Tweet in Haste and Repent at Leisure

TB lost a drunken bet with Kerry McCarthy last night that the Against the Odds vid would never get an airing on TV. Ironically Sister Bear has a

piece in today's Standard

that made TB chuckle - it's all about hasty tweeting. Ben Bradshaw and darling Kerry come under particular scrutiny...

Late-night or ill-thought-out tweets are the cyber equivalent of drunken dialling.

Despite the inherent risk, the Labour party now has a "twitter tsar", Kerry McCarthy MP.

Her tag denotes the seriousness with which politicians have embraced Twitter's 24/7 opportunity to listen the sound of their own tweets and engage with voters.

Over at the Tory party, The Spectator's diary of a Notting Hill nobody, the satirical diary of a Conservative minion, reports that all MPs are supposed to spend three hours a day on Facebook and a further three on Twitter.

Parties might want us to see their tweeting members as spontaneous and modern, but the freedom allowed by constant tweeting can be disastrous.

McCarthy reacted to news that the Sun would be supporting Cameron with the following tweet: "Labour doesn't need The Sun. We've got Twitter ..." only to backtrack furiously.

The most regretted tweet of all made a front-page political row. Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw gave a kneejerk twitter response to David Cameron's conference speech.

Within minutes he tweeted about his attack on "big government", seeming to imply that Cameron and his family had big government to thank for the care their late son Ivan received in the hands of the NHS.

The times of Bradshaw's tweets, too (a veritable dawn chorus), are extraordinary. He regularly tweets at midnight, one, two and five, from his mobile.

Campaign to get SB on Twitter progressing nicely.