Here's a funny little story which shows the power of twitter.
Earlier in the week I was stunned to start receiving messages of congratulations for the birth of our new child which was said to have been born in the car park outside of our local QE2 Hospital in Welwyn Garden City last week. It was definitely the first I'd heard of it!
The initial twitter message of congratulations read as follows:
As you can see, it was posted by Nigel Nelson who is a Sunday People columnist and the longest serving national newspaper political editor.
It began to get re-tweeted (that's where someone else tweets the same message to their own followers on twitter) and to add further to the confusion, a few minutes later Nigel posted a further reference to our apparent new baby, this time in response to a tweet by the speaker's wife Sally Bercow who had herself just commented that she missed her own kids. Nigel's further tweet read as follows:
Now, we already have three children and my wife is most certainly not pregnant again, so I'll have to deny all responsibility for any child born in the QE2 car park last week. But by this point that hasn't stopped random people and long lost associates who have haven't spoken to for years from emailing and calling to congratulate me on our fantastic good news
However, there was in fact a simple explanation for this rather amusing twitter tale...
I had previously tweeted about the fact that a baby (someone else's) had just been born in the car park at our local QE2 Hospital. The point being that the maternity unit at our QE2 is scheduled to be closed and everyone shares my concern that we'll then see plenty of babies born on the A1(M) Motorway hard shoulder on their way to the nearest alternative maternity unit up in Stevenage.
Anyway, Nigel Nelson, who is a terrific guy and always friendly, had just misread my initial tweet and believed that I was talking about my own baby.
So mystery solved and the power of twitter once again reinforced as Nigel's initial tweets convinced people we'd just added to the size of our family!
Grant Shapps MP
Author
Topic: Shapps now on tweetminster.co.uk (Read 2347 times)