The British Embassy in Washington, D.C. has today proudly released a list of “several [social media] platforms” it uses “to better connect with people throughout the US and the world”.
Remember, the British Embassy receives its budget from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – a government department paid for by taxes.
Our Embassy in Washington D.C. alone has 21 Twitter profiles, 7 Facebook pages, a Tumblr, 3 Vine Accounts, 6 Instagram accounts, 2 Pinterest pages, 4 Huffington Post blogs, a Storify channel, a Visual.ly account, a Google Circle, a Flickr, a YouTube channel, and incredibly, a Buzzfeed Community page. That’s FIFTY in total.
Think of the manpower it must take to run the ‘UKinUSA Buzzfeed community page’ alone.
With the kind of unique, insightful content such as these pieces taken from the page. And yes, these are all real, UK Government-funded articles:
And it seems the Embassy is even aware of how superfluous some of its own activities are. The first article it ever posted on Buzzfeed is called:
The article includes taxpayer funded activities such as:
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“Host a ping pong match between Ambassador Westmacott and NBC’s Chuck Todd”;
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“Show our pride at DC’s Capital Pride Parade”;
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“Rock a Comic-Con”;
and even…
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“Join Buzzfeed!”
Talk about meta-profligacy.