Broad Yorkshire Law has been crucified in the media and forced to issue a grovelling apology for tweeting this after four people were seriously hurt on the Smiler rollercoaster at Alton Towers:



When social media went ape, followed by the Daily Mail, Broad Yorkshire solicitor Lois Baylis issued an apology on Facebook. "I do not blame people for being horrified by the tweet", she said, claiming that the firm, "would never try to profit in such a way from such a terrible accident" (except for that one time).

She blamed the off-colour tweet on "a junior member of staff" who "was responsible for the twitter feed". Translation: Graham [not his real name] was the only person in the office who knew what Tweets was so we let him get on with it. She also said that Graham's "previous tweets illustrate his desire to be humorous", a dry comment which rather suggests that everyone else in the office was quite pleased twitter was keeping him busy, whatever twitter was. Until it went horribly wrong, of course.

After all, it meant these gems got shot harmlessly into the twittersphere instead of into their ears:



Why the hell wasn't there an outcry about that one? Graham also dealt in slightly dubious boasts:



I feel sorry for Graham. People didn't seize on the Alton Towers tweet because it was ambulance chasing, but because it appeared to treat the accident like a joke. We love to see a corporation slip up and reveal how inhuman it really is. Only, in this case, nothing could be further from the truth. This wasn't the machine being unmasked as ghastly and crass, it was the machine being unmasked as a dude who tweets because no-one else wants to, or knows how. Graham is the opposite of the machine. The real problem is those exclamation marks. But anyone familiar with Graham's tweets, as, sadly, I now am, knows that he puts exclamation marks on EVERYTHING.



He whispers with exclamation marks. He commiserates using them. He'll probably send invites which say, "Dad's dead!! Come to the funeral!! #RIPDAD #Buffet". It's just his way. Context is all, and with it Graham's rollercoaster effort looks a lot less heartless. But that's not the apology the firm gave. Probably wise. It was still a pretty bad tweet.

The problem is, of course, that all Graham's cracker jokes, all his misunderstood gold, went out stamped with the firm's logo, and was treated accordingly. Before social media everything that left the building was vetted by everyone at the firm except Graham, who was kept away with the end of a broom. Now, because many of the adults still don't grasp the brave new world of the internets, he's been given the power to instantly send out whatever he wants, branded as the business. Which means a law firm says stuff like:



Long may the Grahams of this world control their masters' voices.