Technology Lead @privacyint. Information Security Specialist, Privacy Evangelist, Occasional Public Speaker. Views are my own. I also ride Motorbikes. Open DMs
@mallocblock@WritesBright@epidemic27 Just because a defence exists, doesn't mean the statement wasn't defamatory (if that was so, no defamation case would ever go to court), its for a court to decide whether an opinion is honestly held (belief). Arguably Coutts may even have an absolute defence in 'truth'.
@mallocblock@WritesBright@epidemic27 Coutts staff stating that NF is a racist is defamatory.
Coutts stating that NF account was closed due to funds, when that wasn’t the reason is potentially libellous (defamatory)
How it was reported is irrelevant
@mallocblock@WritesBright@epidemic27 I think you misunderstood that the report that NF put together was on the basis of a DSAR under GDPR, the comments in the report are pulled from Coutts’ own internal information on Farage. The report isn’t defamatory, the underlying information is.
@mallocblock@WritesBright@epidemic27 Both are arguably defamatory. (Coutts’ staff alleging he is a racist, Coutts claiming that his account was suspended solely on not meeting a financial requirement and then briefing media, a statement which may not be true). The question is was NF materially harmed?
@mallocblock@WritesBright@epidemic27 It’s not a case of who published, it’s a matter of what was said and by whom. NatWest/Coutts staff said x and NF alleges that what they said was defamatory.
@WritesBright@epidemic27 Ultimately this sounds like poor data protection practices on NatWests part. Best way to avoid defamation… don’t defame someone, and definitely don’t write it down. Surprised Pikachu face when company (employees) find out that their Slack chats can be DSARed (if related to DS)
Virgin Media looking like they have quite the outage right now. North West all the way through East Anglia and the East Midlands. Lucky I was heading to bed. Virgin’s status page says next update at 0605…
Guess my overnight backups are going to fail tonight though 👀
“We are delivering…the fastest wage growth in years” says Rishi Sunak in #PMQs. It is an extraordinary boast, for a few reasons. 1) that wage growth is a big reason why interest rates are still rising, why the Bank of England will next week increase interest rates again, and why there will be mortgage pain, much of it acute, for well over a million people over the next year (and the government too is having to pay significantly more to borrow) 2) the “fastest wage growth” is mainly in the private sector, over which the government has no control except in respect of setting the minimum wage; 3) Downing St and the Treasury have been furiously trying to suppress wage increases in schools, hospitals and the rest of the private sector, because they regard inflation as THE problem; 4) even with this “fastest wage growth in years”, most people on average are poorer, because inflation is even faster.