Twitter doesn’t end careers; bad judgement does

Gosh! How exciting!  Twitter has claimed its first scalp in the internet election!

Stewart MacLennan was sacked as Labour parliamentary candidate for Moray in Scotland after his Twitter feed was found to be full of offensive and abusive comments. 

As you can image, the media are very excited about this.  After telling us all how this is the ‘internet election’ and its going to won and lost on Twitter, they can barely contain themselves now that they can shriek ‘Told you so!’ already.

But having read some of his tweets in the papers, today I’m struck by three things:

1. What he said in many of his posts really isn’t that bad.  They’re dripping with sarcasm and reflect things that many people would say to each other down the pub.  Comedians get paid for saying things like that.
2. However, he’s not a comedian.  The fact he posted them, given that he wants to run for parliament, shows he has very poor judgment, or is just plain stupid.
3. For me, the most shocking aspect is that he actually bothered to post the vast majority of his comments.  They are so banal.  What a waste of his thumbs and the internet.  Who cares what he thinks about Jedward? That he is sat opposite an ‘old bag’ on the train? Or that his banana isn’t very tasty!?