Those immortal words were uttered by David Prescott, son of John, in response to his dad retweeting a suggestion to click a link, find a Conservative party Google Pay Per Click ad and then click it to remove "50p from the Tories' war chest".
Obviously JP has a fair idea of how social media works and by doing so he was helping empty the Tories coffers. His son down playing it and saying it was "only" a retweet was trying to throw the less social media savvy off the scent, and they were probably reading a report about it in their newspaper. Their audience had no idea the power of a retweet to nearly 18,000 people. Their audience was traditional media readers and they were belittling a tweet. If it means that little, why have a presence at all Mr Prescott?
We all know a retweet is an endorsement of the original tweet, unless you append it with a comment saying something like "no don't, it could be click fraud".
Social Media could play a key part in this election. It could help the politicians reach the people in minority groups and prove they have a voice and it will be heard.
One politician making good use of this is an Essex soon to be MP, Peter Welch. He's on twitter talking about his campaign. He's engaging people and answering questions, he's signposting people to the Facebook group for Southend Lib Dems and answering questions and raising his parties profile.
Last week we saw the Leaders Debate on TV, and an immediate flurry of tweets about what people thought of the debate. This gave rise to the hashtag #IAgreeWithNick after Gordon Brown kept on saying the phrase.
Twitter users have their finger on the pulse and love to share their thoughts, it's only a ReTweet downplays the impact of Twitter and it's relevance today. It's fast, it furious and if you don't use it you are missing out on engaging with the people that matter, the ones that vote.
Sarah Arrow – @essex_courier and @birdsontheblog
