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Today we passed the 42,000 signature milestone! That is just fantastic – thank you so much for all your support!
To get to 100,000 signatures, for that is the aim of myself, Chris Packham, Bill Oddie and LACS, we need 534 people to have signed the e-petition every day since 20 March and to sign it until 20 September. At present we have fallen behind that rate, and currently scoring at a rate of c490 signatures a day, so we’ll need c580 signatures a day from now on to reach 100,000 signatures. That’s a big ask.
I’m expecting we will fall further behind the asking rate over the next few weeks (but maybe we won’t!). However, it is pretty much certain that from August onwards, through Hen Harrier Day, the Inglorious 12th and the Bird Fair that rate will begin to race away to the finishing line. It’s a bit like a run chase in a limited over cricket match: we got off to a very good start and are now keeping the run rate ticking over so that the asking rate doesn’t get too high, and then we’ll be throwing our bats around with gusto as we chase down those last runs. Well, we’ll see!
This is, as you might remember, my third e-petition on this subject. Each time I have thought hard before starting an e-petition, and each time, thanks to hundreds of people I know and tens of thousands of people I don’t know at all, I have been thrilled and surprised at how many signatures we have gathered. this time around I thought 50,000 would be a good total but now, obviously I would be gutted if we ended on that figure in 100 days’ time.
My, our, first e-petition gathered signatures at around 70 signatures a day and I was, and we were, delighted!
My, our, second e-petition gathered signatures at around 180 signatures a day and I was, and we were, even more delighted!
My, our, third e-petition has, so far, gathered signatures at around 490 signatures a day and I am utterly delighted!
So we are doing really, really well! Thank you! Whatever you are doing out there to persuade people to sign – please keep it up! There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who will readily sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. Our job is to give them the opportunity.
Have a strong word with the RSPB, ask them to petition their more than one million members to back the petition to Ban Driven Grouse Shooting. If only a tenth of their membership back the petition that would take it to well over the required 100,000 signatures.
I’m sure there are many of us that would love to hear what excuses the RSPB have for not putting their full weight behind this petition, especially so when they make out they are a bird protection society.
To my knowledge on three separate occasions the League Against Cruel Sports have emailed their members directly urging them to sign the petition. Twice that resulted in several hundred new signatures in a very short space of time, once there were easily 5,000 plus signatures. If Friends of the Earth, the UK Green Parties and Greenpeace UK were to do so (what’s stopping them exactly?) and the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, RSPCA, SSPCA, National Trust, National Trust for Scotland, Woodland Trust (not many trees on grouse moors, but that’s the point) were at least to raise the issue with their members about what needs to be done with grouse moors, then the 100,000 mark is practically a guaranteed cert given what happened with LACS which has a smaller membership in comparison. I know this has been mentioned before, but must be worth repeating, if just one of the above gets involved what a bloody difference, with all!?!
Practice needs to be stopped, benefits don’t weigh up