Andy McSmith's Diary: Another Tory MP red-faced after accidental porn tweet

The lurid mix of a Twitter, pornography and a Tory MP has struck again, though this time the MP is not to blame. Rob Wilson, MP for Reading East, was making a point about David Bennett, the market trader who challenged Iain Duncan Smith to live off £53 a week, though his weekly income is not £53 as he implied, but £156. To help spread the message, Rob Wilson tweeted using a link supplied by someone at Conservative headquarters. Unfortunately, because of what the Tories euphemistically call a "technical hitch", the link users to a hard core pornography site.

Embarrassing, but not quite as awkward as the tweet another Tory MP, Gavin Barwell, fired off last month when he saw that a Labour press release online carrying an advert saying 'date Arab girls'. Alas for Mr Barwell, what he did not understand was that the advert was not selected by Labour but by Google Adsense, based on the preferences of the web user.

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Strange the mind that looks at a washroom and toilet block and sees a "politically-correct hobby horse." Philip Davies, the right wing Tory MP for Shipley, is outraged that having set aside land for 47 pitches for the mobile homes of itinerant families, the government and Bradford council put up £820,000 to provide them with somewhere to wash and use a toilet. That is a one-off investment of £17,500 per family, a lot less than the cost of social housing, most of which came from the government. That has not stopped Mr Davies from berating the council.

"It's an outrageous waste of money and that just makes it worse because the Government looks just as daft as the Council," he told the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. "The Council just seems to have a never-ending supply of money for these politically-correct hobby horses. Instead of pussyfooting around gypsies and encouraging them to relocate here, they should be encouraging them to abide like law-abiding members of the community or move on."

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It is no wonder David Cameron has gone off the idea of 'primaries' in which every voter in a constituency can take part in choosing the Conservative candidate. It was out of that process that Sarah Wollaston became the very independent minded Tory MP for Totnes. Yesterday she questioned why David Cameron has two MPs designated as his parliamentary aides - one of whom, John Hayes, is paid a ministerial salary - and why yet another MP, Therese Coffey, does parliamentary liaison for minister in the Business department. "Wouldn't it be better to have all ministerial liaison with back benchers done by MPs who can also speak openly on behalf of constituents?" she suggests.

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The hype currently surrounding the Rolling Stones is a good enough reason to note that today is the centenary of the birth of someone who was a greater blues singer than Mick Jagger could ever aspire to be, namely McKinley Morganfield, born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on 4 April 1913, who migrated to Chicago and took the stage name Muddy Waters. The Rolling Stones took their name from a Muddy Waters single Rollin' Stone.

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Boris Johnson has been issued with a new challenge: a game of ping pong against Pippa Middleton, who in addition to being famous for being a sister-in-law and bridesmaid, claims to be pretty good at the sport. Writing in today’s issue of The Spectator, she says: “I’m informed that Boris Johnson wants to be ‘whiff-whaff’ world king even more than he wants to be Prime Minister. I’m also told the Johnsons are almost as competitive as the Middletons. So I’d like to lay down a challenge to the Mayor. My only stipulation is that I can use my favourite Dunlop Blackstorm Nemesis bat, which I used when I played in the Milton Keynes U13 National Championships, don’t you know.”

The Mayor being the exhibitionist that he is, has jumped at the chance for free publicity. Whiff whaff. It is sure to be one of the incomic moments in the story of Posh Britannia.