Friday, January 9, 2009

The Sun: recent Chair of Staffordshire Conservative Future "made sick Maddie joke"

The Sun reports on yet another victim of Facebook, or perhaps, more correctly, a victim of crass stupidity and offensiveness fullstop:

A TOP young Tory activist was expelled from the party today for boasting about dressing up as Madeleine McCann at a New Year bash.
Conservative Future member Matthew Lewis wrote on his Facebook site that his costume would include a blonde wig, “pink pyjamas, a teddy bear and a vial of fake blood”.
Other figures from the organisation joined in the sick joke about the missing five-year-old, with one responding: “Is this a cunning (Baldrick style) plan to obtain the reward money?”
Tory chairman Caroline Spelman today branded Mr Lewis’s behaviour “totally unacceptable".
Intolerable
“This offensive behaviour is not only shocking but intolerable and completely unacceptable,” she said.
“There is no place for this sort of person in the party.”
Mr Lewis – believed to be in his early 20s and a student at Queen Mary, University of London – resigned as chairman of Staffordshire Conservative Future last month in protest at internal reforms.
Images on the group’s website show him campaigning with David Cameron for last year’s Crewe and Nantwich by-election.
Mr Lewis was not answering his mobile phone this afternoon, but most of the exchanges were still visible on his Facebook profile.
Page snapshots showing other comments were featured on the Tory Bear blog.
On New Year’s Day, after the party, Mr Lewis told another CF member, Flick Cox, online: “There was a brief moment when I thought I might have gone too far with elements of the costume, but it was ok”.
He added that another guest at the party was dressed as Baby P, the toddler who died after a catalogue of horrific abuse.

“There may not be photos, I don’t think anyone wants to risk being associated with them!” Mr Lewis went on.
Ms Cox suggested that he may have “pulled a Prince Harry” – a reference to the royal’s controversial decision to wear a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005.
She said she would “hate to have to end our friendship when I become an MP” if he got into trouble over the fancy dress outfit.
Madeleine McCann went missing while on holiday with her family in Portugal in May 2007.
She has yet to be found despite a massive worldwide hunt.

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