We thought we should let the users know the following Politicians who have engaged so far. We decided before we would launch that it was only fair to write to Politicians and let them know about their profile and to have an opportunity to engage and update their profiles if they wanted to.
It took a fair amount of time to compile a list of all Politicians in N.Ireland, Scotland, England & Wales. When the emails went out all the N.Ireland MLA's, Scottish MSP's & for the most part Welsh MLA's were notified. All the emails bound for Westmininster were rejected by the sp@m filter. You would think it would be common for organsiations and groups across the 4 regions to be contacting Politicians often as a group. A simple email from R8 Your Politician to all of Westminister was rejected. That means I will have to manually email each Politician in Westminister.
Politicians who have officially endorsed content for their profiles
Anna Lo MLA ( Alliance )
Tom Harris MP ( Labour )
Possibly also Paul Maskey MLA & Sue Ramsey MLA from Sinn Fein both profiles and rating pages were updated on request, just waiting on the ok from them both.
R8 Your Politician over the past few months has engaged with many more Politicians both on-line and face to face but they have yet to give a confirmed offical endorsement and content for their profiles. The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson and Gregory Campbell have both invited R8 Your Politician to visit them at Stormont but have yet to take them up on the offer, hopefully when we get some new laptops and are able to be mobile and online we will be able to visit many more Politicians personally. At this stage now we are just waiting on responses from Politicians.
Prior to the emails going out to all Politicians, R8 Your Politician had contacted all the Political Parties for some engagement sadly we had one reply and invite to Stormont from the UUP staff. Dates clashed and summer came up and we never connected, so we will be following up on it. Looking at the list above I count 4 UUP MLA's so far they have been the most engaging. I know that while building the website some people had contacted Political Parties requesting information on MLA's, MSP & MP's and found them helpful, some more than others.
One Politician recently wrote to us to tell us that he has a lot of engagement with the public and his blog has over 30,000 unique hits a week. That's the kind of good news about Politicians engaging that does not often make it into the media. We realize Politicians are busy people so that is why R8 Your Politician has offered to update and maintain their profiles on this website for free. R8 Your Politician certainly does not want to increase the workload of Politicians.
Although the list above is small for now, many Politicians are already aware of "R8 Your Politician" but have not engaged. If you are a Politician or you know a Politician ask them are they aware of their profile and have they been contacted by us. If you find they have not been contacted ask them or their staff to drop us an email and we will get the Politicians profile updated. Due to the limited staff to update the website, profiles are updated as we get engagement from Politicians or their staff.
We have also encouraged and invited all Politicians to write an article for the website and create a short video for their profiles. Politicians were also asked to include a link on their website or blog that would link back to their profile on R8 Your Politician to help create awareness of R8 Your Politician to their constituents and encourage constituents to rate them.
So it is over to you now public we have contacted your Politicians and continue to contact those Politicians who have not been contacted. The word is out, rate your politician and leave a review.
You don't even need to register or sign in to rate your politician, you can easily find your politicians profile by typing http://www.R8YourPolitician.co.uk/FirstnameLastname , once on your Politicians profile look for the "Rate Me" image. Clicking this will bring you to your Politicians rating page where you can rate him or her and leave a review.
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