"Gordon Brown resign" petition shoots up the charts
Gordon Brown's resignation petition that I mentioned yesterday is now shooting up the charts on the Number 10 petitions site. It now has 6,035 signatures already (up from 706 at about 3pm yesterday).
Many other bloggers have been promoting the fact that it is there. I have not yet seen any coverage in the MSM but someone in it will surely pick up on this soon. I know they keep a close eye on the blogosphere. They are probably just waiting for it to become properly newsworthy and I predict that will be once it gets to the top of the list (it currently needs 28,000 to get there) or close enough that it is clear it will get there. Once that happens it could easily snowball from there as more people hear about it.
Some bloggers such as Peter Black AM think that this is an example of a bad petition. I am afraid I disagree. Gordon Brown was not elected by anyone (as I have posted about before) and we need something like this for people to be able to express their disgust. If this petition gets as big as I think it could then it will be a focal point for a debate about why this unelected man should be allowed to drag this country further into the mire, backed up by the fact that lots of people have expressed their desire for him to go.
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4 comments:
I did not say it was a bad petition I said the whole site is tokenistic and a bad example of e-government.
Hi Peter.
Fair enough, I can now see that it is the site itself rather than the petition you have a problem with. I misread your post.
I agree that the mechanism they have implemented is flawed and it seems to only exist so that they can look like they are listening when they clearly aren't.
It will be interesting to see how they respond if/when this petition gets to the top and especially if it gets lots of signatories.
PS: I also agree that the e-petition site is bad, in the ways described, and this is why from the beginning I had planned for this petition to be number 1 at Number 10.
Also, this clear objective, which looked silly to some at the start, was the feature that generated interest.
Now, some people are telling me that being the biggest of all time is silly, particularly since we have only half the normal time. Let us give it a shot!
So, Mark, can you mention this as objective in your posts and tell others to do the same. It will generate interest.
The press like targets, so give them targets, and they can plot our progress.
The best way to get people talking is to make it fun. However, there also also the real objective --- giving Brown a long and much needed rest.
PPS: Do you agree with this petition, and if so could you direct some traffic to it?
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/savegreenspace/
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