- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 18.19 GMT
Boris Johnson addresses immigrants during a citizenship ceremony at City Hall. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
Boris Johnson has received a formal letter of warning after using public money for party political purposes after using his official mayoral Twitter account to celebrate the fact that the Sun had ditched Labour and decided to back the Tories.
A complaint was lodged with the Greater London authority after the mayor of London tweeted: "The Sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hip hooray" and linked to the Sun website in September.
The matter was referred to the GLA panel for dealing with complaints, who concluded last month that the mayor "could have been seen" to have been breaching a clause in the code of conduct governing elected members, "as it appeared on the evidence presented that the mayor of London was using GLA resources in seeking to affect party political support".
The committee noted that it was unclear whether Johnson tweeted himself, or someone else did so on his behalf.
The committee decided not to take the matter further and opted for a letter of guidance from City Hall's deputy chief executive, Jeff Jacobs, to the mayor highlighting the clause that stipulates that "when using or authorising the use by others of the resources by your authority, ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political purposes [including party political]".
A spokesperson for the mayor said: "Boris was asked on LBC radio that day what he thought of the Sun's decision. It was a huge talking point at the Labour party conference and elsewhere. As a politician and a former journalist, it was reasonable to expect him to have a view. He expressed it in a way he thought was a playful and amusing manner and did not anticipate its repetition on Twitter would cause such a stir."
Meanwhile, Labour's "Twitter tsar" was today deluged with questions from users of the micro-blogging site after comedian Ross Noble launched a "Twitterbombard" campaign.
Noble urged his 30,000 Twitter "followers" to send queries to Kerry McCarthy's site to see how the MP who fronts Labour's new media campaigning would respond.
The Bristol East MP announced she would try to reply to as many of the tweets as possible, and over six hours answered more than 100 questions.
Asked if she would wear a gorilla suit to parliament, she replied: "I don't think it's expressly forbidden, I could give it a try?"
Inspired by his success, Noble said he would try again with Conservative leader David Cameron, telling followers: "Let's see if Dave's lot can respond like @kerrymp ... Never mind an election, it's on right here."
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