Fools and their phones will always eventually fall flat

IONCE toyed with the idea of standing for Parliament. I had a cast iron plan to end poverty, broker world peace and cure all illnesses. But sadly I was drunk and the moment quickly passed. The career of the UK’S greatest peacetime leader (self proclaimed admittedly) ended face down on a kitchen table with a bacon roll, desperately trying to avoid the shakes.

It was a lucky escape as politics isn’t really my bag. I don’t really like speaking to people, let alone engaging with them and then representing them, even for the salary offered.

I just let actual politicians get on with it and then take smug satisfaction voting them out next time around.

I’m sure all of us have thought about running for parliament at some point in our lives but we quickly think again.

Vetting to become candidates used to be fairly stringent. Parties would check all aspects of your background to make sure you hadn’t murdered anyone, eaten a small child or been convicted of treason.

But nowadays I’m not so sure, as parties seem to be unable to check even social media accounts of PPC’S. This has led to a raft of candidates recently being forced to step down after highly inflammatory posts were discovered online.

Now we’ve all posted silly things on Facebook occasionally but very few of us have inadvertently shared something that is deeply offensive, nor would we dream of doing so.

But that’s the problem with social media, you can share things in a flash that show us in an awful light and can wreck careers and prospects.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, people feel the need to share images and posts about things they would never actually say.

However, these can never be undone as somebody, somewhere will find it and then you are bang to rights.

As political parties increasingly use social media outlets to get their messages across and politicians tweet regularly, then these mistakes will increasingly happen.

But this will see the pool of prospective candidates get increasingly smaller and the standard of politicians will become even worse than they already are.

Now that’s a terrifying thought.

I have a grudging respect for most people who put themselves forward as candidates but even more so for the army of canvassers who put in countless hours at elections often with no reward.

These people deserve better than putting in the hard yards for people who are nothing more than fools with smartphones and not worthy of public service.