A Tory Councillor has been suspended from his job for 20 weeks and will be forced to undertake diversity training, after he called members of the public "retards".
Hull City Council received two complaints after Councillor John Fareham used Twitter to denounce people who had protested against public spending cuts.
"15 hours in Council today very hard hitting day and the usual collection of retards in the public gallery spoiling it for real people," he wrote.
The council's standards committee found that his actions breached its code of conduct. Fareham's suspension is effective immediately.
Chair of the sub-committee Sheelagh Strawbridge said: "The committee concluded that Councillor Fareham may have caused the authority to breach equality enactments and had brought his office and the Council into disrepute."
Fareham's tweet has since been deleted but not before the Political Scrapbook blog took a screen shot.