Thursday 29 April 2010

Another penitent sinner...

Here's a statement I issued earlier:

"On hearing the results of a random and unscientific sample of postal votes, I posted them on Twitter. It was a thoughtless thing to do, and I very quickly realised that it was not appropriate to put such information in the public domain. Because this was not official information, and no votes had been counted, I thought of it as being akin to canvass returns, i.e. telling people how well we were doing with Labour promises on the doorstep, but I appreciate now it was wrong to do so. I have personally called the Returning Officer at Bristol City Council to apologise, and assured him I have removed the information as quickly as possible, within a matter of minutes. He has advised that it would not be lawful for anyone else to publish the information, for example, by re-posting my original Tweet."

I am not the first person to make such a mistake, and I'm sure I won't be the last, but as you can imagine, I'm cross with myself. Tweet in haste, repent at leisure....

5 comments:

Nick Harding said...

Kerry, We all make mistakes.

Glenn Vowles said...

Penitent sinner? I thought that, like me, you were an atheist Kerry?

Kerry said...

That is indeed true Glenn.

Anonymous said...

Until your post I wasn't aware of the rules either.

Malcolm Clarke said...

Twitter does make mistakes like this very likely as it does not get the scrutiny of other things an MP will release into the public domain.

You know everyone will jump all over you for it, but it will not cost you votes.

Those without sin cast the first stone. There would be few stones thrown.

Good luck this week!

Malcolm
NW Durham Labour