Complaints can teach us all a valuable lesson

The pandemic has been blamed for a great many things over the past year, from the gravely serious to the downright trivial. But hearing that it is, in a roundabout way, responsible for more complaints being made about councillors is an intriguing proposition.

Portsmouth City Council has seen the number of complaints against its councillors more than double in a year – from seven in 2019 to 20 in 2020.

A council spokeswoman says that it is ‘probably’ down to both councillors and members of the public using online platforms more ‘during the pandemic.’

It led to at least two regrettable incidents which grabbed the public’s interest – a post emerged from former Lord Mayor of Portsmouth Councillor Lee Mason’s Snapchat showing a hot cross bun with a swastika baked into the top, and Cllr

Linda Symes sharing of alleged racist Facebook posts.

Both Conservative councillors were suspended.

It does however, highlight how shockingly naive some still are when using social media.

Just because you are on your own page or account it doesn’t mean it is private.

Far from it.

Social media thrives on the social aspect – it is it’s very business model – it is designed for everything to be seen, disseminated, shared.

Even if you think you’re safe – your comments are being made in the online equivalent of a gated community, it only take one person to take a screenshot, share it with a friend and before you know it, it could be halfway around the world.

And once it’s out there, that genie is nigh-on impossible to get back in the bottle. If you’re an individual with any kind of public profile the stakes are that much higher. Those words or images could pop up again to haunt you at any moment.

If you don’t want it to be in the public domain for ever more, don’t hit enter.