What I wrote at Lib Dem Voice

May 27, 2006

A right Cameron cock-up

Hat-tip: BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show

[At his speech to Google Zeitgeist Europe 2006,] David Cameron was singing the praises of the Internet, and, notably, “the most exciting new businesses, the ones that capture the spirit of the age.”

Fair enough. He then went on: “Look at
craigslist, which talks about restoring the human voice to the Internet in a humane, non-commercial environment.”

So we had a look, and the first thing
craigslist said was:

‘You could be having casual sex with a strange within hours. Just follow the four easy steps below, and get yourself shagging today.’
(I’ve not provided the link, ‘cos this blog has some standards. But type into your browser craigslist.co.uk if you don’t believe me.)

Still, it could have been more embarassing: Mr Cameron might accidentally have let slip a policy in his speech.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The craigslist Cameron was talking about is evidently craigslist.org (his "non-commercial" comment implies org rather than com or co.uk). It's possible that you already knew this and were just having a laugh, but perhaps not. In any case, it seems unlikely that Cameron would actually have much time for the social and political values underlying craigslist.org, which after all uses the peace symbol as its favicon in the address bar. Indeed, it may be that praising this site, which suggests that there is such a thing as society, is more embarrassing for a Tory (even of Cameron's softly-softly variety) than talking up the good old business of making money out of sex...

Anonymous said...

Hmmm.... maybe... but on craigslist.org check out the "casual encounters" personals section or the "kinky" discussion forum. They'd certainly open Dave the Chameleon's eyes.

Rob