The first eight weeks

Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting keeps making significant progress.

Highlights:

• Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey approaches 100 signatures – next week?
• The number of constituencies with 50+ signatures has jumped from 18 to 26 in the last week.
• Foyle and Barking remain the only two UK constituencies without a single signature

Here are the leading constituencies so far – many of them are old friends (all with 50+ signatures):

1. Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Drew Hendry MP, 97 signatures
2. Ross, Skye and Lochaber, Ian Blackford MP, 79 signatures
3. Skipton and Ripon, Julian Smith MP, 77 signatures
4. Calder Valley, Craig Whittaker, 75 signatures
5. Thirsk and Malton, Kevin Hollinrake MP, 74 signatures
6. Sheffield Hallam, Jared O’Mara, 74 signatures
7. Isle of Wight, Bob Seeley MP, 73 signatures
8. Dumfries and Galloway, Alister Jack MP, 72 signatures
9. Suffolk Coastal, Therese Coffey MP, 70 signatures
10. High Peak, Ruth George MP, 69 signatures
11. Penrith and The Border, Rory Stewart MP, 68 signatures
12. Westmorland and Lonsdale, Tim Farron MP, 66 signatures
13. Sheffield Central, Paul Blomfield MP, 65 signatures
14. Richmond (Yorks), Rishi Sunak MP, 63 signatures
15. Stroud, David Drew MP, 62 signatures
16. Argyll and Bute, Brendan O’Hara MP, 61 signatures
17. Derbyshire Dales, Patrick McCloughlin MP, 56 signatures
18. Harrogate and Knaresborough, Andrew Jones MP, 55 signatures
19. South Norfolk, Richard Bacon MP, 55 signatures
20. Wells, James Heappey MP, 54 signatures
21. North Norfolk, Norman Lamb MP, 54 signatures
22. Ceredigion, Ben Lake MP, 53 signatures
23. East Lothian, Martin Whitfield MP, 52 signatures
24. Ludlow, Philip Dunne MP, 51 signatures
25. Central Devon, Mel Stride MP, 51 signatures
26. Somerton and Frome, David Warburton MP, 50 signatures

 

Last week,and the week before, I stuck my neck out and predicted a significant leap forward in the number of signatures by now…well, the total increased by nearly 4000 signatures in that fortnight but that wasn’t achieved through the means that I was expecting, so I’ll assume that we may see another significant leap forward in the next seven days. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

Eight weeks is not two months, but it almost is, and so we are nearly a third of the way through the time – and clearly not a third of the way to 100,000 signatures. But there is plenty of time and we have picked up a bit of momentum over the last couple of weeks.  Most of my effort is planned for 2018.

However, here’s a thing you can do very easily to spread the word – if you are on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr then please sign up to this thunderclap which will send out a message on 10 December, the last day of the grouse shooting season, that we want this unsustainable hobby to disappear as soon as possible.  Thank you.

 

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