Has Stewart Jackson MP's casual dishonesty been revealed on Twitter?
@sjacksonmp's recent tweets on sex-ed have been well documented here, here, here and here. There's a particular aspect that's not been addressed yet which is the reason for this post.
Here's the tweet that got it all started:
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That was sent at 2.04pm Aug 26th, after that the tweet was slowly picked up around twitter and a discussion ensued causing @sjacksonmp to send this tweet at 8.05pm the same day:
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The first part ("shrill intolerant pro sex education Lefties") is just a bit of offensive insulting, not particularly constructive, but there you go. But here's the rub: "...who don't like debating issues. Wonder why not?" that's the bit that really got me and I think it warrants further attention.
That line, casually tagged on the end is clearly meant for his twitter followers and implies, fairly strongly I think, that he has been out there attempting to debate the issues but has encountered people who refuse to do so (therefore he wins etc).
In a face to face discussion with someone, those little embellishments lend weight to an argument without ever needing to be backed up, because in day to day life, no one will be able to confirm or refute them. The same goes for a live TV interview. It's just like saying "many people come up to me and say..." or even "it's widely recognized that...".
You probably know some people who talk like that in your own life. They might be friends or yours, but you can't really trust what they're saying about anything important. If you don't concentrate, it's easy to be swayed by an argument which has no substance. And that's exactly the sort of person who should NOT be an MP.
Now of course, that line "...who don't like debating the issues. Wonder why not?" might actually be an accurate representation of the truth, and many of you might have assumed that was the case.
But Twitter is not the same as a face to face conversation or even a live TV interview, twitter is a very public platform and it keeps records. It should be possible therefore to see evidence of the people refusing to debate that @sjacksonmp is referring to.
Firstly we have a record of all the tweets that @sjacksonmp sent between 2.04 and 8.05:
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Not a huge amount of evidence for @sjacksonMP attempting to debate there I must say.
Now Twitter will also show you all the people who have been sending @sjacksonmp public messages, you can see for yourself here. Below I've reprinted just the ones between 2.04 and 8.05 (I have also removed non pertinent ones - there was another discussion going on at the same time. This is also a manual process, I don't think I've missed any, but feel free to point out in the comments if I have):
V disappointing news on STD rates in Pboro. No doubt our liberal friends will tell us we need MORE sex education - as it's worked so well!
— Stewart Jackson (@SJacksonMP) August 26, 2010V disappointing news on STD rates in Pboro. No doubt our liberal friends will tell us we need MORE sex education - as it's worked so well!
— Stewart Jackson (@SJacksonMP) August 26, 2010
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3 more (I went over quoteurl's limit): here, here and here
So basically scant evidence of anyone refusing to debate, some evidence of people actively asking for debate but being ignored by @sjacksonMP.
I wouldn't be so stupid to accuse @sjacksonmp of lying, our libel laws are just not cut out for that (follow @jackofkent on twitter for more on that by the way). I do however expect you to make your own mind up. To help you out, I've made a list of all the possible explanations I can think of (and there may be more) which would indicate that @sjacksonmp didn't just casually lie to his hundreds of followers:
- 1) Twitter is really flaky and possibly the search function when I used it didn't return all the public messages sent to @sjacksonmp during the time period that I looked at.
- 2) Twitter is really flaky, maybe the timestamps are wrong.
- 3) Maybe @sjacksonmp was referring to someone he met in the street who really was a "shrill intolerant pro sex education Lefty" and it was them that was refusing to debate the issue.
- 4) Maybe @sjacksonmp is referring to other discussions he had on twitter using the DM (private message) function, although for DM to work he would have to be following that person and I'm not sure how likely it is that @sjacksonmp would be following people he views as "shrill intolerant pro sex education lefties".
- 5) Maybe @sjacksonmp was just speaking generally and people he met in the past that he's assumed to be "shrill intolerant pro sex education lefties" were probably "unwilling to debate", and had they heard his tweet it would probably have "touched a raw nerve". Although, in that case he really ought to have added "Hypothetically" to the end of his tweet.
I can't think of any other possibilities. If @sjacksonmp is the sort of person who casually lies during conversations with people and this time got caught out due to an unfamiliarity with how twitter works, it would be pretty sad. It also makes me wonder how long revelations like this might continue (once people wise up to how twitter works, people might start being a lot more guarded when they use it).
By the way the subsequent interview on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire with Dr Petra Boynton (@drpetra on twitter) is on listen again for the next few days here.
And here's a particularly good post on the HPA data that @sjacksonMP was referring to.
