Give the kid a break, Paris Brown is no Sally Bercow.

“I was naïve, I was idiotic and regret it” words many people said many times to excuse things they did and said in haste and without thinking about their consequences. Things said or done for a laugh, in anger or for whatever reason, but at the time the person didn’t know any better. That is how most people young and old learn, from mistakes either theirs or someone else’s.

Any caring parent knows there will come a time, a moment in their child’s life when they have to pick up the pieces and either scold their child for being a total idiot (then cuddle them) or hug them so hard to squeeze and suck out the pain of whatever they just faced.

I don’t know Paris Brown and never even heard of her until her Twitter business made headline news. But I bet she needed one of those squeezey hugs to take the pain away.

As a nation, we have a serious problem with politics becoming the reserve of a certain type of people. You know the ones who did nothing besides politics and don’t seem to have any idea how the rest of world outside politics work. Like in most industries, when the pool of candidates starts to shrink in size and diversity, recruiters need to look at ways and means to deepen and widen their selection pool. One way of doing it is grooming young people from all over and getting then interested and involved in politics. Kids, normal kids climb trees, try smoking and drinking, make out behind sheds and get into all sorts. Most normal average kids don’t think beyond today or maybe the day after. Some will go through life without putting a foot wrong and some will spend a great deal of their adolescence doing nothing but getting into trouble. Neither of them is bad or good, because it could all change either way. However, as parents our job is to love and nurture them all and as a society our duty is to understand and use common sense when it comes to judging them. And part of that common sense is putting things in prospective.

What shocked me about the Paris Brown case was not what she tweeted as much as when it was tweeted, almost three years ago, yet still was an issue! And even after explaining herself, some still want her gone. Unless we only want uber clean wholesome organic porridge type politicians, we need young people like Brown in politics. We should use her and her experience to educate other young people. We daily hear of adults getting in trouble via social media and it makes you wonder where is their common sense. Brown’s experience should be turned into a positive and used to shape many futures, after all isn’t that part of her brief (to promote closer links and understanding between police and young people)?

What she said is very true. Young people do have a different language to older people and vice versa. And instead of frightening and alienating young people, the Paris Brown Twitter incident should be used to encourage more young people, especially those who made mistakes in the past to come forward and participate in politics and public life.

P.S. Where is Sally Bercow these days? I do miss her and her tweets.