MRN staff blog – Policy and ‘House Rules’

The aim of the MRN blog is to keep visitors to our website updated on news in the world of immigration, including perspectives on latest policy developments, events and reports, as well as updates from our office. We will be writing about a range of subjects and would welcome feedback, experiences and opinions on the content. Visitors can leave a comment for up to 21 days after publication.

Like many other blogs we have house rules. These are for two reasons; first so that we do not publish illegal or offensive material; and second to make sure the blog continues to be useful to our readers. We read all comments before publication but won’t withhold your comment unless it breaks the house rules. We’ll do our best to publish your comment quickly but outside of normal working hours or if we receive high numbers of comments, it may take us a little longer.

Your comments

1. Please be civil– we won’t publish anything that:

• Is considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others
• Is racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable
• Contains swear words or other language likely to offend
• Breaks the law, condones or encourage unlawful activity or which could endanger the safety or well-being of others
• Impersonates someone else

2. Comments that could damage the reputation of a person or organisation, that risk prejudicing on-going or forthcoming court proceedings or that could place MRN in contravention of its legal and/or regulatory obligations will not be published.

3. Please make comments relevant to the subject of the article. We may not publish comments that we consider to be spam or which are unrelated to the article content against which they are posted.

4. Please keep the number of comments you make on a topic reasonable. Too many posts from an individual or small group can discourage other readers from joining the conversation.

5. In exceptional cases we may get a high volume of similar comments on a post. In these cases we may close comments for that post, adding a note letting you know that further comments have been received but not published.

6. By submitting comments to this site, you warrant that such comments are not defamatory nor infringe any law. You agree to indemnify MRN against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be incurred by MRN as a result of your breach of the above warranty.

Trackbacks and links

Trackbacks and links will be published unless the page they link to breaches the house rules above or where the website they link to contains, or directly links to, material which is:

1. Offensive:

• Pornography and sexually explicit content
• Text and images likely to offend most people
• Hate sites (on grounds of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation)
• Gratuitous violence

2. Unlawful:

• Condones or encourages unlawful acts
• Breaches copyright law or encourage others to do so (e.g. peer-to-peer music sites, illegal downloads of software and games, etc.)
• Defamation and contempt of court
• Hacking or other technical disruption to online services
• Describes how to conduct an unlawful act (e.g. bomb-making, fraud etc)

The fact that a link appears on this blog does not mean that MRN in any way endorses the content of that website and is not responsible for its content or actions.

Your privacy

We ask for your email address when you post a comment. This will not be published but may be used to contact you in relation to your comment, or to send you future MRN bulletins and updates. We will not use it for any other purposes without your permission.

If you have a question for the MRN staff, please post a comment including your email address and we’ll get back to you.

We may update these house rules from time to time, so please revisit this page to ensure your comments will be published.