Think before you blog
The danger with blogging is that it enables and encourages you to publish your thoughts in a very immediate and instantaneous way.
And what feels the right reaction can after only a little bit of hindsight look crass or embarrassing.
Kerron Cross fell foul of this yesterday with a fairly predictable jokey post about the building housing Hazel Blears' campaign collapsing.
This looked a lot less funny after a few hours when it became clear that some poor construction worker was trapped in the rubble. The fire service couldn't get him out until 1.30am - some 9 plus hours after the accident. He's still in hospital this morning.
Moral to Cllr Cross - and indeed all of us who blog - pause for a moment before joking about what could be a serious incident - and if determined to proceed, have the sense to go back online regularly and delete or amend your post if new information suggests it's in poor taste.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 8:47 am
17 Comments:
Stop posturing, Luke. It's not side splittingly funny but the kernel of the joke remains, even if you tell us we shouldn't be laughing. We are not laughing at the bloke trapped, we are laughing at the joke, such as it is.
9:10 am, June 13, 2007
Will there be a Blears bounce on the back of this?
9:18 am, June 13, 2007
Stop pontificating and get round to my place and help out with the phone lines. That will ensure a Blears bounce back.
9:20 am, June 13, 2007
Benjamin - there were a whole bunch of my friends in that building. It was a very scary experience for them. It was a seriously unfunny incident.
9:21 am, June 13, 2007
Luke
I appreciate that: of course it wasn't a joke for the folk concerned.
9:29 am, June 13, 2007
Luke, stop being such a pious prat.
You know full well from the timing of my post that I was posting on the BBC (and other rolling news sources) story that no-one was seriously injured and at that time no-one was thought to be trapped.
It now is clear that the incident is more serious than first thought - or related - by the media.
Obviously our major concern is with those concerned and possibly injured - as I mention in my original post.
I have added an update to the story for anyone who now stumbles across it.
10:15 am, June 13, 2007
"Pious prat". Shurely not a common turn of phrase in Christian households in the village of Croxley Green? Or has Hertfordshire taken a sad turn to the ungodly since my last official visit there?
11:35 am, June 13, 2007
Phew, at least Luke himself wasn't trapped in the building for hours, unable to blog his own knee-jerkery. Obviously it's a serious incident but it could have been a lot worse. And the K Cross Clan were actually boosting your candidate, weren't they? 3rd preferences aren't two a penny. Hopefully your petulance will nto have cost Kerron's bessie Hazey a 2nd.
11:36 am, June 13, 2007
Bad taste? Bad taste? You want to try this for bad taste!
Roof collapses on Labour Party's chairwoman Hazel Blears: UK TV news reports have claimed that there are still some people trapped in the wreckage "unfortunately none of them are Ms Blears".
12:00 pm, June 13, 2007
Still, look on the bright side. The chap who's trapped is a Romanian building labourer presumably brought here on the cheap by Blair & Prescott, without proper H&S training, so that decent upstanding trade unionists like you don't have to get your hands dirty.
12:03 pm, June 13, 2007
Kerron Cross is such a joke I'd ignore him if I were you! He combines the tragic flaws of a) being a nobody b) thinking he's a somebody c) total vacuousness d) occasionally psychotic nasty streak.
And he's a bible-thumping Christian (allegedly) who's nearly 30 and still lives at home with his parents.
And his favourite band is Crowded House.
IT'S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!
1:17 pm, June 13, 2007
"Pious prat" is probably de rigeur in the CSM ... perhaps to throw at the Tory and Lib god botherers who don't see how hilarious is is finding chinese restaurant signs that are double entendres ... and worse.
2:04 pm, June 13, 2007
baFor a thread complaining about jokes in bad taste, this thread is developing into quite bad taste itself.
Is Kerron going to retaliate by blogging about crass insults to his religion perhaps?
I'm not sure what Chris Paul's point is, but I'd rather we avoid making sweeping insults of comrades in CSM before this blog hits new lows of divisiveness...
2:33 pm, June 13, 2007
Rubbish - you have no idea how low this blog can go.
3:07 pm, June 13, 2007
Two words for Kerron Cross. Pious. Prat.
3:37 pm, June 13, 2007
Still, look on the bright side. The chap who's trapped is a Romanian building labourer
Poor guy - if only he'd been drinking in the street.
8:17 pm, June 13, 2007
Backfiring gags are an occupational hazard in politics, I think. I remember the late Tony Banks (master of the one liner) making a gag about William Hague as a foetus, that got "outraged of Tunbridge Wells" going...
10:58 pm, June 13, 2007
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