Yesterday I highlighted a petition from Friends of the Earth and mentioned that the issue was important but the petition is accompanied by lots of irritating stuff where FoE ask for your details so that they can contact you in future.
I much prefer the petition systems set up by the national parliaments across the UK as a means to petition government action because they are free of those issues. In addition, the petition system set up by the Westminster parliament and government is a brilliant system which triggers action from government at 10,000 signatures and from parliament at 100,000 signatures.
So I was pleased to see this petition emerge yesterday on the same subject of peaceful protest;
This petition opened on Tuesday evening and when I signed it on Wednesday evening it had already reached 60,000 signatures. It has acquired another 20,000 signatures overnight. That this petition flies past 100,000 signatures today is even more certain than that Irish-trained horses will win more races at the Cheltenham Festival this week than the British will – the score is GB 3 – 11 Ireland at the halfway stage.
Please help it keep soaring away by signing here please.
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Yes I completely agree with you Mark. One often hesitates to sign petitions (there are very many) because of the follow ups that come with them once one has signed. Not a good practice by the petition sponsors on the whole.
I signed it about the same time you did Mark. I see now that our, sorry the Tories Home Secretary is talking of processing all asylum seekers abroad, wanting to follow the dreadful and almost certainly internationally illegal Australian model. Perhaps she should reflect how fortunate she is that this didn’t happen to her parents.
I wonder what odds you’d get that Priti Patel is already looking at ending this government petition nonsense?! We wouldn’t be allowed to protest its closing down would we.
Its at well over 98K signed now……….
The new legislation on protest is just one element in a growing attack on our democracy. We have a Government rightly nervous because of its incompetence that is using power and money (usually taxpayers money) to shore up its electoral position. The attack on the BBC is another prime example, as is the Prime Ministers refusal to answer questions from the opposition. Look out for future gerrymandering – constituency boundary changes and changes to the law – most relevantly, thinking of the success of Wild Justice the moves that have already been made to restrict judicial review. The Extinction Rebellion protests and similar protests over climate change and the environment are as big and important as the campaign for votes for women a century ago – and the Government reaction is as out of step with the times and urgency as it was then.
Quite noticeable how many ‘man of the people’ podcasters are out there calling for defunding the BBC. Not reform, greater transparency or for a change in the licence fee, but flat out termination of the institution that probably does a bigger and better job of representing this country’s good points (a level of commitment to public education you don’t get in the U.S.A for one) than any other. Surprise, surprise many of these podcasters turn out to be Farage supporters, and Trump fans too – they’ve even repeated bonkers claims about Biden being an election cheat. Flawed though it is the BBC will never be Fox News and that pisses some very devious people off, can’t have relatively unbiased programming!
I think this anti protest legislation is aimed squarely at Extinction Rebellion, Most governments are OK with protests as long as they are not disruptive or noisy and they don’t get lots of PR in the media, in other words protest is OK as long as it is ineffective. So much for the libertarian right and their cancel culture.
I too completely agree with you, there are some large campaigning organisations promoting petitions that, in my opinion, lose support due to being very pushy regarding sharing and “chipping-in” and as far as I know most are not run on a voluntary basis. I avoid them unless I feel extremely strongly about the issue and when I sign I unsubscribe immediately. Government petitions are (as you say Mark) brilliant by comparison.
Just signed and I was number 99,825 – although my enormous ego felt let down by me not being 100,000 – it’s very, very close. Yes I’ve started getting phone calls after signing petitions too. People will stop signing petitions. There are ways that groups could raise funds from promoting reduce, reuse, recycle initiatives that need to be explored, they are clearly desperate for funds.
Well over five million pounds a day is spent in the UK on bottled water, plus creating plastic waste and air pollution freighting it when it could just come out of a tap. If public water refilling stations – http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/taps-top-edinburgh-gets-five-new-public-refill-stations – had an option of an inbuilt collection box allowing people to donate part of the money saved from not buying a drink to charity then many more places might be prepared to install them – shopping malls, railway and bus stations, and even supermarkets might find it politically more difficult to refuse installing them. For public health reasons clean water should be accessible away from home too.
If carrying and using refillable bottles gave people an opportunity to help charity as well as the environment then that would increase the demand and viability of refilling stations by increasing the number of people prepared to use them. Charities could become major proponents of refilling stations as they’d mean a significant new source of income – ‘help good causes, not making plastic waste.’ Each refilling station could be linked to a charity, or perhaps the beneficiaries would rotate/share. Could there be a Wild Justice refilling station some day? Is this an idea worth pursuing, would the public be supportive of this as opposed to pissed off by getting a call through signing a petition? Anything must make more sense than buying a bottle of something we can get out of a tap.
I seem to remember Dominic Dyer saying something similar at Bird Fair two or three years ago. His point was that governments are much more likely to pay attention to their petitions than others.
This government wouldn’t be in such an unchallenged position if we had proportional voting: MakeVotesMatter.org.uk
“In addition, the petition system set up by the Westminster parliament and government is a brilliant system which triggers action from government at 10,000 signatures and from parliament at 100,000 signatures.”
The legislation that the petition refers to has already had its first nod through the lower chamber. Clause 59. A majority of 80 will likely not be swayed by anything.