You know how old people sometimes just don’t get modern day technology? Well, Nigel Mills, the MP for Amber Valley, is 40, so he actually does get modern technology. Enough to be a fan of Candy Crush.
That said, he doesn’t know enough about technology to know that a) just because you have the gift of texting, the internet and loads of games at your fingertips doesn’t mean you should use any of them at any time and b) Candy Crush is a bit done. You see, he was spotted playing the sweetie-aligning game on his taxpayer-bought iPad for about two and a half hours during a meeting of the works and pensions committee.
After photos of Nigel playing the game were published in* The Sun* (committee meetings are sometimes filmed, but the paper had got hold of an image taken by a ‘sickened’ person at the press bench behind him), he gave this comment: ‘It was a long meeting on pension reforms, which is an important issue that I take very seriously.
‘There was a bit of the meeting that I wasn’t focusing on and I probably had a game or two.
‘I shouldn’t do it but if you check the meeting I would say I was fully engaged in asking questions that I thought were particularly important in how we get the pensions issue right.’
The Conservative MP ended: ‘I shall try not to do it in future.’
The consequences of his actions? He might have jumped up a few levels on the game, but* The Sun* predicts that as Mills is in a marginal seat (he was only 536 votes ahead of the opposition at the last election), this blunder will ‘anger’ David Cameron.
To put this into context: last month, Labour leader Ed Miliband sacked Emily Thornberry from her post of shadow attorney general for tweeting a photo, and she was nowhere near a committee meeting.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.