Why do we recognise that people should be able to live down past errors in every area except social media?

Financial mishaps are scrubbed from the record after six years.

It is not possible to bring a libel action after 12 months even if one did not know of the libel and even if one had been unknowingly harmed by it.

In short, there is a recognition that everybody is entitled to live down a past error or not to be under the cloud of reprisal for ever.

Yet there is no equivalent period of grace in social media.

Even children can find that something they have sent because they trusted the recipient is subsequently used to embarrass them. It is now a political sport to trawl back through people’s social media in order to find embarrassing posts. Nay, party HQ’s use this also as a form of vetting the suitability of candidates.

What might once have been said in a pub in a group of men over the fourth beer and forgotten is now more likely to be communicated in a WhatsApp group and thus enshrined forever in the indelible ink of the Internet.

A vulgar remark made by a 19-year-old can be resurrected when he is in middle age with a family and looked up to by his neighbours.

Rob Kenyon has been pilloried in the Makerfield by election for liking a coarse post of 15 years ago. He is now 41 And the context of the post was that it was part of an exchange between rugby players when he was in his mid 20s . Nothing can excuse the abominable post itself and if I had read it in a book I would have chucked the volume in the bin without bothering to finish it.

But it is unreasonable to react as though this was something he had “liked”in maturity rather than youth.

The unfortunate victim of the obscene misogyny was Carol Vorderman and political opponents have demanded that he should apologise.

In fact the person who should apologise is not Kenyon merely for liking the post nor even the man who originated it but rather the one who published it 15 years later, thus making Ms Vorderman aware of offensive remarks about which she would never otherwise have known.

Very few of us have escaped without overhearing something insulting or disobliging or mocking about ourselves.

It is a normal hazard of being anything other than a hermit and social media posts should be treated similarly.

Nay, how many of us can recall opinions or sentiments which we rejected long ago or wince at jokes or terminology once acceptable but taboo with changing times? A few years ago, I was attacked for using the word “golliwog” even though I was referring directly to a toy which, as far as I am aware, has no other name.

I always prefer convention to statute and would quite like one which says that after ten years what you have posted (bar of course criminal activity) should be disregarded and make that five years for anyone posting under the age of 18. Then we might actually judge people on what they think rather than what they once thought.

After all, when I was 28, I campaigned “yes” in the referendum on joining the EU. Dear Heaven…