A Conservative MP who blocked a constituent for lobbying him on Twitter about tax credit cuts, and appeared to refer to complainants as “whingers”, has said he did not mean to cause offence.
MP for Montgomeryshire Glyn Davies blocked a local member of the Liberal Democrats who asked him to oppose the tax credit cuts. After being contacted by a journalist, Mr Davies then said on Twitter that the Lib Dem constituent was not the only adding: “I’m blocking all the whingers.”
Blocking someone on Twitter means they can no longer follow you or see your tweets.
However, he told The Independent that he had not meant for the word “whingers” to refer to those worried about the cuts, adding that he did primarily not use Twitter as a forum for political debate.
“I treat Twitter and Facebook as places for social networking. It’s mostly sport, family, charity stuff, that’s all. Some people want to make it political and it’s not.
“There’s too many people following me,” he said. “A lot of people want to have thousands of followers and I don’t. When you have so many it spoils it for the people who want to join in in the family, rugby and charity stuff I do. I’m blocking quite a few people, not in a vindictive way, I just don’t want the nature of my Facebook and Twitter sites made what other people want rather than what I want.”
He said he had also received around 100 emails from constituents on tax credit cuts, and that he shared concerns about the policy.
“I take the view that perhaps it was moving too quickly. I’m rather hoping that in the spending review there will be some mitigation to make it less impactful on the poorest people,” he said.
