There follows a guest post by Dr. David Seedhouse, Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University, who says the public are being fobbed off with a Government petition website that never brings about any change.
For the last year I have run a website promoting participatory democracy: Our Decision Too. We have a small group of loyal supporters on the site who debate topical issues, providing examples of how citizens might be involved in direct decision-making, were we to have the opportunity. One of our members, concerned about the one-eyed mainstream media framing of the Ukraine-Russian conflict, asked if we might create a petition on the Government petitions site. Her original suggestion was:
We request that the House of Commons holds a full, emergency debate on the Government’s policy on the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is a complex issue, not a simple matter of Russia = bad, Ukraine and the West = good.
While any U.K. citizen can start a petition, only 80 characters are allowed in the title so we agreed this version: “Debate the history of Ukraine-Russian relations to inform U.K. policy.”
The petition was rejected on the ground that it was “not clear what the petition is asking the U.K. Government or Parliament to do”. Apparently, one of the rules is that petitions need to call for a specific action and it seems a debate doesn’t qualify. So we had another go: “Hold a referendum on sending deadly weapons to Ukraine.”
This time the petition was published, but it was an edited version, altered without permission to this: “Hold a referendum on sending deadly offensive weapons to Ukraine.”
I received no explanation and have no opportunity to challenge the Government’s amendment since its email address is a ‘no reply’ address.
Were I able to, I would tell the Government:
- Adding ‘offensive’ significantly changes the meaning of the petition, implying that ‘defensive’ weapons (whatever these are) are acceptable.
- My name is now associated with a statement that I didn’t write and do not believe. I believe the Government should not fund any weapons to Ukraine without the informed consent of U.K. citizens.
A little digging reveals a depressing picture. Almost 40,000 petitions have been posted, three quarters of which have been rejected outright. The House of Commons has debated 126 and responded to 658, though the comebacks are largely bland and non-committal. Sometimes the Government claims to be doing what the petition asks already or makes blatant value judgements without apology. For example, the petition “make parking at work permanently free for all NHS workers” prompted this retort:
Free hospital parking for NHS staff was a time-limited measure during the pandemic. It is right to end this now as we learn to live with the virus. Free parking for staff working overnight remains.
While it is a relief to learn that the pandemic is officially over, there is an unmistakable sense of a jaded schoolteacher reprimanding a recalcitrant pupil, “Not again Jamieson, how many times do I have to tell you I make the decisions around here?”
In fact none of the 40,000 petitions have succeeded in bringing about their desired change. As Amelia Tait reports in the New Statesman: “Despite accumulating millions of signatures and hundreds of thousands of shares, not a single one of these campaigns succeeded in obtaining its intended outcome.”
The Government argues that petitions have occasionally been a catalyst for policy change, but can point to just four rather slight examples. Even granting these, a success rate of 0.01% is hardly an example of productive public engagement.
So why bother with a Government petitions website at all? If you are going to prohibit most submissions from the get-go, fob off almost all that do pass scrutiny with a vacuous response, and even change the wording of some without consent, is it really worth the effort?
I can only guess why the Government continues to run its weird petitions site but suspect that it is partly self-delusion and partly deliberate subterfuge. By running a website open to any U.K. citizen the Government reinforces its own myth that it really does believe in democracy. At the same time, by minutely managing what is allowed, it runs no risk of any group of citizens actually exercising what should be a basic democratic right – asking the Government to represent the will of the people.
Of course, we know from the past two years of repeated assaults on our fundamental freedoms that the U.K. Government, like many others, has no interest whatsoever in including citizens in any part of its decision-making processes. We have a practically meaningless vote once every five years, and that’s about as far as it goes.
Yet there are readily achievable alternatives. For example, instead of ‘possibly’ debating petitions if they reach 100,000 signatures, it would be a relatively simple matter to guarantee a vote on any petition over a threshold of say three million:
Petition → Threshold passed → Informed debate in the House → Free vote → Law passed or rejected
This form of direct democracy, though less immediate than the Swiss version, would require a radical divestment of power by the handful of people who guard it so jealously. At the moment there seems little chance that this will happen. To those outside the self-congratulatory Government bubble, inclusive citizenship seems as far away as ever.
The bottom line is the Government doesn’t trust us. It claims to be delivering what we want and thinks of itself as a world-leading example of democracy while doing everything it can to prevent representative change, including micro-managing its petitions process.
If we are ever to have meaningful democracy, superficial non-solutions like token petition sites and antiquated first-past-the-post elections must be seen for what they are and replaced by systems where we can reflect, debate and make our own decisions without Government censorship.
David Seedhouse is creator of Our Decision Too and welcomes new members. The site is free of charge.
Discussion
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We are governed by a globalist uniparty.
Part of the game is to keep the plebs docile by pretending they have choice.
But it doesn’t matter whether Labour or the Tories get in we get the globalist uniparty agenda.
If voting changed anything, they’d ban it.
The same applies – in spades – to petitions. I sign them, but only because I like to feel I’m doing something to annoy the Establishment, not because I expect anything meaningful to come of it.
Stop signing petitions – they are controlled opposition and designed for instant shredding.
People are still pretending that we are living in a democracy when the voice of the people counts – since Johnson took over with his “Emergency Covid Rule” we do not and it does not.
The complete obliteration of the Labour Party as any kind of political organisation with any defined policies of purpose is further evidence – it now appears just a device for putting the bums of lackeys on Westminster seats and stuffing their mouths with money to keep them shut!
A few Tories grunge and mumble now and again – but that’s it since the “Covid Coup” of 2020!
So many people are waking up to the fact that this destruction of our economy and culture is deliberate. The Bank of England has printed loads of money which always causes inflation. I would say 10% inflation is very optimistic. It’s likely to be far worse.
As the Climate Change subisides we pay for fund “renewable energy” that clearly doesn’t work and is destroying the environment not saving it.
Amanda in East Sussex gets it dead right
Mike Graham caller claims UK is being destroyed
youtube watch?v=Nai-G1zF7Hs
Amanda in East Sussex claims the government is destroying the country “on purpose”, with people “still wearing masks in shops” and migrants “flooding in.”
TalkTV
A quote from one of the messages left on YouTube: “This chap Graham it was clear had no interest in her anger, and waffled on about the Weather and inflation. Good on her! She speaks for the majority.”
**
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make friends & keep sane from the globalist propaganda
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Interesting article but fundamentally naive. Democracy has long gone from this land and globally and only a little research is needed to find the new global hierarchy (organogram). Until we break this new structure we will never see democracy again I’m afraid
Yes indeed, the instantly binned/ shredded ‘petitions’ are just the steam valve like planning or ‘proposed legislation’ consultations – all a total sham to fool the naive.
We have no democracy in this country nor a Parliament which any longer represents the interests of the people .
“Illusion of Democracy” indeed but we sign in hope…
‘If we are ever to have meaningful democracy’ : ha ha ha ha!
I’ve signed many of these petitions and have become numbed to the inevitable bland response and lack of any meaningful action. It’s just a cynical ploy to make us feel like we have a voice especially when one’s MP is useless.
So, the reply to the original petition title suggests that the Government admits that a debate in Parliament does not equate with ‘action’.
Is Truth beginning to make a timid reappearance?
you want a favourable outcome for the petition?
easy!
just petition the following:
“increase the enumeration of members of parliament by 100%.”
Yes, the petitions are a waste of time. Writing to your MP is a waste of time. For me, the lack of a viable right of centre party means that voting is a waste of time, too.
Groupthinking mainstream political parties have lost connection with the electorate, but the only new party that has broken through is the SNP.
We need new political parties, and a media that doesn’t protect the status quo.
I don’t agree with much of this. The Government petitions are way way more influential than all the other options such as change dot org that simply collects signatures and nothing happens nor is it required to make anything happen. With a Govt petition you get updates on debates, you can watch live streams of them, your MP gets to know how many in your area are signing it, there are requirements at different levels to respond so at 10k a ‘response’, at over 100k a debate….all of the above being far in excess of any other petition option that simply collects emails for future marketing. Charity petitions also don’t lead to action just a longer marketing email list. There’s a charity petition that’s been going on for about 5 years saying ‘sign to get shops to use less packaging’ etc. last time round it had over 3 million sigs. but what has happened, almost nothing and when you contact them to say ‘what’s happened, why didn’t you do this as a Govt. petition’ they give a very patronising answer as if to suggest….’don’t worry your little head, we’ve got it in hand, we spoke with a leading supermarket last… Read more »
This is a very good riposte to the atl piece.
The rejected petitions site was always good for cheering one up. My personal favourite was “Reclassify Cheese as a vegetable.”
The aim of government “consultations” are to give the illusion of listening and soak up the efforts of the opposition on the entirely pointless and loaded “questions” whilst they just get on with what they were always going to do.
The aim of an “inquiry” is to soak up the efforts of the opposition, into a meaningless exercise which at best will prevent prosecutions and kick the subject so far into the future that everyone forgets what it was about.
Interesting article. I was recently in Norway and the Nobel Peace exhibition had an index of world wide democracies and the U.K. was well outside the top 10, which initially was a surprise to me but thinking about it, sounds about right
Don’t trust Priti Patel. This Fake Conservative Government is trying to destroy our freedoms daily, Chinese Communist Party style. ISPs and Government Quangos are currently trying to shut down the conservative Woman website
You must wake up to the fact that ISP are now trying to shut down websites that don’ t fit the narrative. The Online Safety Bill is passing through Parliament at the moment and threatens to be even more draconian. It will give the British Government further powers to shut down free speech and debate.
.
“As censoring of TCW worsens, who is trying to gag us?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/as-censoring-of-tcw-worsens-who-is-trying-to-gag-us/
TCW”
***
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Interesting that neither Dr.Seedhouse, nor any commenters seem to mention the Climate Assembly or various other Citizens’ Panels.
This might be strange, as Our Beloved Leaders set these up, at considerable expense and some fanfares of publicity to show how important they consider “Public Opinion” to be.
Of course, even a bright six year old could (and perhaps did) point out that a selection (that they carefully made) of “applicants” to be on the panel (thus giving them many “activists” to choose from), who were then gathered together (at public expense) and bombarded by activist agit-prop (previously selected and annointed as The Settled Science), would only, could only, propose and agree on things that absolutely reinforced our Beloved Leaders’ decisions.
So, on balance, it is perhaps encouraging that neither Dr. Seedhouse nor any of the commenters thought that this cynical and despicable propaganda manoeuvre worth mentioning.
We even got some of our Beloved Leaders commenting in the House or on the Telly that the Panel’s or Assembly’s views would have to be respected and adopted. I suppose that it was thought a cunning wheeze, so that if any policy they had dreamed up went tits up, more obviously and… Read more »
“In fact none of the 40,000 petitions have succeeded in bringing about their desired change.”
Looks like I was right, then!
Still, some people like to believe they got some virtue-signalling points for signing petitions.
“I signed it!”
“So did I!”
“Me too!”
“Baaaaaa!”
Well, of course. Like peaceful protests, they’re just safety valves to stop the pressure building to the point where anyone does anything.
It’s scary ‘doing something’ – you could end up getting arrested or being sent to prison.
With respect, if online petitions had any meaning they would be hijacked by minority groups to push unrepresentative policies through. We’ve got that problem bad enough ad it is. Most normal people show up at elections but don’t actively engage in politics apart from that.
Yes, they’re a joke, but pretending petitions had some sort of authority would make us a better society seems naive to me.
A very real problem with their website also is that it makes absolutely no attempt to validate whether the people who sign their petitions are humans, are citizens, are of voting age, haven’t signed before, etc. They only seem to require that each signature is associated with a unique e-mail address.
Using the old UNIX convention of ignoring everything after the +, it would be trivial for me to sign one of their petitions more than once per citizen of the UK in a few days with a simple set of scripts.
If one wants to use the petitions to properly feed into the democratic process, then one must ensure that the signatures are meaningful, that they come from people who are entitled to vote and they have not been fraudulently obtained.
In other news, the Pope is Catholic.
But then he isn’t, is he?
Petitions don’t change anything because if they did we wouldn’t be allowed to have them. It’s all part of their evil game, like “being allowed” to have Pied Piper marches and a lot of these protest groups, to lead you round in circles, never actually achieving anything, usually organised by agents of the state to ensure everyone is kept happy and feeling like theyve “done something”, and to steer people into the outcomes THEY want! We are all being played like never before. We have to be kept as subdued as much as the normies. But one thing it does do is give an idea of strength of opinion, and we have to remain ultra vigilant to their tactics, and keep on doing what we need to do to keep pushing back.
OK. So how do we change things for the better? No use whinging if you have nothing to move forward with.
good luck moving forward with any cunning plan, that’s the whole point being made here! 🙂
Point being, you could invent the “perfect system” and they wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole!
No need for a cunning plan. Simply a movement refusing to participate in the existing system would be a start.
I would argue a local secession has the best chance. Lead by example. Small enough you can reach everyone, but large enough to support itself. Our ancient petty kingdoms fit the bill; Strathclyde, Northumbria etc.
Nationwide reforms cannot easily succeed. They own national media. But they don’t own local media. That is one factor.
If it were me I’d love to demonstrate to people how Russia can survive with only a 14% income tax and minimal regulations, despite being supposedly bereft of freedom. That is, abolishing all sales taxes and business taxes in your local area would free up a lot of cash for ordinary people. It would also demonstrate how we are being fleeced by big government.
That would be my goal. Localism. Then it doesn’t matter if Brighton want to promote gaydom or Manchester wants to heavily tax pensions. It is the one size fits all stuff that is killing us.
Precisely.
We should all be considering how to improve our electoral system. For too many years MP’s have busied themselves, making themselves busy. But no one reviews their performance. No one monitors the successes or failures. If they do something wrong the first people they answer to is their peers in the HoC instead of their voters.
Lots more options and suggestions needed, not just whining about how bad things are.
I try not to already!
Most people are politicly sound asleepwalking, especially the hardliners effectively living in a limited hangout; they even think their vote counts!
It follows that any system must not involve”them”. The whole point of freedom is you don’t need permission for anything. That is our tradition. We have rules against negatives only.
Not saying it is easy, but a base assumption we must somehow convince the psychopaths destroying us to go along with it won’t work.
It’s a fair point, Corbett, Fitts etc. have explored this, an alternative system rather than challenge the current system.
It reminds me of the “Transition Towns” thing ~20yrs ago, I think some of them are still going, Totnes, Brighton, Bristol and a few more had LETS systems, but it was way before it’s time for most people.
I was inspired at the time, I even opened up a 14 acre permaculture site, first 2 yrs went great, then narcisisstic people problems pretty much kyboshed it, I got so stressed my wife threatened to leave me unless I sold the land to free up the capital to renovate our building project <shrug> I ain’t got the mental energy to lead another one tbh, I’m digging in prepper style with a wider network of like minded people, we won’t be the slowest campers when the Bear comes!
Usual socialist bollox. You don’t tear down a system only to build it into some sort of utopian dream, you fix what doesn’t work in a potentially promising system.
We have a promising system, it’s just been badly neglected and is now run by the very people who shouldn’t be running it.
Corbett & Fitts socialists? LOL No. Corbett is Anarchist (in the true sense)/libertarian; Fitts seems very conservative (in the UK sense)
It’s not about “tearing down” anything, it’s about self reliance, building local networks that can work outside the system. Doesn’t look “utopian” to me, looks like bloody hard work.
It’s as if you don’t really any idea what they’re really saying, but label it “socialist bollox” because it’s easier than looking at what they’re saying.
100%!!
DS Etiquette frowns on conspiracy theories, the done thing is to blame it all on bumbling Bozza, ineptitude, and incompetence, though pointing out “fibbing” sometimes makes final copy 😉
but seriously, it’s pretty obvious governments of all stripes hold the electorate in contempt. If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it (Twain)
Can’t comment on the half a dozen or so I’ve signed recently as I’ve not checked the outcomes but
“Debate the history of Ukraine-Russian relations to inform U.K. policy.”
does seem rather vague to me.
The first-past-the-post system is based on the assumption that defined groups of people each elect a representative which is then sent to an assembly of representatives on behalf of them. That’s a simple concept easily understood by people and it creates a fairly strong bond between voters and their representatives. Ultimatively, people don’t become MPs because they belong to a certain party but because the majority of a specific set of people elected them as their representative.
That’s not so bad compared to something like the German system where MPs are selected by parties they’re supposed to represent and input of voters is restricted to chosing their preferred party. Especially, when one also considers how hideously complicated the election system used in this case is and that presumably only a few people are aware of all its implications and corner cases.
Eg, in general, a party which didn’t get at least 5% of the actually cast votes will be excluded from parliament. This routinely leads to 10% – 15% of the votes simply falling through the cracks, usually votes cast for parties the political establishment seriously dislikes. But these votes are not effect free because they raise the bar for… Read more »
Eh? people vote for other parties than their preferred party and that makes it difficult for their preferred party?
stronk logic!
People who voted for any party which didn’t pass the 5% hurdle all unwillingly collaborated in making that happen: There votes jointly served to raise the 5% bar to a point where none of the parties they voted for could pass it anymore.
No sorry, still not making any sense. “non of the parties they voted for”
You get 1 vote.
This makes perfect sense because that’s how it happens to be. Let’s assume 80 people vote. This means 5% of the votes which were cast would be 4 votes, ie, any party with 4 or more votes would go into parliament. Now, let’s assume another 20 people vote in 5 groups of 4, with 5 parties no one voted for so far getting 4 votes each. As the total number of votes is now 100, 5% of that would be 5 votes, hence, all parties with 4 votes get eliminated as well.
NB: I’ll ignore any future attempts an unintentional or intentional misinterpretation of anything I wrote so far.
But, how, as they voted, were they supposed to know that their choice wouldn’t make the 5% barrier?
Macron first came to power on the back of a newly-minted party.
I didn’t even understand the sentence you quoted. Should ‘unwilling’ have been ‘unwillingly’?
A great example of what we shouldn’t do, but what should we do?
If that bit weren’t so tricky, we’d all have the answer.
There are no ‘answers’. Life is ever evolving, what’s right today might not be right tomorrow. All we can do is provide suggestions. Lots of small suggestions build a plan.
One question is, why do we even need a government petition website when we have elected MP’s who should be conveying important concerns of their constituents directly into the HoC?
Surely we should be reforming our process of representation if the common man’s concerns are not getting through?
I would also say that many of the petitions I have seen raised on the petition website are just juvenile.
Our system only worked pretty well while the interests of the country were generally patriotically sought by the politicians in power. Now their interests are on the global stage with token gestures towards the populace while corruption and is on a scale never seen since feudalism.
Now, in our Information Age, the masses can, if the dig a little, see the rot. To combat this they have decided to control information, create a turnkey full spectrum control grid and prevent the growing swathes of red pilled masses from outright revolt.
Voting won’t save us. They are all sucking at the giant rotten teet of state. Not to do so or wish to would prevent access to the halls of power by the rest of Animal Farm’s pigs.
Seeing as the first phase worked so well in the fake pandemic, it doesn’t bode well for us in the coming manufactured crises of food and energy shortages.
The state has lost its need for existence, so it needs to find a way to make us need the system. For them, it’s a matter of survival that we become slaves to the state.
To combat this they have decided to control information, create a turnkey full spectrum control grid and prevent the growing swathes of red pilled masses from outright revolt.
They have always concealed their motives behind the concept of “you little people don’t have all the information to hand to involve yourselves in matters of state”.
Well, we wouldn’t would we, because we are told much of it is a matter of national security. Whether it is or not is moot, but they will never say that, because “it’s a matter of national security”………..
Mushrooms…….
The HoC and HoL are the Gentleman’s clubs, or even the Masons where, what went on out of sight, stayed out of sight. Each of them sworn to secrecy to uphold the continuance of the system, even if that means lying for your worst enemy.
It’s notable that they all share the same dining facilities and the same drinking dens e.g. the Strangers Bar, where they undoubtedly mingle and chat amongst themselves. They certainly don’t sit across the room glaring at each other.
When they say “it’s just politics” they mean it, whilst slapping each other on the back and toasting each other successes, or commiserating… Read more »
Of the 16 comments so far, not a single suggestion as to how to resolve the petition problem, or holding government to account generally.
We have the technology to secure every Bank account in the UK. Why can’t the government have an electronic, participatory system, in parliamentary debates?
It sounds alright in principle, as long as the code was OS and publicly auditable.
But code would be secret, fiddleable, and we’d have to accept a digital ID, a slippery slope of technocratic authoritarianism. No doubt that’s comming anyway with CBDC, or it wouldn’t be programmable!
Good start, so what else would you suggest?
No point in knocking a suggestion over when you can’t propose something yourself. Nor does it need to be grand.
We can play “what I’d do if I were PM” all night, but it’s pointless, they would ignore any idea that takes away even a smidgen of their power.
Frankly, it’s got nothing to do with the PM. It’s got everything to do with elected officials, your MP.
Is he/she held to account for the mistakes he/she makes?
Is he/she under a performance review?
Does he/she engage you in discussion over the most important issue humanity has ever faced – climate change? My MP has refused to communicate with me over one reasonable letter I sent him on the subject. Why is that allowed?
Why do so many of these officials have second jobs and are allowed to invest in businesses whilst obviously having an inside track on what government decisions are made on future business decisions?
There are numerous other questions we should be asking of this ancient and unreformed electoral system like, who was in charge of pandemic planning? Was there even one and was it abandoned? Who is in charge of a civilian nuclear assault plan if we’re attacked? Who is in charge of a food shortage plan, and where is it? What about a financial disaster plan, and when was it last fully reviewed? Is there even a natural disaster plan, and shouldn’t we all know what it is, where it is and who is… Read more »
‘Of the 16 comments so far, not a single suggestion as to how to resolve the petition problem, or holding government to account generally.’
Is this how the White Rose stared off?
Oh and what “Parliamentary debates” are these?
The ones about beer and cake which get a full house – or the attempt by Sir Christopher Chope to have blatantly ignored ‘vaccine’ deaths and severe injuries taken seriously by a scornful, smirking Speaker before being trashed and which attract ZERO MPs?
The sight of that virtually empty chamber was something we should make them aware that we’ll never forget.