“To err is human, to forgive divine.”

We’re not exactly living by that idiom coined by Alexander Pope, an English poet and satirist who lived and worked between 1688 and 1744, now are we? Mr Pope is renowned for his ‘Essay on Criticism’, which examined his own role as a poet and critic. I can’t help thinking that he should’ve been alive today – the fodder to examine would be endless.

Take, for example, this week’s faux par committed by Jeremy Hunt, Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, who made the mistake of implying that the Hillsborough disaster was caused by hooliganism.

I used to work for Mr Hunt during my London technology PR days back in the mid-90s. I can vouch that he’s a decent sort of chap and isn’t, ahem, the obvious word that rhymes with Hunt, as the Twitter-using hordes seem to be suggesting. I would also hazard a guess that Mr Hunt doesn’t have a strong background in football and probably isn’t fully au fait with its history as a result. Yes, he should certainly have Googled “Hillsborough” before he mentioned it during the ill-fated TV interview but We All Make Mistakes. And surely a person can’t be expected to know every single damn fact (or bunch of facts) related to their job... in what year Damien Hirst’s cow and calf preserved in formaldehyde won the Turner Prize, the number of times Red Rum scooped the Grand National, the cubic meterage of the National Gallery, in what year Rupert Murdoch acquired ‘The Sun’... the required knowledge base would be endless. Even the autistic memory man, Raymond Babbitt (played by Dustin Hoffman in ‘Rain Man’), would have trouble memorising it all.

In Britain, you’re not allowed to have a slip of the tongue or the pen, it seems. In the case of Mr Hunt, some online critics clearly believe that the unfortunate verbal gaffe stemmed from Class War (large sigh): others took it as casting aspersions on football supporters and undermining the official investigation into what happened at Hillsborough. Sheesh! Can’t people accept that a ‘foot in mouth’ moment doesn’t necessarily have sinister motivations? And that growing up without being bang into footie ain’t an attempt to be snobbish.

I have no strong political leanings myself. And I dislike football. However, as a casual observer, I think that we, the public, are too keen to jump down everyone’s throat these days. The Hunt incident reminds me of the scenario in November 2009 when Gordon Brown – who is strongly rumoured to be dyslexic – made spelling mistakes in a letter of condolence to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. The mother, Jacqui Janes, was up in arms and suggested that it was some sort of personal insult and that Brown didn’t care. No, the man made a mistake because he has trouble with his spellinks. Furthermore, he had actually bothered to compose the letter himself - by hand. We All Make Mistakes.

I remember writing a press feature about antisocial behaviour on St James Street several years ago. I interviewed a resident at a council-run shelter who had some mental health issues. It transpired afterwards that he’d given me highly inaccurate information. I duly edited my copy to correct the facts and saved the final draft. Or so I thought. I pressed “send” and emailed the article to the editor. When the article was printed, the editor took me to task because she’d had unhappy folks from Brighton & Hove Council on the phone. The final draft hadn’t saved correctly and the previous draft, containing all the mistakes, had appeared in the magazine. I cringed and cringed and, ever since then, I’ve opened every single email attachment to check that it’s the correct version. By today’s standards, someone would no doubt accuse me of engineering a deliberate and subversive error to show the council in a bad light. Nope. We All Make Mistakes.

There’s a Spanish expression, “without hairs on my tongue”, which means being forthright and outspoken. In England, this idea has been taken a step too far. Just look at the online comment facilities on tabloid newspapers. The public has endless enthusiasm for slinging mud at anybody in the public eye. In particular, tons of mud is slung at successful female celebs: it seems that women are cattiest towards other women. Nobody is perfect. And, yes. We All Make Mistakes.

Latin idioms predating Alexander Pope suggest “to err is human; to persist is of the Devil”. I would agree with that: after all, we don’t want to repeat our faults over and over again until we’ve driven everybody round the bend. However, today – by popular demand - the phrase should be revised to “despite being human, you’re not allowed to err at all”.