexist language which, if included in an email to the council or councillors, means that email is blocked.

However, the list also includes several anatomical terms such as ‘vagina’, ‘penis’, and ‘testicles’.

The far-right group Combat 18, so-called to represent the initials of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, is also blocked from council servers, though surprisingly the term ‘nazi’ is not blocked.

Councillor Nicky Brennan

(Lab) called on providers such as Twitter and Google to do more to block online trolls after the release of the list.

“I think there’s some words on there, like vagina, that I don’t think should be on there. Things like ‘slag’, which is a slangy term, or ‘bitch’ also aren’t on there, and maybe they should be,” she said.

“I get loads of emails that get blocked.

“Sometimes they’ll send them through because they won’t be too bad, or the headline of the email will be bad, sometimes, so I’ll know what’s coming. I get things about my politics, I’ll get called a ‘commie’. People writing in about the bins will swear at me. Stuff like that.

“It’s because we’re here to serve the public. So people think ‘oh well, we pay council tax, we pay your wages,’ and it’s like some members of the public feel like they own you.

“You’re just kind of there, and in the public eye, so it’s quite easy to abuse people.

“I think the whole culture of online abuse is growing anyway, with things like Twitter, and there’s no kind of way to stop it from being seen as acceptable. Twitter don’t really do anything, Google don’t really do anything, so people just get on with it. There’s no consequences for these people.

“It’s really easy to set up a fake Twitter account, it’s really easy to set up a Gmail account. When I got properly threatened it was a Gmail account, and the police investigated it, and they just said ‘there’s nothing we can do, it’s a fake account’.

“There’s no accountability from these providers to keep people safe, and that’s something I’d like to see change.”