UK.gov insists e-petitions won't be ditched
The future of Number 10’s online petitions website is still under consideration by government despite its absence from Martha Lane Fox’s strategic review about Directgov, released today. A Cabinet Office spokesman told The Register that it was never the intention of Fox’s report to make direct reference to Number 10’s e-petition …
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Waste of Space
The epetition website was a typical bit of Blair BS. They created the site knowing full well it would achieve nothing, just so a few gullible fools would think that the government cared about and were listening to public opinion.
but it's still there
I'd have thought that the site would have been one of the first to go had DaveyBoy considered it to be not worth it. But it seems that the typical Labour bollocks must serve a purpose after all.
It's there so people can rant at it and think they are taking part in some form of democracy. If anything, it's exactly what the Tories would have done as one of the parts of the Big Society con.
Exactly!
I don't think I have seen anything come from all the petitions that were made and signed. Simply paying lip-service to the plebs and maintaining the illusion of democracy for the proles, that was all it was good.
re: but it's still there
Probably because one of the most popular petitions was the one invited Gordon Brown to resign.
100,000
I'm sure I could find at least that many fellow citizens who would support 'declare Uwe Boll an enemy of the kingdom'
Now replaced by Facebook?
People seem to be running campaigns on there now.
Eg one to drive people towards one at gopetition.com for defending RAF Marham from possible closure.
I think the Gov epetitions sight may have suffered from the odd joke petition - or ones that look like joke petitions. I can't figure out if "Please provide monkeys for disabled folk on the NHS to do jobs around the house for them." (that's the entirety of the details) is genuine or not.
Anon cos I'm supposed to be doing paperwork in the office.
Your protests are ours now
Great idea. So unless you sign up to the Facebook data-sucking vampire empire you don't get to have your say.
e-petitions listened to?
Can anyone provide a single example of the governments response to an e-petition which went along the lines of "ok, we hear you, we'll change the policy"?
I gave up signing them because every official response was "it doesn't matter, we're not changing our policies".
yes
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/
does that count? they decided to listen to what people wanted for a change! of course in that specific example what people wanted didn't involve the government actually having to do anything, hence them being willing to listen...
Any petitions taken notice of...?
Not just e-petitions, those that get handed in to Downing St all hand signed are ignored too.
These never worked, they just get binned as soon as the door's shut - don't know why people still try them, to be honest.
BB - because he wouldn't listen to them, either.
Except perhaps to note the names and addresses of those adding their names...
Blair ignored them, Brown ignored them. Cameron and Clegg will XXXXX
You fill in the blanks.
Such a site is *potentially* a useful tool to act as an early warning of what issues people think are important, rather than what the government *thinks* is important.
but that implies a commitment to *real* democracy by real democrats. A government that does not view *every* dissent as potential treason (and if you don't think the last few didn't see things that way explain their fetishistic desire to gather *every* piece of data on *everyone* forever)
I really enjoyed the responses...
I really enjoyed the utterly condescending responses. You'd have a petition which went along the lines of:-
Proposition: We oppose 90 day detention without trial for littering.
Signatures: 10,000,000
Response: We understand your concern, but it really is for your own good.
Nothing like getting an email 6 months later with that in to raise the blood pressure through the roof.
This was Labour's idea of democracy, being something out of a single party state, with the added bonuses of collecting the names and addresses for dissidents for future re-education. Let it die.
Waste of space...
Having signed a few Number 10 petitions in the past - you would always get the usual "we know better than you, we aren't changing anything, now please go away" response back from them.
It was all a bit pointless really.
Not completely pointless
Sure title should be "UK.gov insists e-petitions will be ignored", but it did manage to collect a massive list of signatories to add to the terrorists/anarchists governmental secret list :p
Seriously, I never bothered to sign anything because I knew it wouldn't do any good, and it could only be detrimental to myself. Yep, I'm a coward, but an anonymous one :p
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