14 Comments

• Liberal Neil 30th Mar '07 - 10:09am

  Has he got anything to apologise for.

  Surely a 19 year old is entitled go and have a few jars with his mates?

• Rob Fenwick 30th Mar '07 - 10:11am

  I don’t think so, you don’t think so – but I wonder if the electorate are oddly prudish about this stuff.

• Liberal Neil 30th Mar '07 - 10:22am

  What has he got to apologise for?

  He’s 19, he has a few jars with his mates.

  I’d be more worried if he didn’t.

• Liberal Neil 30th Mar '07 - 10:30am

  Sorry about the double message!

  I don’t think that many people will be bothered to be honest.

• Rob Fenwick 30th Mar '07 - 10:35am

  And yet… if the tables were reversed… and we were looking for a ‘comical’ face to use subliminally in a Focus, wouldn’t we be tempted to pull a photo of someone pissed as a fart off their Facebook profile?

• Neil Woollcott 30th Mar '07 - 10:36am

  Reading the Times article the only thing that might cause concern is the candidate wanted to promote young people in a good light.

  Sadly too many young people are seen as ‘perpetrators’ of anti-social behaviour. The many young people who are volunteers or respect the rule of law usually go unreported.

  Whilst the young might view this as a politician that is ‘life like’, older voters may think the opposite.

• MatGB 30th Mar '07 - 1:44pm

  I’m fast getting used to the whole ‘live life openly and online’ thing, but looking through younger friends facebooks &c the number of pictures that just shouldn’t be posted publicly is scary.

  Still, hopefully he’ll get past it (then, he’s chasing a big majority so doubt it’ll make a difference). Don’t think the way he apologised was good, he should’ve simply explained what happened and pointed out it was in sensible situations.

• James Graham 30th Mar '07 - 1:52pm

  All the photos of my youth I’ve put up on Facebook are insurance against the possibility that I might ever be foolish enough to stand for public office.

• Ed Trelinski 30th Mar '07 - 2:51pm

  Sadly I think Rob is right. The electorate is less inclined to share our liberal tendencies. This kind of thing will continue to occur though because of the proliferation of people posting on social networking sites. The interesting question is, will the electorate become more accepting of such revealing photos, videos and alike? Will we as voters have to learn to accept politicians are flawed?

• Hywel 30th Mar '07 - 3:10pm

  Without getting all po-faced there is an issue here in terms of people’s attitudes.

  Years back (AKA when I was young!) such activities would be remembered by those there. Rarely they might be photographed but those photographs would have fairly limited circulation for practical reasons. By the time someone reaches political prominence 10-15 years later most such photos will have been lost.

  Now, anytime anyone goes out and does something vaguely stupid most of their friends will have video recorders or certainly cameras on their phones to document it. It also makes it easier to emulate Paris Hilton 🙂

  It’s also massively easier to circulate such recordings via the various websites.

  Once something is on a website it is very difficult to remove it – you certainly don’t know who else has copied it.

  So such incidents are likely to become much more common and people will be less able to leave the foolish excesses of their past behind them.

• MatGB 30th Mar '07 - 5:33pm

  people will be less able to leave the foolish excesses of their past behind them.

  But, conversely, people will be more accepting and tolerant, as we’ll be more used to there being records of us as well.

  Admittedly, that’s not going to be the case for awhile, but we are more used to it than we were. At least sites are getting better with their privacy functions these days.

• Andrea 30th Mar '07 - 6:49pm

  He’s standing in a seat where Libdems came 6th last time beated by SSP and SSCU, so any potential electoral impact won’t be a problem anyway.
  If it had happened in a target seat, it would have been more “interesting” in terms of voters reaction.
  Maybe the reaction would depend on the seat where a candidate is standing (would the voters of Brighton, Oxford or Cambridge react in the same way of the voters of the Western Islands?)

• Caron 31st Mar '07 - 4:07pm

  I don’t think he has anything to apologise for. He is a decent chap who has, like virtually every other young person in the country, had a bit too much to drink a couple of times. One of the occasions was when he’d come back from doing voluntery work abroad.

  It makes me cross that the media aren’t interested in portaying young people in a positive light – and are always out, just like the Labour Party, to demonise them.

• Hywel 31st Mar '07 - 6:15pm

  Apparently one of the photos shows him “swigging from a bottle”.

  Sounds like a most dangerous character 🙂