In defence of Vincent Bailey

If the internet existed when I was in my late teens and early twenties and I had had a web presence on it, my profile would undoubtedly have declared that I was an Adonis, a Lothario and a more successful serial shager than either Casanova or Nick Clegg; I'm sure that it would have declared that I was brave and cool and had done all sorts of things that were seen as "manly" and against the rules including drug taking and violence.

The truth is that I was 22 before I had my first fumblingly disappointing sexual conquest, I have never taken an illegal drug in my life and if anybody had threatened me with violence I would have run home to my Mam as my primary way of confronting the threat; as would the vast majority of the lads in my peer group. If I had been truthful I would have been drummed out of my peer group by friends who were as virginal, clean living and frightened as I was – but afraid to admit it. Young lads lie about sex and their social equivalent of drugs and rock'n roll; always have done and always will do!

When I was a young lad those lies were unimportant, unrecorded and are now only remembered by those of a similar age who know that we all lied together for the same reason. Because my teenage fantasies and bravado were never written down, they can't come back to haunt me now, should I decide to stand for election or decide to give support to a candidate for election.

Vincent Bailey, isn't a bad person who has no place in Welsh politics. When he was doing what I did at his age he was caught up in a new technological system without realising its consequences for his future, something I didn't need to worry about!

I suspect that every possible future politician, political aid or political supporter under 35 could find themselves in the same boat as Vincent. Any young person who shows an interest in his or her country's politics may be threatened and dissuaded from becoming politically active because a silly tweet or a profile or a blog comment might come back to haunt him or her forever! That is bad, very bad, for democracy!

The villain in this story is not Mr Bailey, but the person who decided to trawl through Mr Bailey's internet history in order to embarrass him and in order to embarrass Andrew RT Davies' campaign to lead the Welsh Conservative Party!

Dirty Dave, should be ashamed of himself as should his cronies at Trinity Mirror / Western Mail for regurgitating his dirt digging in the ancient history of a political opponents' puerile web presence!

And if Andrew wants to show some leadership skills he should stand four square with the now (hopefully) mature Mr Bailey, rather than throwing him out as a sacrifice to Dave's dirty tricks!