One month ago to the very day I received this email threatening legal action against me for a blog I had written linking her husband, the booming barrel chested John Blommesteyn, with the insufferably smug and self righteous blog, Newmarket Town Hall Watch (NTHW). 

From: Di Muccio, Maddie

To: Gordon Prentice;   Darryl Singer ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Dec 7 at 1:52 PM

Mr. Prentice,

I'm going to give you 24 hours to retract your blog insinuating my husband, John Blommesteyn, is the author of something he is not.

If you fail to do so, I fully intend to file legal papers against you.

Maddie Di Muccio

Newmarket Town Councillor, Ward Six

Seems to me that threats of legal action are best not made unless one is deadly serious about following them through. As yet, I have not heard from her lawyers but a letter may be in the mail.

It is alleged by NTHW that the John Blommesteyn/Newmarket Town Hall Watch Twitter account is a fake.

There is, of course, no easy way to tell with Twitter accounts whether they are fake or real. Even the company may not know but they will have a lot more information to go on. The blogger.com account for Newmarket Town Hall Watch will have a gmail (or equivalent) address behind it but, again, only the people at Google will have fuller information.

Short of a Court Order compelling Twitter/Google to reveal more, linking an individual to a blog or series of tweets means relying on forensic linguistics or similar techniques.

As it happens, I received an unsolicited email from Eric Smith on the same day Councillor Di Muccio sent hers to me.

Smith, a long time Newmarket resident and commentator on local affairs, whose declamatory and opinionated letters appear from time to time in the Era Banner, told me:

Maddie’s husband is NOT the writer of NTHW. I know who is, but in the interest of her privacy I will not disclose her ID.

With that impressive display of iron certainty, it looks as if the matter can only be settled in open Court.

As soon as I receive the much anticipated letter from Councillor Di Muccio’s lawyers I shall post it here.