There's really only two parties. The Liberal Democrats are just a figment of our collective imagination.

/nod

I understand MPs and suchlike having, indeed needing, a web presence. I don't understand why they would use facebook, a site primarily created for communicating with your FRIENDS. He has 2500 "friends", and I bet he only actually knows about 1% of them, and engages in conversation through facebook with only slightly more than that. Why not get a website built? If you want to open up comminication with your constituents, use one of those newfangled forum thingymajigs. That way you can even get it styled exactly how you want, make whatever announcements you want, and aren't quite so likely to get banned from your own site for not being yourself.

Facebook is cheaper.

Glad to see MPs involved in such a wikid, phat jive as facebook innit. He iz da bomb aiit!

Marketing ploy to target the youth market? Never...

well becouse nobody would visit the website, via face book he can just make an announcment or whatever and everyone sees it.

Evidently it's all well and good for hippies, fossfags, alcholics, students and other grease spots to congregate in large cliques online but if a "respectable" (he's a lib dem and as such would sell his grandmother for a vote) MP type wants to use it then obviously he's faking it.

Facebook has nothing to do with communicating with friends.

It is really useful for organising events and meetings and the like and I know plenty of political activists who use it as a campaigning tool because you can reach a lot of people rather than relying on emails where you have to troll through loads of names and footers to get to the meat of them. I'd rather be invited to a public meeting (to which I wouldn't go but I would feel all politically engaged by just being invited) than being asked if I wanted to add to someone's virtual ruddy Christmas tree or stroke their hamster

What on earth is a fossfag?

I'd imagine its a derogatory term for the Free and Open Source Software community.

Who'd heard of this guy prior to this stunt? Nice way of getting your name known

I suppose it was ridiculous of me to expect better literacy skills from Register readers.

Really, all I wanted to do was say "Wanker" an an article about an MP... Surely, the term is equally applicable to our Congress?

All MPs are clueless

All Facebook users are clueless

However;

Not all Facebook users are MPs

Not all MPs are Facebook users

Therefore:

All MP Facebook users are clueless

used to be my local mp

seem to remeber him having problems with hotmail a while back too lol

oh well, least hes a lib dem, not much chance of him losing 25 million records, and wasting our tax on god knows what crap (wars and nhs it systems)

Facebook take themselves way too seriously, I've had an account that I created for fun disabled too. In fact, according to their policies ("must provide full real first and last name"), they could cancel my main personal account, since I don't give my last name out of privacy concerns.

Their user data ("intelligence"?) is obviously more valuable if it accurately reflects real life, the question is who actually requires this level of accuracy?

Facebook users are clueless? Come on. If you took the time to use it you'd see it's great way to keep in touch with your friends and find out what they've been up to. Not like myspace with all those "pimped" profiles and the deluge of spam..

Does he have a T-shirt with

I'm an MP ... bitch

No Lib Dem MP is going to sell his Gran for a vote.

They needs to know that at least one potential voter has heard of them.

or maybe i've become a figment of my own imagination again....