[LINK] [UK] Parliament ponders the weight of e-petitions

Jan Whitaker jwhit at melbpc.org.au
Wed Jan 16 08:55:16 AEDT 2008


At 08:06 AM 16/01/2008, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>One poster complains about their experience of the e-petitions run 
>by the Prime Minister's office.
>
>Poster "Perspective Vortex" said that at the end of the consultation 
>period the government emailed everyone who had signed up opposing 
>replacement of Trident nuclear missiles with a message in support of 
>government policy.
>
>The poster explained: "In essence, my petition was used to create a 
>mailing list to assist the government in lobbying the public; I 
>consider myself to have been duped into assisting interest groups 
>opposed to my petition... I consider the e-petitioning system to be 
>a mendacious gimmick with the overall effect of generating political 
>disengagement and cynicism."

why is a government office, and the PM's office to boot, running 
petitions??? What a weird way to do something. Petitions come from 
the people, not under the auspices of those being petitioned to do something.

If the PM's office did email everyone to 'lobby' the citizenry to 
think differently, getting those email addresses by pretention of 
participating in a faux petition, that's just wrong.

But, this misuse/abuse of petitioning is quite different from 
comparing e-petitions to paper petitions.

Jan


Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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