A cracking, little story that we arrived at via the Daily Mail website: thanks to an FoI request put
in by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Department for Transport has revealed which websites its staff visited on work
computers between January 1st and May 31st this year. The full list is here, and there are some eye-catching entries to
say the least. Take the role-play site bearsfaction.org.uk, where you are advised to “conduct yourself as a Bear would” — that got 183 hits
per day. Or the infamous sexymp.co.uk on 142 hits per day. Even the website of the website of Page 3 girl Claire Tully got 5 hits per day.
And there’s more more, much more. The Department’s sad cohort of Arsenal fans visits a trio of Gooner sites to the tune of 412 hits a day. A site for Classic Porsche enthusiasts reaches 268 hits per day, and one dedicated to American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd (of “Free Bird” fame) 65 hits per day. Transport officials also visit the blog of a Jonathan Tolhurst 20 times a day, perhaps to have a go at his “UK Coastline Quiz”.
Oh, and this very website, Spectator.co.uk, was visited 169 times a day. So while we ought to urge the civil servants to get on with their jobs, we’re actually grateful for the traffic. Hello, and thanks, to you all.
P.S. If you want to get steamed up about civil servants wasting time, then do read Freddy Gray’s recent article on Whitehall’s four-day week for The Spectator.
Comments