ONE HAS TO FEEL SORRY for millionaire Brooks Newmark, Conservative MP for Braintree in Essex, after the recent scandal involving him being "trapped" into sending photographs of his penis to a "young lady" on his twitter account. The fact that the young lady was in fact invented by a journalist working for the Sunday Mirror is neither here and there, when it is obvious that Mr Newmark, who is one of the founders of Women2Win, an organisation aimed at improving life for women in Britain, was, by befriending a person he genuinely believed to be a woman who wished to better herself, only doing his bit to contribute towards this by dropping his pyjamas and taking an intimate selfie.
IT WOULD BE UNFAIR OF ME TO SUGGEST that this behaviour has anything to do with being American -- indeed he was born in Connecticut and lived there until he was nine years old -- and that photographing one's genitalia is, I am told, extremely popular in that country, but is, regrettably for Newmark, somewhat frowned upon in this country, even for Conservative Ministers.
MR NEWMARK HAS NOW resigned, and will have to deal with the opinion of this matter held by his wife Lucy, given that she is certainly one woman whose life will not be improved by his latest amateur photographic activity.
YET PEOPLE OF SOME SOCIAL STANDING, as I can confirm myself, will always be subject to offers normally withheld from the common man, and if only social media maladdress is at the root of Newmark's faux pas then it may be forgivable. My own opinion, however, is that people like us should always be able to say 'no' whenever we are asked to send photos of our penises to people we do not know very well.
