Neil Wilby Media

A Neil Wilby Media exclusive, published yesterday morning (7th April, 2024) and followed up a few hours later, has certainly ruffled cotton sheets in a famous old East Lancashire mill town.

The first, and main, exposé was of a Conservative councillor in Oldham apparently procuring pornographic pictures and videos via his official ‘X’ (Twitter) account (read in full here). The follow-up reported that Cllr Dave Arnott had deleted that same Twitter account in order to avoid further and wider scrutiny of some highly questionable content (read here).

Cllr Arnott, never far from controversy and with his errant conduct routinely chronicled on this website (read more here), did not take up the standard courtesy of right of reply to what was alleged in those two well-grounded pieces of journalism.

Opting, instead, to issue a purported ‘statement’, via a very badly written email, to a group of fellow councillors and senior paid officers that he describes as ‘Colleagues and friends’. They are:

Fellow Conservative councillors: Cllr Lewis Quigg; Cllr Graham Sheldon; Cllr Pam Byrne; Cllr Bethany Sharp; Cllr Luke Lancaster; Cllr Max Woodvine.

The email was copied to: Cllr Christine Adams (his wife); Cllr Arooj Shah; Cllr Howard Sykes; Cllr Brian Hobin; Cllr Kamran Ghafoor (the four Party Group Leaders on the Council); Harry Catherall (Part-time Chief Executive); Paul Entwistle (Borough Solicitor); Shelley Kipling (Part-time Assistant Chief Executive); Emma Barton (Executive Director of Place and Economic Growth).

“Subject: Statement from Councillor Dave Arnott

“Dear Colleagues and friends,

“About 12months ago, I decided to create a “twitter” account, laterally to become known as “X”.
For reference , I was advised against this action by the Chairman of the Conservative Federation, but to my regret, I choose not to take this advice, and argued that it would widen my profile.

“Over the last 12 months, I have been a fairly “passive” member of this platform, containing my actions to forwarding posts that I agree with. These have generally been related to the Conservative Party and to, especially the remembering of fallen servicemen from various conflicts ranging from WW1 to Iraq and Afghanistan .

“As many of you will know, I am not the “worlds most tech savvy” individual. I noticed, that not without a considerable of amount of humour, I immediately started to receive dozens, soon to be hundreds of unsolicited “requests to follow” from various “ladies” in various forms of undress. I ignored these requests, have never “followed” or engaged with any of them.

“I suppose that I should be flattered that some extremely attractive lady in California is desperately trying to “hook up” with a 60 odd year old, overweight balding man from Royton. Of course not !!

“I believe that this is known as some sort of “isshing” . But it is all mystery to me !!

“Today, I have been made aware that the alleged and discredited “journalist” Neil Wilby has posted a piece that is both inaccurate, inflammatory, and completely untrue.

“I am sure that many of you will have already seen this article. You will note that the “pictures” that he has posted show the tag “follow” and not “following” , i.e., these where unsolicited requests, and not a “chain”. If Mr Wilby had such “evidence” he would have gleefully reported it. But he has not !

“I am further informed that Mr Wilby has now taken to social media purporting to have evidence that I have “replied” to some of these posts. I can tell you that I HAVE NOT.

“If there is evidence of such “correspondence” it most certainly has not come from me. Do you seriously think that I would engage this way, using such as public platform, on a telephone that is owned and monitored by the company that I run ?

“I am told that I should look at the possibility of my account being “hacked”. I will admit that I do not have the first idea as to where to start this process, however, I will engage with my company’s IT provider on Monday morning to look into the matter.

“If there is one thing that I will happily admit to, it is that I am naïve when it comes to the workings of the “social media” bubble, and as such, and on (probably good) advice, I have immediately closed my “X” account.

“I will not give the rest of his article any “oxygen” at this stage, short of being very clear that, if a standards complaint is submitted, as Mr Wilby infers, not only will I vigorously contest such complaint, with legal representation if necessary (costs of which I will look to recover from the council, when I am most certainly proved to be at no fault) I will raise a counter complaint against those opportunist and desperate councillors who may submit a vexatious and unfounded complaint in the first place.

“I will be very clear, I have absolutely NO intention of resigning from the council. If this is the best that Wilby and his cohort of “leakers” has got ….. then you need to work a little harder!!

“Finally, for now, I will address Wilbys points regarding the female members of my party and the council. I am “old school” , I treat women with respect, courtesy and good manners. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary, please feel free to contact me at any time.

“Thank you for your consideration.

“Regards

“Dave Arnott

“Councillor Dave Arnott
“The Conservative Party
“Royton North”

Here is Neil Wilby’s reply, made publicly, not to a select few:

Dear Readers

The statement put out by Cllr Arnott to just fifteen people, bizarrely including his wife, leaves more questions than answers and exposes further his propensity to lie or obfuscate or abuse:

I will number the succeeding paragraphs for the convenience of a reply from either the Council Leader, the Borough Solicitor in his guise as Monitoring Officer, or maybe, even Cllr Arnott himself?

1.  The general sneering tone and smearing content of the purported ‘statement’ is not only deliberately disrespectful and discourteous, it is, in parts, highly defamatory, and, as such, actionable in law.
2. Moreover, even on the merest inspection, the email unequivocally places him in breach of the elected Members’ Code of Conduct.
3. It starts off with a bare faced lie and it is, more or less, all downhill from there: He states his ‘X’ (Twitter) was opened ‘about 12 months ago’. It is clear from the featured image of the subject article, his own Twitter biography, that the account was created in March, 2022.
4. The proposition that Cllr Arnott’s ‘X’ (Twitter) contributions were ‘fairly passive’ is similarly false. It is also counter intuitive when set against the stated ambition to ‘widen my profile’.
5. At the time of the deletion of his account, Cllr Arnott had followed 764 and was followed by 364 Twitter users. As an example, Cllr Aftab Hussain, who opened his Twitter account as a St Mary’s councillor five years ago, and operates an account that is genuinely passive, follows 27 and is followed by 33. Other examples are available.
6. The Arnott posts and replies on ‘X’ (Twitter) were not ‘contained’ in either of the forms he suggests in his statement. It was an account noted for a not inconsiderable amount of content palpably inappropriate for a local councillor. He set out to be controversial and a ‘bit of a lad’ personality and, of sorts, achieved those aims.
7. Cllr Arnott claims not to be ‘tech savvy’ but is Sales Director of an electronic security company.
8. If his Twitter account was receiving attention from 100s of sex bots then the most likely explanation is that the web crawlers, and the artificial intelligence tools that the social media giants use routinely, were identifying his use of the internet as commensurate with that suggested content.
9. Neil Wilby has almost 6,700 Twitter followers and encounters negligible attention from sex bots on his timeline. Follow requests from sex bot accounts are very few and far between.
10. Cllr Arnott claims not to have engaged with any of them. But, on the clearest of pictorial evidence, he has conversed publicly with three of them. To receive the requested pornography, via direct message, it would also have been necessary for him to follow those porn bot accounts.
11. ‘It is all a mystery to me’ he says. But the replies Cllr Arnott gave to those pornography purveyors don’t give that impression. Correct answers were given to questions and he won the prizes of porn into his Twitter direct messages, seemingly.
12. The mind boggles at what scrutiny of that particular inbox might reveal.
13. There is nothing ‘alleged’ about Neil Wilby’s credentials as a journalist: He is a newsgatherer authorised by the National Police Chiefs’ Council; accredited by his professional body/union, the National Union of Journalists, for whom he serves as a Branch Committee member, and Membership Secretary, in the Leeds and West Yorkshire Area. He is also accredited by the International Federation of Journalists and the International Travel Writers’ Association. He carries coveted NUJ, IFJ and ITWA press cards.
14. Insofar as is relevant, he is also an appointed Community Moderator on the ‘X’ (Twitter) platform. Trusted to assist the platform operator in verifying content.
15. Whether Neil Wilby is ‘discredited’, or otherwise, could be regarded as subjective or historic (an adverse libel finding from 2013); but Cllr Arnott, as a publicly elected official with the responsibilities and ethical restraints that such a position carries, needs to articulate clearly, and with evidence, how he arrives at his conclusion. Otherwise, it is a simply a gratuitous smear and, again, actionable.
16. Cllr Arnott asserts that the subject article ‘is both (sic) inaccurate, inflammatory and completely untrue’. That is also defamatory. Very highly so, at this point: In a recent case authority QB-2021-001140 Shah v Imran and others, Mrs Justice Steyn DBE said that “an allegation that a journalist has knowingly published false or baseless reports strikes at the heart of their professionalism, and undoubtedly meets both the consensus requirement and the threshold of seriousness……The statement of opinion that he has been misusing his professional position for his own purposes also meets those requirements. These are serious allegations to make against a professional journalist.”
17. As his evidence, Cllr Arnott cites (i) that the porn bot accounts with which he interacted simply sent him ‘unsolicited’ follower requests (ii) there is not a ‘chain’ within which there have been Twitter conversations.
18. The facts are: (i) that the posts of these porn bots appeared on his timeline (or he has gone looking for them via a search), not in his Notifications where follower requests appear (ii) When checked in real time on Saturday 6th April, 2024, prior to the article being published, those Arnott/porn bot conversations existed, with not a scintilla of doubt. The article could not have been solidly grounded, or published, otherwise.
19. Cllr Arnott in his email to colleagues and friends (some of the recipients are decidedly not his friend) then says, forcefully, that the porn bot “correspondence” has definitely not come from him and alludes to the possibility of his account being “hacked”. The regular resort of the compromised.
20. He then claims that to operate an official councillor social media account he uses his work phone, not the one provided by the Council.
21. Generously, he offers up his work phone to IT scrutiny, including checks as to whether his Twitter account has been ‘hacked’. A task made particularly difficult as the account has, for the moment at least, been deleted (see para 20 below) or that phone has not ben used to access Twitter.
22. The same offer to give up his Council phone for appropriate IT scrutiny is not made.
23. He does not address the subject article’s core points of malware risk and potential risks to data and safeguarding by interaction with porn bots.
24. Cllr Arnott claims that on ‘good advice’ he has ‘immediately closed [the] Twitter account’. He does not say from whom that advice came or why, when probably the entire Borough of Oldham would consider that to be shockingly bad counsel, he considers it to be good.
25. If he had nothing to hide and everything was above board and in line with what he claims, the sensible, ethical, professional and appropriately robust response to the article would have been to issue a legal letter to the publisher, Neil Wilby Media, inviting them to amend or remove it on pain of a High Court claim.
26. At the same time inviting the world at large to see for themselves that there was nothing untoward in the way that Twitter account was operated. His long running obsession with Labour councillors’ cover-ups demands that his own conduct is not only absolutely beyond reproach it is seen to be so.
27. The threatening and bullying by Cllr Arnott towards fellow councillors who wish to follow due process and raise their well-grounded concerns through the Council’s Standards process is unattractive and, again, regularly the resort of the compromised.
28. He has recently made one Standards complaint against a fellow councillor, falsely alleging at least one ‘leak’ to Neil Wilby, and that was dismissed as ‘no case to answer’. A fair definition of a vexatious complaint, one might fairly argue.
29. The threatened use of solicitors to defend a Council Standards complaint, and raise complaints against others, also strongly suggests that there are matters that Cllr Arnott does not want scrutinised independently within the Civic Centre
30. The proposition that he would be able to recover his solicitors’ costs from the Council (the taxpayers, effectively) is, put bluntly, ludicrous.
31. Cllr Arnott asserts that he has ‘absolutely NO intention of resigning from the Council’ despite his position being completely untenable before his ‘colleagues and friends’ email. After that missive, only the particularly dull-witted would attempt to continue in public life.
32. He signs off by claiming he is ‘old school’ and always respectful to women. Some of us, ancient in years, remember ‘old school’ from the days of our parents and their contemporaries; where women were expected to cook, clean and provide a laundry and taxi service, have a meal on the table on demand, not have an opinion and offer up sex, involuntary or otherwise. The more enlightened rejected that regime as adults and treated women as equals, at the very least.
33. With regard to his treatment of women, Cllr Arnott should also be reminded of two grotesque, highly-personalised smear campaigns mounted by the Tameside-based group of conspiracy theorists known as The Rabble, of which, as a sitting councillor and along with his Tory colleague, Cllr Lewis Quigg, he is a coveted member. One ‘paedophile protector’ campaign, notably, against Arooj Shah in Chadderton South, where he lived at the time, the other against Amanda Chadderton in Royton, where he also lived at that time (read the full story here).

In conclusion, the only way this matter will be settled to the satisfaction of the ward electorate in Royton North,  the taxpayers of Oldham Borough and other stakeholders, including myself and the list of Cllr Arnott’s colleagues and friends, is for the following actions to be taken:

– The subject Twitter account be re-activated by Cllr Arnott and placed open to public and stakeholder scrutiny. Twitter allows a ‘cooling off’ period of 30 days in which a decision to delete an account can be reversed.

– The Council-owned phone (and any other Council-owned device) be handed over for forensic scrutiny.

Two very simple actions and ones that, in all fairness, the Monitoring Officer, Paul Entwistle, his Conservative Group Leader, Cllr Sheldon, and the Council Leader, Cllr Shah, should already have already pressed for.

– The immediate suspension of Cllr Arnott from the Oldham and Saddleworth Conservative Group, pending an investigation, should follow if he refuses to take those actions.

– To avoid further legal action, an apology from Cllr Arnott to me, together with a full retraction of his defamatory comments and a donation equivalent to one month’s councillor allowance, made in my name to Oldham Food Bank, would be a reasonable and public-spirited compromise.

Yours in truth

Neil Wilby

In conclusion, readers, and Cllr Arnott, might just reflect on this Twitter exchange a few months ago:

 

Page last updated: Monday 8th April, 2024 at 07h55

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Picture credit: Lancashire Constabulary

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