Advising an errant employee on "netiquette".

I have been blogging here now for almost fourteen years.

In that time I have sometimes gone back to amend – or delete – posts after they were originally posted.

There are all sorts of reasons why one might do that and it wouldn't necessarily be wrong (although good "netiquette" would be to identify and date any substantial amendment)

It would, however, be a bit misleading if – for example – I were now to go back to a post written in (say) 2014 in order to write in a prediction that the Tories were going to win a parliamentary majority and stage a referendum which would lead to the UK leaving the European Union.

Happily, the internet protects against such gross breaches of “netiquette” and so if I did that (and then sought to claim the blog post in question as evidence of my prescient wisdom) I could easily be caught out.

Remembering what I was saying yesterday about giving advice to workers as a union representative I can only add that, if I were advising someone whose job was to be a high-profile political advisor who had been exposed for rewriting their own personal online history in this way, I would have to advise them that such deceitful behaviour could undermine the relationship of trust and confidence upon which an employment contract is founded.

So they could find themselves in trouble at work.

Unless they were Dominic Cummings and they worked for Boris Johnson, who does not think he is responsible for managing subordinates.