Monday 22 April 2013

Lord McAlpine tells Twitter users he does not intend to 'create hardship' as ... - Telegraph.co.uk

It adds that there will be "a small administrative charge to cover the costs of dealing with this matter".

The accompanying "Twitter reconciliation form" asks for such details as the number of Twitter followers the person has, whether the offending tweet was original or a re-tweet, whether the tweet has been deleted and, in the case of re-tweets, the source of the original tweet.

It does not, however, ask for any details of the person's salary, assets or financial circumstances.

The BBC paid Lord McAlpine £185,000 plus costs after the source of the Newsnight allegation, former care home resident Steve Messham, withdrew his claims of being raped by a senior Tory, saying it had been a case of mistaken identity.

Lord McAlpine was not named by the BBC but the programme led to him being wrongly named as an abuser on Twitter and elsewhere on the internet.

People with more than 500 Twitter followers who tweeted the peer's name, including Sally Bercow, the Speaker's wife, face individual action and are likely to be asked to pay far more than the minimum £5 charity contribution.

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