Published by Robert L Senior Reporter on Monday, 1st July 2024, at 18:30hrs
A pub in Accrington has released a statement after an external marketing company that runs its social media channels posted a distasteful meme regarding the disappearance of missing teen Jay Slater from Oswaldtwistle.
The meme posted to the Bees Knees pubs facebook page showed a photo of Jay Slater, 19 from Oswaldtwistle alongside a photo of a football with the caption ‘both not coming home’, this caused anger within the community and distress to Jays family that are understandably very distraught as the search by local authorities came to an end on Sunday.
In a statement released by the pub earlier today, Bees Knees said,
“This morning, a conversation between Bees Knees Directors and Affordable Social has taken place in which we have decided to terminate our contract with immediate effect after not receiving an adequate explanation into how this happened. Affordable Social were challenged three months ago to improve our social media pages via light-hearted humour, good content, and sports talk. The post that made it onto the page was neither one of the above and was highly insensitive and deeply offensive. As a business, we are utterly gobsmacked that this has happened and how somebody could find good humour in a missing boy. I can’t stress enough that nobody within the pub company has posted this status, some of which are receiving threatening messages, which is completely unacceptable.
As a company, we are East Lancashire based with our head office in Blackburn, we fully understand the impact this news about Jay has had on the area. We all have our fingers crossed of his safe return to the UK. We, however, fully appreciate the damage has been done, and nothing can change this. However, we will make a donation to the family fund of £1000 to assist the search for Jay.
OUR CHALLENGE IS TO BE BETTER, we will be looking at recruiting a social media company that shares our beliefs in how we operate as a company so this never happens again. “
Jay, 19, went missing whilst attending an NRG festival in Tenerife, he was last seen on Monday 17th June in the Rural De Teno Park area above the small village of Masca, despite search efforts Jay still remains missing.
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