Labour MP denies calling Tories 'scum-sucking pigs' on Twitter

A Labour minister has claimed his Twitter account was hacked, after a tweet went out under his name that brandished the Tories as "Scum-sucking pigs". David Wright, who is the Labour MP for Telford, insisted that the "scum-sucking" phrase was added by someone else on the micro-blogging website. The minister had been using …

[Neur0mancer]

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Chinny reckon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians denying reality again.

It's time to be open and admit that they're all scum sucking pigs.

Paris: She knows about sucking scummy pigs.

[Dave Harris]

Don't like it up'em

And when ToryBear described Gordon Brown as looking like a paedophile? Silence from Tory HQ http://bit.ly/aFI7RC

[Pete James]

Do try to be consistent

Torybear is an individual blogger. A bit of a pillock to be honest, but a citizen and not someone who holds public office.

David Wright is a Minister of the Crown; a person who was elected to his position and is expected to follow the highest standards of propriety. The comments of others does not legitimise his behaviour.

But then, David Wright is an MP who voted against full disclosure of expense claims made. He also accepted £16k from the landlord of his flat in return for no longer paying low rent, and then moved out. Oh, and he was paid for his moving expenses too.

This nasty little man has form.

[Dave Harris]

And your point is?

Because tory MPs like Nadine Dorries are really the type of people who have a clue, and wannabe PPCs like Iain Dale (despite his impeccable taste in football clubs) are truly people who I want speaking for me.

Meanwhile, on planet Reality...

[Anonymous Coward]

MP's

The term scum sucking pigs is perfectly ok when used in the context of MP's..... all of them are and it doesnt matter who wins they will fuck up the country......

[phil mcracken]

it's all well and good saying you've been hacked and someone's tinkered with it...

Except you can't edit tweets. Nulabour fail.

I'd have a lot more respect for him if he admitted that it was him - at least he would be being honest and I suspect he's not the only one who thinks that.

Saying that he is a politician - honesty seems to be illegal nowadays, probably as a result of wor Mandy's meddling with the laws....

[Shaun Austin]

Liar

You can't edit a tweet. You can delete but not edit. He's been caught out and rather than fess up and say he'd gone too far he's coming out with the "I was hacked/it was edited" bollocks.

From Twitter Help pages:

"[Can I edit a tweet once I post it?]

Nope. Once it’s out there, you can’t edit it. You can delete an update by clicking the trash icon..."

[Richard 118]

Supicious

"Looks like my tweets have been tinkered with"

Clearly doesn't understand that Twitter don't and have never allowed editing of Tweets (http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/13920)

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Supicious

What no one seems to have pointed out yet is that tweets can't be edited. I really can't understand why no one has mentioned this yet. Come on, get in the game.

[Billy 8]

Pfft ;-)

Sarcasm ftw ;-)

[Dunstan Vavasour]

Smug Moderatrix

Of course, if the comment system were able to post comments as they were made rather than bunching them up like London Buses, the Reg hacks wouldn't get the opportunity to make sanctimonious little jibes like this.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Smug Moderatrix

Ah, cram it, Dunstan. If the comment system were able to post comments as they were made the threads would be even more full of inane, offensive and rampantly pointless shit and shitola than they are now.

Furthermore, your momma.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Smug moderatrix

So that's what it means when you reject my posts. In future I shall take it that my comment was either inane, offensive, or rampantly pointless. You're right though, even I don't want this to turn into /b/.

[Jamie Jones]

@Sarah

haha, though mean if you moderated those 3 posts all at once!

[furious]

Liar.

...Because we all know how easy it is to edit a post on Twitter once you've made it. Oh wait.

I really couldn't care less about mudslinging between the rival main parties but for the instigator to then turn around and cry foul play, when there are screenshots of the post and his apology minutes later, is nothing short of pathetic. Is it any wonder that there's so much voter apathy when we have prats like this in office?

To those of us who were online watching this as it broke, it's obvious that Wright is simply too spineless to acknowledge his gaffe.

[Jamie Jones]

Mr

I've never and never will use twitter, but couldn't someone simply copy/delete/paste/edit/post ?

Pedantically not an edit, but effectively so

[TeeCee]

Plato.

Let's see, now that Representative Democracy has degenerated to the level of handbags in Tw@ter-land, a quick look at Plato's Republic is in order to tell us what comes next.

Oh, Tyranny, that sucks........

[Rat]

Suspicious, but...

If - and that's a big if - he was hacked, I suppose it's possible that the hacker deleted the old, non "scum-sucking" tweet, and retweeted it with the added words.

Seems highly implausible to me, though; if someone had hacked the account with the intent of publicly embarrassing the Minister, you'd think they'd tweet something a bit more offensive and contentious than that.

Sounds to me like a common-or-garden noob getting caught out in a bare-faced lie. About par for the course for politics in this country, these days...

[Eddie Edwards]

Lost, sorry

What's Twitter? Is it a new kind of hustings?

[It wasnt me]

I really cant believe it.

What is most disappointing is that the people of Telford elected that mindless imbecile. Yes, collectively, Telford have said, "Hes the man. That's who I want to be my representative in parliament. When it comes to big decisions on the economy and the wars, he's the man I trust to do the right thing by me."

Come on Telford, what is wrong with you ? Did you even look at his picture???????

FFS, Telford should have the vote taken away.

And any MP who posts anything at all on Tw@tter should have their salary halved, as its not what I call work, and its not what I pay them for.

Bastards.

[ForthIsNotDead]

Telford

Ever visited the place? It's full of pram pushing 16 year olds smoking fags and scoffing kebabs while their kids polish off a pot noodle.

Of course they're gonna vote Labour. Got to keep those benefits coming in...

I'd advise staying on the M54 and continue on past junctions 4 5 & 6. Next stop, Shrewsbury. Much better ;-)

[Daniel Evans]

Well...

It is Telford after all...

[lglethal]

A few points

a) Why on Earth is a politician on twitter? There PR teams must be collectively sh*tting themselves as the politican can make as many stupid comments as they want, commments which havent passed through the Spin Doctors collective bullsh*t bin and been processed to a level of the average NotW reader whilst removing even the slightest hint of honesty from the statement. Also why the hell are they twitting* and not working?

b) Who has so much time on their hands they actually follow the twits of a political tit?

* Anyone using twitter is obviously a twit so i prefer to think of what theyre doing as twitting - it sounds far more appropriate to me...

[IdristheSweep]

Ah, finally...

...a user-base worthy of this platform!

[Steen Hive]

All this brohuha

Over a tautology? C'mon people! it's a simple mistake.

Of course the scumbag should be flayed for lying about it afterwards...

[Lan ser]

scum sucking pigs

I'd rather be a scum sucking pig than a cowardly ball-less wanker without the guts to back up his words.

Oh dear someone edited my post and put all sorts of nasty words in

Paris because even she has balls

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't they all ?

Aren't all politicians scum sucking pigs?

[Chris Byers]

This could get quite good actually

If it hadn't been reported he could have moved on to tweets like 'Tories eat babies....raw!' and 'If you vote tory we'll drag you out of your house at 3am and lock you up without a charge or trail for months'..oh, hang on.

Wheres the icon for 'I'm going to be redunadant in 3 months time'?

[LinkOfHyrule]

I wish

I wish Malcolm Tucker was on twitter - twitter would then have a use. 140 characters of pure swearage spin! Shame he's not real!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh noes, haxxorz!111

I thought this defence of self-pwnage was only employed by 15-year-old girls who'd been caught out slagging off their best friend because they shoes she bought are, like, totally hideous and make her ankles look like two bags of flour

[Daniel Bennett]

I'm from Telford

And I LOL at this man every day.

Has anyone pointed out to him you can't edit tweets?

The scum one appeard BEFORE the tweet without scum involved. He obviously deleted it.

This isn't the first time he has done this.

Hes drunk tweeted before and offended people. Hes a bit of a twat.

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know...

...that you can't edit tweets. However I quick trawl of the mainstream media seems to show that nobody working in that sphere is aware of this simple fact. Odd since most of the meeja claim to know all about twitter.

Or could it be that every journalist reporting this doesn't want to burst Wright's bubble because they're all planning to use that excuse at some point?

[Rod MacLean]

Obvious question

Why are "the Tory faithful" following a Labour MP on Twitter?

[Oninoshiko]

Obvious answer...

to catch him saying some they think is stupid.

[Dave Harris]

Regret?

I wish he'd just had the balls to stand up and say "I called them scum-sucking picking pigs because, guess what? They're scum-sucking pigs! I may have had my snout in the trough, but at least I put it right in, rather than use a straw and pretend I was nowhere near it."

And let's face it, when Dodgy Dave gets in, we're even more fucked than we are now.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dave H

Quite so, sir. It would be refreshing to see a break from the bland PR outpourings, I think I'd be more likely to vote for someone who was able to accurately characterise his opponent as a clown-infested wanktunnel or similar.

Moreover, as a child of 18 years of Tory misrule (oooh, ancient), I am currently shitting bricks over The People's Dave (emolient tabloid weathercock that he is) and his lovely wife Rupert Murdoch getting their horrid little hands on things. The current lot couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery, but at least they probably would at least try not to drown kittens in the kegs en masse.

Yeah, we're pretty much doomed. Is it too early to burn out in a massive communal drug-fuelled rampage? It feels like the only way to make the Fail stop.

[Tom 13]

Yo! Chowder head! Yeah, I'm looking at you David Wright.

(What's the point of being an obnoxious American if I can't be obnoxious?)

I think you would have been better off just admitting you sent the tweet. If you can't protect your twitter account, how are you going to protect other things that ought not be public information? Like all that personal information the government keeps collecting about its citizens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ill judged...

Pity the torys didn't think a little longer before rolling out Eric Pickles - literally!

If anyone has been sucking and chewing his way through the food trough it's Eric! Oink oink!

[SirTainleyBarking]

And the lesson is

Don't let twats twit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter

I've never bothered at all with Twitter, am I missing anything?

As an IT pro, you'd expect I'd know! My understanding was that it was just a short messaging service, mainly used by celebrities because they think the public is interested in what they're eating in a restaurant...

Strikes me, that the message length is so short as to convey anything useful..except "Help..I'm at location xxx" in an earthquake zone. Now that's a use I can agree with.

[TeeCee]

Re: Twitter

You mean it would make sense if all the tw@s were in an earthquake zone?

I can agree with that too.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dave Harris

Are you really saying you'd prefer the totally useless numskull called Gordon Brown to Cameron?

Did you have a frontal lobotomy by any chance?

Have you kept abreast of all the f**k ups Brown has made, of the erosion of civil liberties, the inexorable march into labelling everyone a criminal, a padeophile before they've even committed any kind of crime?

So you're quite happy to go along with his decept and blatent lies to the general public?

[I ain't Spartacus]

I think I've changed my mind on Twitface

I was with David Cameron that there was a danger that too many tweets make a twat. But now I'm changing my mind, as I can see a point for twitter.

I've no problem in politicians trying to communicate whichever way they can, and I can understand their frustration that the mainstream media are usually more interested in finding a way to deliberately misquote them, in order to get a cheap headline, than to cover the real arguments. This means you have to carefully assess the mainstream news organisations to spot where they're deliberately misleading you.

The great thing about politicos twitting is that if they say something really bloody stupid they've got no-one else to blame, so you can sort the numpties out from the ones with half a brain with much less effort.

Given that New Labour's strategy has been stealing Tory policies to grab Tory voters since 1995, I'm not sure that it's too much of a sign of intelligence to call one of your target audiences scum-sucking pigs. Perhaps that's just me though, perhaps he's studied some kind of uber-marketing where you treat 'em mean to keep 'em keen.

Hey! He doesn't work for Apple does he?

[Bilgepipe]

@Spartacus

"Hey! He doesn't work for Apple does he?"

Nahh, the politicians are Microsofties - they treat the populace like idiots to keep them in line.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the problem, it is not liked it was cracked

it was only hacked, nothing wrong with authorised hacking, but cracking, now that is a different story....

[Mr Larrington]

He's got form...

...at least according to Pickles, who says Wright once described Dave the Chameleon as a ‘horrible opportunistic scumbag.’ On Twitter.

One may find fault with Wright's honesty, but his judgement is spot-on.

[Robert Carnegie]

Not to be distracted by implausible denial

But instead of saying how it can't be done, shall we consider how it can be done?

If you "own" the victim's PC - let's say you're a tabloid journalist or a hacker working for them - you can probably interceptsand edit all their communications. Now Twitter... I believe it has its own API or network protocol, and the web page but "no one" uses the web page. So the malware probably wants to divert tweets, sending them not to Twitter but to the hacker, and a minute or two of delay while you choose whether to let it pass, edit, or suppress it.

More easily, you can just trick them into using your "enhanced" interface to Twitter and voluntarily passing all their tweets through your computer.

(It doesn't have to have any real enhancements, except for helpfully substituting "Tories" with "scum sucking pigs" in text submitted after 11pm.)

There's precedent: http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=5337 , a utility that auto-completes "Thatcher", when you type it, to "Thatcher is a #@$&*". Bearing in mind that Carol Thatcher was suspended from "The One Show" on BBC TV after what she seems to have said off-air about a French tennis player, Mark Thatcher apparently attempted to mount a mercenary takeover in Equatorial Guinea, and Mark's children were being privately educated in the United States, this software looks like being useful for a while to come. I'm not aware that the next generation have done anything appalling yet, but it must be only a matter of time, don't you think?

As for scum-sucking pigs: well, the remark is probably offensive to domestic pigs, who in fact have always had to eat what they're given, and, these days, receive normal, carefully and safely prepared animal fodder. And wild pigs are more choosy. They'll have truffles if they can get them. But if anyone or anything is sucking scum then that is probably a good thing. It is better than leaving scum lying around around the place. But you might not want to kiss them afterwards.

[Intractable Potsherd]

But ...

... do pigs actually suck scum? If they do, is it bad? Does this insult actually make any sense? Would we actually be better off with scum-sucking pigs (the four-legged kind, not Tories) running the country? Inquiring minds want to know

[John Smith 19]

Boiling a frog anyone?

That's the novel by Martin Brookmyre. MPs, scandal, a trail of dodgy comments.