Unless policy has changed in 5 years, you don't need to pull strings to make the police visit somebody who made tweets you don't like. You just need to make the right noises and be sufficiently offended such that the police will check whether there is a genuine problem or not.

It's pretty scary getting a phone call or visit from the police, but they make it quite clear you're not in trouble, at which point it's mostly infuriating that someone got butthurt enough to trouble you in this manner.

True, but they should not have asked him to take it down.

I can think of scenarios where it would be reasonable for the police to ask someone to stop legal behavior - "please stop pissing off your neighbours" - but this is not one of them.

I was asked to remove offending content too. Like OP they admitted they couldn't make me, but it was implied that it would appease the offended party and make things easier (for them, at least, since it makes it more likely the crank would stop wasting their time).

It certainly wasn't suggested in the way the Mafia might suggest you pay for protection, if that's what you're thinking. There was no sense of authority when they asked it. It sounds like the same thing happened to OP.

Honestly I think it is fairly problematic for them to even relay the request that you take it down. If the aggrieved party has an issue with what you are saying but you are operating within your rights and the law, then the aggrieved party can make the request themselves.

I think that having the police, or a politician (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09...) or any other member of the government relay those requests is out of line.

True. Looking back on it I was pretty mad at the time, especially over what is a civil matter, but it proved to be absolutely inconsequential.

The post (if by 'poster' you meant post) is confusing. UKIP say they're cancelling house building on green belt land, someone else says there's 'numerous refs', the someone else says no source was found. It seems to be pointing out that the of the claims against UKIP aren't referenced, but it's being tweeted by a Green Party supporter.

After digging through his twitter stream, it looks like he took an existing image and tried to add references for the claims.

He did. But as he mentions in his post, he only references official UKIP sources.

The unreferenced ones are contentious, but from my understanding of UKIP's plans, they're broadly correct.

ah, he confirmed on twitter last night: https://twitter.com/MichaelAbberton/status/46560706028634521... so I think what happened is that the original image was produced, someone annotated it with unverified info, and Michael Abberton then double checked this and annotated it further with the bold text to note any claims which couldn't be confirmed.

I think that he's confirming that some claims aren't verified because he's being honest, irrespective of party ties.