MP deletes royal corgis Facebook post

Gloucester MP Richard Graham has explained why he deleted an “insensitive” Facebook post of royal corgis hours after he published it.

Mr Graham posted an image of four corgis being carried off a royal plane which has been shared widely online after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Many have mistakenly thought the photograph was a new one of the late Queen’s beloved pets – but they were actually the Queen Mother’s corgis and the photo was taken in 1993.

Mr Graham posted the picture at around 1am on September 18 with the comment “another caption competition…”.

But he faced public backlash as several people commented that the post was “tasteless” and “insensitive”.

Others asked “what on earth was he thinking” and whether Mr Graham’s account had been hacked.

The Conservative MP said he decided to remove the post because “it is a sensitive time”.

“I posted it because I thought it was a particularly poignant photograph that the future of the corgis at that stage seemed to me and to quite a lot of people rather uncertain,” he explained.

“I thought it was a very poignant photograph but now of course we know the future of the corgis is happily resolved because the Duke and Duchess of York are taking them on.

“So actually, in terms of what I put on Facebook, there were quite a lot of likes of the photograph and there were a handful of people who came back very strongly saying it was totally inappropriate but not really explaining why.

“But because this is a sensitive time, I decided the easiest thing to do was simply delete it which is what I did by 9 o’clock on Sunday morning.”

This news story was held back from publishing out of respect during the period of national mourning for Queen Elizabeth II.

By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter

Gloucester News Centre – http://gloucesternewscentre.co.uk