Sunday, March 09, 2014
Top five political Twitter gaffes
Picking up on David Cameron accidentally starting a meme on Wednesday when when he tweeted a picture of himself looking extremely serious on the phone to Barack Obama, the Guardian features the top five political twitter gaffes.
Amongst those tweets are Ed Balls now infamous tweeting of his name that has led to the creation of an Ed Balls Day and George Osborne posting a picture of himself scoffing a late-night takeaway the day before the comprehensive spending review. Except that it soon transpired his burger wasn’t from some any old takeaway, it was actually a posh burger from upmarket chain Byron Burger.
And then there is Conservative MP, Aiden Burley wildly misjudging the national mood during the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, tweeting: “The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen – more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?”:
In a subsequent tweet, he added: “Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multicultural crap.” Not the best move while the rest of Twitter was going wild for Danny Boyle’s celebration of all things British. Burley told the BBC the tweets had been misunderstood.
Typos are par for the course on Twitter, of course. Except when the leader of the opposition makes a rather unfortunate one after the death of a high-profile figure. Ed Miliband made his mistake in an attempt to express sadness at the death of gameshow host Bob Holness, of Blockbusters fame.
“Sad to hear Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters,” read the hastily-deleted tweet. It didn’t help Miliband had only just given Diane Abbott a right telling off for her own social media mishap.
i am sure there will be more in due course.
Amongst those tweets are Ed Balls now infamous tweeting of his name that has led to the creation of an Ed Balls Day and George Osborne posting a picture of himself scoffing a late-night takeaway the day before the comprehensive spending review. Except that it soon transpired his burger wasn’t from some any old takeaway, it was actually a posh burger from upmarket chain Byron Burger.
And then there is Conservative MP, Aiden Burley wildly misjudging the national mood during the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, tweeting: “The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen – more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?”:
In a subsequent tweet, he added: “Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multicultural crap.” Not the best move while the rest of Twitter was going wild for Danny Boyle’s celebration of all things British. Burley told the BBC the tweets had been misunderstood.
Typos are par for the course on Twitter, of course. Except when the leader of the opposition makes a rather unfortunate one after the death of a high-profile figure. Ed Miliband made his mistake in an attempt to express sadness at the death of gameshow host Bob Holness, of Blockbusters fame.
“Sad to hear Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters,” read the hastily-deleted tweet. It didn’t help Miliband had only just given Diane Abbott a right telling off for her own social media mishap.
i am sure there will be more in due course.
