Comments Policy

These are standard rules about comments posted to this blog by the public. They are designed to ensure all users feel safe and keen to visit regularly, and the blog keeps its focus.

1. Debate should be lively but also constructive and respectful.

2. Don’t incite hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, age or sexuality or other personal characteristic.

3. Don’t swear, use hate-speech or make obscene or vulgar comments.

4. Don’t break the law. This includes libel, condoning illegal activity and contempt of court (comments which might affect the outcome of an ongoing or approaching court case).

5. Don’t submit comments which are substantially material from another website, publication, news feed or blog. Clearly attribute any content from another website or publication or it could constitute a breach of copyright.

6. Don’t engage in ‘spamming’. Don’t advertise or promote products or services.

7. If you are under 16, please get permission from a parent or guardian before commenting on this blog.

8. Don’t impersonate or falsely claim to represent a person or organisation.

9. Don’t post in a language other than English. (We hope in the future to be able to support translation.)

10. Protect your privacy and that of others. Please don’t post private addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details.

11. Stay on-topic. Please don’t post messages that are unrelated to the topic of the original blog post.

12. Finally, please keep it brief. Comments should be no longer than 250 words and preferably a lot less.

Comments are moderated by the Hansard Society or blog authors before going live. Comments will go live as soon as possible within a 48 hour period (in office hours). If a comment contravenes the Comments Policy it will not be published. Where a comment partially contravenes the comments policy, it will be edited to remove the offending passage/s.

Content Disclaimer

Views expressed by the authors or ‘bloggers’ are their own and do not represent the views of the House of Lords, its authorities or its other Members (including parties and other groups of Members) or the Hansard Society. The House of Lords is not responsible for, and disclaims all liability for, content or comment contributed by authors or users. The Hansard Society is not responsible for any content on this site.

Copyright and the law

You own the copyright in your postings, articles and images. If you do not own the copyright for an image you want to upload onto the site, you must ensure that you obtain prior written agreement from the copyright owner, agreeing to publication. You also agree to grant the Hansard Society a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicenseable right and licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, play, and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to any such work worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any media now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content. If you do not wish to grant such rights to the Hansard Society, it is suggested that you do not submit your comment to this site.

You should remember that you are legally responsible for what you write. By submitting a comment you undertake to indemnify the Hansard Society against any liability arising from breach of confidentiality or copyright, or any obscene, defamatory, seditious, blasphemous or other actionable statement you may make.

The Hansard Society logo is copyright.

Virus protection

The site operators make every effort to check and test material at all stages of production. It is always wise for users to run an anti virus program on all material downloaded from the internet. The Hansard Society cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or your computer system which may occur whilst using material from the website.

Your privacy

Cookies are pieces of data that are often created when you visit a website and are stored in the cookie directory of your own computer. Cookies are used to store a session ID which allows you to log-in and make comments. No personal information is stored in the Cookie. Other websites linked from this site are not covered by this privacy policy.

This site does require a user to enter a name and working email address in order to post a comment on this blog. This information is securely stored and will not be passed on to any third parties.

Links to and from other websites

The Hansard Society is not responsible for the contents or reliability of the external websites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. Links to external sites should not be taken as endorsement of any kind. We cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and we have no control over the availability of the linked pages.

The Hansard Society encourages users to establish hypertext links to the site. You do not have to ask permission to link directly to pages hosted on the website. We do not object to you linking directly to our information, but you should obtain permission if you intend to use our logo.