Public Blogging

Last summer I posted on La Petite Anglaise, the blog written by a Parisian 34-year-old English expat woman (her identity has since been revealed as Catherine Sanderson) and her sacking for gross misconduct as a result of her blogging. Last Friday however she was absolved by an Employment Tribunal and her former employers, accountancy firm Dixon Wilson have been ordered to pay a year's wages as compensation for unfair dismissal as well as the unemployment benefit that Sanderson had been receiving since her sacking.

Sanderson is not the first to have lost her job as a result of her blogging and in her case the sacking was egregiously unfair as the references to her job or her workplace were both rare and suitably oblique. There is little on this blog that would be likely to jeopardise my own employment (except perhaps for an admission a few months back that I am not the world's greatest teacher); that said I have told nobody at my current job about this blog, mainly because it is nice for there to be a space in my life where it doesn't exist. Everyone at my old place of work knows about it (and one or two read it regularly) but in an age where people surrender their anonymity willingly online it is a pleasure to lurk in the background for a change.