Poor old Doug Beattie. The head of the UUP, Northern Ireland’s moderate unionist party, almost lost his job this week over a trove of crude comments he made on Twitter ten years ago. He was, at the time, a captain in the Army who had recently returned from Afghanistan and held no elected office. But hell, it’s a nice opportunity to work up a fury, so why not?

This bout of offence archaeology, in which people who have nothing better to do but dig up decade-old social media posts, was triggered by an act of stupidity by Mr Beattie.

Mr Beattie made a vulgar remark about the wife of the DUP’s former leader and now faces a defamation law suit.

But even worse for Mr Beattie, the digital diggers then began a search into his past and found all sorts of big no-nos buried on his profile.

The richest seam was in “misogyny”, apparently the catch-all for his various comments on staring at women’s breasts, suggesting women are too hormonal to work in submarines and making a joke playing on the comparison between a 21-year-old Scotch and a 21-year-old “hooker”.

Then there was the “racist” stuff. He once used “the n-word”, it was breathlessly reported, without the context, which was this: discussing how language changes over time, he brought up the example of the dog in The Dam Busters.

He used a derogatory term for Irish travellers, to crack jokes about being itinerant and badly dressed. He claimed that Gurkhas “like white hookers”.

In a couple of tweets, he implied that Muslims have a victim complex or a bad “attitude”, though, as the BBC’s scrupulously fair Stephen Nolan pointed out during an hour-long confessional interview, he had posted many more tweets defending Islam and Muslims than attacking them.

All in all, the Mr Beattie of the 2010s seemed a slightly boorish fellow who was careless with language, while the Mr Beattie of today seemed genuinely upset and embarrassed.

“What I did ten years ago was pretty horrific, pretty horrendous,” he stuttered, over and over. “I am sorry… It’s not me; it’s not who I am.”

Leaving aside the ontological question of who Mr Beattie is or isn’t, I found his contrition convincing and, for once, in the cruel world of cancel culture, so did his party. He has been allowed to stay.

If only we could all learn these lessons.

Firstly, adults should not post stupid nonsense on social media.

Secondly, people who once upon a time used sexist or nasty language about a group can learn not to do it and should be treated generously if they apologise.

Thirdly, a leader can only lead if they own their mistakes, rather than run from them.

If only it weren’t too late for our own Prime Minister to learn this last lesson.

*****

The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison got into an embarrassing spat with China this week after his account on WeChat, China’s Twitter, was unexpectedly sold to someone else and rebranded. WeChat is used extensively by Australia’s Chinese diaspora. “Censorship!” cried Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

Well, it turns out that Mr Morrison had for some unknown reason registered his account via an agency in the name of a random Chinese man in Fujian province, in breach of WeChat’s rules. Although it’s possible Beijing had a hand in the decision to sell the account, Mr Morrison had left himself wide open to the snub – and has now aroused suspicions that he was using his own stupid mistake to whip up support for a WeChat boycott.

By all means, Canberra should scrutinise WeChat, but not because Mr Morrison can’t figure out how to set up his account properly.