MPs and their staff repeatedly try to access porn sites while on the job

UK politicians (and their staff) tried to access porn sites to a staggering degree over the past year from within Parliament, according to an investigation by the UK division of the Huffington Post.

Utilising the Freedom of Information act, it was revealed that the peak smut searching period was November 2012, when a whopping 114,844 attempts were made.

In it’s defence, a House of Commons spokesperson claimed that these figures did not prove the user actually intended to visit any pornographic website.

Which you’ll have to admit sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse, and one you might expect to hear from a teenage son rather than the ruling body of the world’s 6th largest economy.

Further, no doubt flustered, parliamentary officials rushed to add that the figures published would be inflated by websites refreshing themselves, and that pop ups could have an effect too. Which may technically be true, doesn’t ring out as particularly strong defence either.

Some MPs have jumped in and blamed over-prudish filters on Parliamentary systems, which they claim have been flagging some news stories as porn. An awful lot of them, it would seem.

But unless the system is entirely defunct the figures surely show some element of on the job porn browsing has been going on in the chambers of parliament.

Which if nothing else adds interesting context to the current administration’s pious war on online porn sites.