An Aberdeenshire councillor has avoided suspension after branding an online blogger as “scum” and “toxic”.
Westhill and District member Fatima Joji was brought before the Standards Commission after making the comments on Twitter, now known as X.
An affronted Stuart Campbell alleged that Ms Joji’s posts breached the Councillors’ Code of Conduct.
In particular, the complaint referred to paragraph 3.1 that states councillors must treat everyone “with courtesy and respect”, even when using social media.
The complaint, made this summer, came before watchdogs today.
Panel members had to decide whether Ms Joji was acting in her capacity as a councillor, and whether her comments breached the code.
The SNP member was represented by solicitor Scott Martin.
Who is Stuart Campbell?
Mr Campbell is a Scotttish independence campaigner and runs the Wings Over Scotland political blog.
Back in 2020 he tried to sue former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale for defamation but was unsuccessful.
Why was blogger told to ‘absolutely GTF’?
Last July, Mr Campbell tweeted about Conservative party leadership candidate Kami Badenoch.
He stated Ms Badenoch was a “young black female working-class immigrant” and could be a good candidate for the Conservative leadership.
This led to the Aberdeenshire councillor replying with her own comments.
In her response, she branded the blogger “toxic”, “scum” and “a clown”, adding “he can absolutely GTF” – which the panel explained is “an acronym for get to f**k”.
The hearing was told Ms Joji went on to state that Mr Campbell had harassed members of the SNP party who are from ethnic minority backgrounds.
She even updated her Twitter biography with a sentence which read “Stu Campbell is toxic”, it was heard.
Mr Campbell then published a blog post titled ‘A Little Respect’ which included screenshots of the Aberdeenshire councillor’s tweets.
After telling his readers to “meet SNP councillor Fatima Joji”, he went on to explain what had been going on.
The post read: “The tweets were part of an extended tirade objecting to a tweet thread I’d posted about Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch.”
Councillor acknowledged comments were ‘not acceptable’
In response to the report, Ms Joji acknowledged that she had violated the councillors’ code.
She said: “I understand my use of language such as ‘scum’ and ‘toxic’ have contravened the code.
“It was not acceptable to use the language I did as an elected representative.”
But Ms Joji argued she wasn’t acting in her role as a councillor while posting the tweets in question.
She claimed that the tweets were made during the council’s summer recess and while she was on her lunch break at her other job.
However, the standards commission agreed she was acting as a councillor as the messages were made through her public social media account.
What did the Standards panel say?
Panel members noted that Ms Joji had been subjected to abuse, but believed her comments were “entirely inappropriate”.
Do you think they made the right decision? Let us know in our comments section below
The Westhill councillor faced suspension or even disqualification from her local authority role.
However the panel agreed to let Ms Joji off lightly with a censure.
This means the Standards Commission has formally recorded its “severe and public disapproval” of her actions.
The decision will not affect her role as an Aberdeenshire councillor.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article made reference to Mr Campbell’s account being permanently removed from Twitter, now known as X. This was based on incorrect information from the hearing, and we are happy to clarify that this is not the case as the account was reinstated last November.
The article also stated that Cllr Joji was not present for her online hearing. In fact, she was at the hearing throughout, although her camera was off. We apologise for the error and are happy to clarify.
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