The answer to the headline? When ‘Sarah Edwards’ is replying to you on Facebook. Presumably having been spooked by the complete blowout Labour had at the County Council elections, Sarah Edwards faced with the reality that she will be a one and a bit term MP has decided to take action. Or rather direct her staff to. If you’ve read this site for a while or ever used the comments section on her Facebook page, then you’ll know that she has never ever replied to anyone. But what’s this?!
Despite the use of ‘I’ in the sentence ‘I receive’ this is of course not Sarah Edwards herself that is replying to this irked resident. It’s her staff, likely either Councillor Natalie Statham or former Councillor Simon Peaple. As if Sarah after all this time would even dream of coming close to real people even if it is digitally. She’s never replied to people on Facebook and she’s not about to start now. Unlike the unsuccessful former Tory MP Eddie Hughes who did once have staff, he has always replied to people himself on Facebook, even if they were nutjobs, and as we know there are plenty of those around.
We presume it’s those very nutjobs that have prompted Edwards to put in place an acceptable behaviour policy, given pride of place at the top of her Facebook page.
She’s had enough, and she’s doing something about it. Not that she has to see it and deal with it herself, but now her staff are empowered to hide or remove comments or banning them from interacting with her office at all. They were already removing and hiding comments as it was, so this is not news. We’re not in anyway condoning the trolling of politicians in a malicious way online, because you’re no better than our local troll and several morons we know of on Facebook who are just plain vile and looking to abuse. What we do know is that Edwards’ staff have consistently removed legitimate criticism of her and the government from her comments section and that’s what we have a problem with. Ban the morons by all means, but don’t shelter yourself from legitimate concerns.
Edwards is battening down the hatches for a hard few years ahead, she knows what’s coming. She’s also continuing in the manner in which she started, by blatantly lying to the public.
