Allegedly on Saturday 19th November Andy O'Brien told Simon Grayson that he would refuse to play for Leeds ever again, So why are we still paying his wages? If you refused to work surely you would be fired... Yet he is still a Leeds player? What are we not been told?
You should know by now, football is not in the real world. You can't compare the normal work place to the football pitch!
I agree with nashville, we should not be paying him. I bet the Spelling Policeman would agree with us too!!!
The salary payments (without any bonus) may be paid until either O'Brien leaves or his contract ends, mainly due to the reasons behind the decision not to play for the club. I would suggest the reasons are enough for the club to accept that they need to continue to pay his wages and avoid all the legal and media ramifications.
He may have a legal reason for not wishing to play football for the club, under the current manager, which the club would rather keep out of the spotlight for as much as possible.
Every forum, blog, twitter, facebook etc has to be very careful about defamation. Posting comments under a username doesn't give a person free reign to ignore etiquette and common sense, you can't print false information about people or businesses and expect to be legally protected. There are two versions of defamation, libel and slander. Libel is when the defamation is written down (including email, bulletin boards and websites), and slander is when the incident relates to words spoken. In the UK, if someone thinks that what you wrote about them is either defamatory or damaging, the onus will be entirely on you to prove that your comments are true in court. In other words, if you make the claim, you've got to prove it! The forum itself can also be held accountable, hence those who run a forum need to observe everything and act to remove any offending material that may be legally challenged, unless of course the forum owners strongly believe and have evidence that what they have allowed to be posted is factually correct.
I suppose the way round it to to express it as an opinion ie I think mr x is a murderer, as apposed to mr x is a murderer
Use terms such as; "it would appear" "from information I have been given, it looks like...." (state where you got the information) "Information from another forum (state the forum)....." "it could be" "it appears" etc etc...
It's not just the person making the allegations who can fall foul of the libel laws. If an offending article was published in any form of media, the person who posted the article can be sued, the owners of the forum can be sued, and in magazines or newspaper media, the distributors can also be sued. Heavy reading but interesting: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/it&law/c10_main.htm
Just remember that you are never ever hidden from what you post on a forum, blog, Twitter or Facebook etc. What you post will remain and will be seen by people and action can be taken against you and in the case of forums, those who operate the forum, if defamation takes place. A username doesn't hide your identity from those who need to find out who you are. There are many cases of individuals losing their jobs after posting something nasty about their employers on Twitter or Facebook, anyone who uses these social media networks need to be aware that your employer has the right to take action against you, should you carry out a vilification, traducement, slander, and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words anything about another employee or the organisation itself.
Almost every employer in the UK now has a policy for employees using the internet at work and use of social networking media outside of work, which all employees must adhere to. You can use any social media network or forum as you like, but as soon as you mention your employers or state a comment that others know to be a specific company, you can be held accountable. See ACAS:http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3381
