Friday, June 01, 2007

Bad PR!!

So you are a public figure, you get caught parking you car illegally in a disabled bay at a railway station and the media get hold of the story; how do you respond? Well to me the easy response is claim it to be a mistake, ok it wasn't but it might work, but apologise profusely. The alternative is go on the attack and say the station had "an absurd number of handicapped spaces... I've ever seen a handicapped person ever use one of them... Some helpful and public spirited constituent telephoned the Herald-Express to let them know my car was there... It would have been much more useful if they'd telephoned me to let me know my car had a ticket, but they didn't choose to do that and they were anonymous which is a very sneaky thing to do." This is the response of Anthony Steen, the Conservative MP for Totnes, or at least these are the parts of his response the BBC reported. Bad move methinks, annoy every disabled pressure group and reinforce negative images of the Conservatives in the process. In the words of Homer Simpson "DOH!!!"

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