A Daily Mirror journalist tries to serve George Osborne some champagne so they can take a photo of him portraying him as a “toff”. Someone asks candidates in an OUCA election to tell the most “inappropriate” joke they know, attracting masses of negative media coverage. The Party is forced to expel a Conservative at another university after bad publicity when someone draws a moustache on him and takes a photo. Someone else is expelled for their facebook quotations wall.

It’s very easy to get caught out nowadays, especially with websites like facebook, and opponents deliberately trying to create negative stories about the Conservatives. Seemingly innocous comments, sometimes months old, can attract disproportionate media attention without warning. Even with very high privacy settings on facebook, it is possible for photos and comments to escape into the public domain.

Be careful not to do something you might regret, even if it seems harmless at the time. And if you feel a situation is developing that might end unpleasantly, make sure it is stopped as quickly as possible.

(I might point out , following coverage of this post in Hugh Muir’s enlightened column in the Guardian, that “Views expressed are those of the poster, not the Association or Party”. – CW.)