In yet another example of the potential pitfalls of social networking in the workplace, a British MP for Telford and party whip is today at the centre of a storm over an offensive post on the micro-blogging site Twitter.
 

 
Yesterday evening, the Twitter account of MP David Wright posted the message

“#ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it’s still a scum-sucking pig.”

The tweet was joining in with the Twitter meme responding to the latest Tory poster campaign which features the tag line “I have never voted Tory before but…”. However the turn of phrase has hit a raw nerve among many Twitter users, prompting the MP to delete the offensive tweet and apologise.
  

 
 
Out of interest, in response to the question above “Do you *really* think it’s acceptable to call people ‘scum-sucking pigs”???” The MP responded as in the next image:
  

 
 
The story doesn’t end there though.. David Wright MP has said that he actually posted the comment as “#ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” (in a kind of homage to Barack Obama use of the phrase during his election campaign) but that his message was subsequently “tinkered with” and the extra words added. Mr Wright told the BBC that this was a legitimate “edgy Twitter comment about the political process” and the Tories’ “general policy position“.
  
I’ll be very interested to see how this story ends, because currently neither the Twitter interface or any of the third-party Twitter clients have any kind of functionality that allows the editing of Tweets once they have been posted. So for these words to have been mischievously added by persons unknown must mean a quite substantial security failure at Twitter themselves. Either that or Mr. Wright just forgot what he actually typed.