At the Study of Parliament Group annual conference, held last weekend in Oxford, one of the subjects discussed was e-petitioning. The system that has been introduced is proving somewhat dysfunctional: it raises expectations that cannot be met as well as exacerbating the tendency to confuse Government with Parliament. People sign a petition on a government website and , if 100,000 signatures are obtained, it is passed to the Backbench Business Committee in the Commons to decide if it should be scheduled for debate. There is no guarantee of debate, even though there appears to be a popular perception that 100,000 signatures will automatically trigger a debate. The system was introduced by the Government without consulting the Backbench Business Committee.
My view is that the system needs to be changed and that what we need is a means of e-petitioning Parliament, with Parliament having ownership of the process and I do mean Parliament. I have developed my views already in a post on my own blog. Any reader interested in puruing the issue can read it here.
100,000 “Petitioning” people is never going to make this country truly and sustainworthily Democratic;
nor healthily & wellbeingly both Individual & Community Lifeplace Human Developmental.
If Britain had ever been an egalitarian and sustainworthy Democracy it would have long ago found out or created a way
of not only accurately listing and prioritising every Need and How
(not the mere wants, wishes, dreams, desires, or fantasies)
of every level and kind of individual-citizen/subject,
but of two-way verifying that List with every-one affected,
and publishing it,
and at least annually updating it;
out of the Public’s Tax funds.
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There certainly appears to be lingering on, in every British Power, an effectively permanent avoidance of, and chronicly repressive dearth of, Advocacies, Committees, and Proactive-Associations, for
“Normal-Individual, Disadvantaged-Individual, & Small-Communities’, Needs & Affordable-Hows Recognition, and Mutual Human Development, Enablements”
Surely it is plain to be seen,
that if those trained, protected, and super-highly paid, in Human-and Environmental Support Expertise and Governance
are content to remain in ignorance of all the Needs of every-one of The People
(real Needs; not Wants, Desires, Dreams, Wishes, and Fantasies)
and are power-wasteful and ‘content’ enough to also brazenly obstruct the registering of such a Need directly from ‘the-individual-bottom’ to ‘the collective-governance-top’,
then we not only do not have a Participatory-Democracy
we do not even have a sustainworthy and survivable People, neither as a Nation of 63 million heads,
nor as a few thousand Governance experts in Houses of Parliament Control, and in the Chairs controlling our various Economic and ‘Social’ sectors
(and in many cases outrightly owning whole sectors, companies, and neighbourhoods).
Again NB please, having to find 99,999 other people to sign a single formal Petition for such a Need is neither Democracy, nor Good Government nor even individual-human-life-respectful and responsible.
People sign a petition on a government website
A separate page on parliament.uk website perhaps. It would be better for parliament to own the whole deal. It might not even matter if it were done by both the government website and the parliament one, as long as each petition gets to the backbench business committee.
As a thought a referendum asks
“Do you want?”
A petition says
“We want!”
I find a petition infinitely more satisfactory as a method of guaging opinion. A referendum demands strength of feeling and usually gets none. A petition seeks out strength of opinion and if it gets it, may begin to succeed in its goals, not just the acceptance of the petition.
Surely such a strong-need as requires such a huge number of people to sign a special-format of ‘petition’ needs to be stating
“We Need … (seriously, desperately)
(such-and-such)(to be [urgently] legislated) (for at least us 100,000 legitimate-and-signatory British subjects)…”.
If not, then the correct evaluation of this whitewash-spin-doctored term “Petition” (like so many thousands of other so-called ‘politically-correct’ terms) has to be “Pusillanimous” “Puerile” “Do-They-Think-We-Are-Stupid” and “Why Do They Continue To Make Us ‘Stupid’ ?”.
———–
Otherwise GH, you’re right about a Referendum being “buying a pig-in-a-poke”, top-down Directive
(even in effect ‘dictated’)
a pre-cornered ‘closed’ either-or “choice”,
often between ‘the devil and the deep blue sea’ as far as the most-needy subjects are concerned about getting their desperate-needs both recognised and affordably-met by legislation and (crucially) by effective enforcement thereof.
===========
[Ergo, my above longer initial submission’s content and intent must surely stand, and even be ‘nailed to the table’ until ‘taken-on-board’ and ‘proactivated’ upon ?].
No petition or referendum of an ignorant or lied to public can ever correct the imbalance within that State. A State that has no intention of educating its people in the truth, before asking for their permission to take action, is a duplicitous administration that has no right to be running a democracy.
The same way the Americans are lied to about Europe, so are we. And our people are totally ignorant on what it is our government wants to opt out of in Europe. What they want is to opt out of the social chapter of responsibility toward our fellow man, who pay the bill for just that purpose right here in the UK. They want to dismantle the welfare state for us all so their rich friends can have even more.
Whilst at the same time they want to continue increasing our foreign aid, which in the main, is filling the pockets of the already wealthy. All for political control over its war machine and arms sales.
Here is the truth we never get. Listen with intent and ask why you never read any of this in our papers or hear about it in our television documentaries? Then ask, if you did know all about the reality of why its all gone to the wall, would you vote in a referendum or put in a petition the way they tell you to slant it? A referendum on any issue is only as worthy as the correct information the voter has. And only if that information tells them the full truth of a situation, not the propaganda of a bent political class that denies its people the right to know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwq3Q9ODVI
Petitioning is rather like a literary form of “demo”, prefered by the labour left! In a demo you are voting with your feet for the perceived objective; with a petition, your fingers, although, gladly not walking on them.
Is a petition demonstrative or asinine?
The Obama administration has started an e-petition program for persons to petition its White House website. The Constitution here allows that all citizens of these United States have the Rgiht to petition Congress but is silent on petiotioning the President.
The Obama administration in its website policy agrees to address any petition that gets 25,000 or more endorsing e-signatures. There have been several such petitions. The Obama administration will not deport British telejournalist Piers Morgan for his statements in the gun control debate and will not attempt to build a Death Star like the one in the Lucasfilms product Star Wars. I am particularly pleased about the last of these two decisions — however difficult it may have been to pass on such a splendid weapons system so far superior to anything in the UK or the Commonwealth or Europe.
@ Frank:
Don’t know why, but, I felt you may find this amusing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
Maude Elwes,
I was indeed amused…
2012, a proposal on the White House’s web site urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 25,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013[33] and noted that the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $852 quadrillion. The response also noted that “the Administration does not support blowing up planets” as a reason for its denial of the petition.
Ha!Ha!Ha! Why not?
2012, a proposal on the White House’s web site urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 25,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013 and noted that the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $852 quadrillion. The response also noted that “the Administration does not support blowing up planets” as a reason for its denial of the petition.
Ha!Ha!Ha! Why not?
Gareth Howell,
I did not respond to your first comment about the same matter as my comment. I was willing to let it stand as it is written and it is not indexed as a reply to me. However, now that you have put it up twice I am far more compelled and will reply:
‘Ah Ha!
That is more or less the history of the petition: However, were it not for the low probability of success, the substantially crippling cost of the attempt and the intended effecting of destroying planets I would argue that the Death Star is really a very fine weapon. But I am personally unsure whether it is fundamentally possible to make a ship the size of small moon travel through from any portion of our universe to another through a hyper-space dimensionality which relies on the relatively continuous and seamless availability of wormholing potential through other dimensions with in all of space-time. I think that might be tricky to work out even if it should prove to be true — so that is against it.
Offsetting all these difficulties however is extreme deterrent factor that such a ship would offer here where we only inhabit one weapon. I think there is absolutely no way to determine what percentage of people signed the petition from any set of motives. But without knowing this set of motives one can still determine many things from the rise of the petition submitted. “