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Saturday, November 08, 2014

Facebook is the go-to site for Assembly Members

This morning's Western Mail has a curious little article in which they try very hard to make a mountain out of a molehill.

The paper reveals that National Assembly Members and their staff have spent more time on Facebook than any other website, including search engines, news sites and the Assembly’s own home page.

They say that in July 2014 the social networking site was clicked on 218,000 times, averaging around 6,400 visits per day:

It was accessed from Assembly staff’s computers more often than the search engine Google, which had 74,000 hits in July.

Their computers visited Facebook 196,000 times in August, as well as the travel website Trip advisor and amazon.co.uk.

But in September, the end of the Assembly’s recess, Facebook usage plummeted to 26,000 hits.

The paper drags up a spokesperson from the Taxpayer’s Alliance, who says that: “Taxpayers will wonder why their money is being spent on politicians’ Facebook visits.

“Wales, like the rest of the UK, faces some fundamental challenges. There is quite enough important work for everybody in the Assembly to be getting on with.

“There must be a crackdown on internet time wasting.”

What world does he live in? Not only do I interact often with my constituents using Facebook but I also get casework through that website. No doubt the Taxpayer's Alliance still use messenger pigeons to talk to each other.

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