Lewes District Councillor wins Private Eye Award

A Lewes District Councillor has won the dubious honour of winning Private Eye publication's 'Council Tweet of the Year'.

The Eye bestowed the award to Donna Edmunds, a Tory councillor, after her online exchange earlier this year with a constituent regarding the privatisation of the National Health Service – for which Edmunds is in favour.

The row developed after Edmunds expressed her view on the NHS should and later told the Lewes constituent, who used the name Jim Cornelius, that he should pay his "taxes to die of cancer if you want," later amending her comment to "pay your taxes for a ****** service if that's what you want to do."

The then lead member of communications and community engagement (she has since resigned that post but remains a councillor representing Barcombe and Hamsey) for Lewes District Council made the error of referring to the constituent as "the village idiot" on Twitter.

As the debate got evermore heated the councillor told Cornelius that "you've just confirmed your status as the village idiot."

However Edmunds remained unrepentant saying: "I don't regret calling him an idiot. It has to be seen in the context of a conversation that was going on for three or four hours and I had persistently told him I didn't want to talk anymore.

"In terms of the other comment I do regret the wording and I did retract it afterwards."

The councillor did admit, though, that she would probably not have made the remarks had the debate been held face-to-face.

Cornelius later tweeted to say that comments Edmunds had made to The Argus newspaper, in which she said the 'village idiot' came after she had asked him to stop tweeting her. He claims that request came the day after.