From the Daily Mail online:
Thank goodness ministers are taking the swine flu outbreak so seriously. Or at least some of them are.
Just as Gordon Brown was gravely announcing that two more Britons had been diagnosed with the virus, one government figure, I can disclose, decided that the potential pandemic was a great opportunity for a joke.
In a bizarre attempt at humour, junior minister Sion Simon suggested that unlikely Britain's Got Talent singing sensation Susan Boyle is to blame.
Sian Simon, the Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington posted the following on his Twitter page:
'I'm not saying Susan Boyle caused swine flu. I'm just saying that nobody had swine flu, she sang on TV, people got swine flu.'
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Some MP's have described the remark as 'insensitive' and 'infantile'; bearing in mind that Sian Simon is the vice chair of the Labour Party, I would question whether such a remark bears a relation to Labour thinking with regard to people with disabilities. To refer to a disabled person in this way (even as a 'joke') seems tantamount to encouraging a view of them as little more than harbingers of disease.
Sian Simon has since removed the remark from his Twitter page and posted the following:
'Earlier I repeated a joke that was in poor taste, which I now regret.
'I apologise wholeheartedly for any distress or embarrassment caused.'
Sian, how about: ' I apologise unreservedly for the deeply unpleasant slur that I cast on Susan Boyle' ?
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