Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Online Politics


Worried that an e-petition or facebook site hasn't had enough traffic? Easy. Just get a party leader to mention it in a speech and you'll never look back! Last week Norfolk Blogger was reporting that, since David Cameron referred to a facebook group that hated him in his conference speech, the numbers joining it soared. Then, today, Gordon Brown rather foolishly drew attention to the fact that only 26 people had signed a Downing Street website petition for an election. Sure enough, that number is now nearing 2,000, not least because of posts by bloggers such as Guido Fawkes urging people to sign up! Not that the Downing Street e-petitions are likely to be actioned by its current occupant. One petition, signed by over 19,700 people, calls on Jeremy Clarkson to be made Prime Minister!

PS: Such is the speed of online democracy, or perhaps I'm just a slow typist, that another 200 people have signed the election petition since I started!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

The Clarkson petition has even been signed by Tony Blair.

Online government sponsored petition websites don't change policy. Thats the job of Sun 'Have your say' polls.

future tory PM said...

If you look on the website you will actually find that there are a lot of petitions that have been rejected. This is due to the fact that they contained "party sensitive material". One of these rejected petitions with this problem was to stop Gordon Brown from being PM but how can that be so? Surely it is just an opinion that, whether right or wrong (right in case you were wondering), should be voiced on a political website as a valid opinion on the leader of our DEMOCRATIC country.

future tory PM said...

Oh by the way I am a student that currently graces the corridors of Sutton Grammar despite what speculation at school may be suggesting...

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