Annual Report 2016

Internal governance

It seems too early to reflect on the political events of 2016. The world, and the UK, and the Labour Party, all seem to have got more volatile and unpredictable.  Anyone who thinks they understand what is going on probably hasn’t been paying attention.

Domestically we were again involved in the Labour Party leadership contest, and got a lot of not very welcome publicity when our internal leadership poll was hacked. We never imagined that anyone would be sufficiently interested in our affairs as to want to hijack it. When we reran the poll securely of 642 members entitled to vote,  412 voted – 64% of those eligible.  The results was Owen Smith: 209, Jeremy Corbyn: 174, neither: 29.

Our online presence has increased, especially on Twitter.  Our website is now attracting significant advertising, and we need to balance the need to generate income with the need to stimulate discussion.  Sadly, as always, much of the advertising content is, at best, uninteresting to our audience.  We don’t carry advertising for anything we consider actually harmful, but carrying adverts does not imply that we approve of what is being advertised.

Year201220132014201520162017
Current members651677654672683792
Website Pages 915974101910431163
Website Posts530436112415011853
Website Comments (culmulative)22722501225728633370
Website Page Views338,415375,511410,000382,045408,288347,000
Unique Visitors131,303158,180181,281171,000204,596171,062
Followers of the blog360418
Twitter Followers (culmulative)136528454178483956876104
Tweets (culmulative)16,57812,52238,10047,70055,200
Facebook likes (culmulative)148817571975206721292349
Tweet impressions137,1800204,700322,400
Contacts database40,88842,31039,03936,29236,24235,993
Website Google Page Rank544444
Domain Authority4144

Hon Secretary’s report