When I last delved into the world of rejected petitions there were 35,842 of them. Now there are 37,176 of them, so people have not lost their enthusiasm for trying to find a solution to the things that irritate them by means of a debate in the House of Commons. It is also clear that that the pattern of petitions varies with the seasons and with issues that are in the news. Thus, the most recent batch of rejected petitions is dominated by calls for silent fireworks and the banning of noisy fireworks. Another common topic in recent weeks was the issue of American Bully dogs: some demanding they all be shot and others asking that the owners are not stigmatised.
But, scattered amongst these are some attempts at having a petition raised that demonstrate the sheer eccentricity, the sense of humour and a widespread inability to master the rudiments of English grammar that is prevalent among those who raise rejected petitions.
Outrage at the price of confections is quite common and the absence of a fast food product stirred one failed petitioner. “Lock the price of a Freddo at 25p” demanded someone who justified his attempt saying: “The price of a Cadbury’s Freddo is absolutely abhorrent. The U.K. is in a cost of living crisis, and one can’t even purchase oneself a Cadbury’s Freddo without breaking the bank.” But, at least Freddos are available, even if overpriced, unlike the McRib which appears to have been banned. “Bring the McRib back to the U.K.” demanded one person who asked: “Unban the McRib, get McDonald’s on the line and tell them to bring the McRib back to the U.K.” Sadly, the McRib will remain ‘banned’.
Demonstrating an enthusiasm for exclamation marks but not for spelling, Transport for London (TfL) will never know how close it came to being the subject of an early day motion as a result of one hopeful request to “Make TFL free!!!” Why, well it is clearly explained that we need to “make TFL free as there (sic) scammers”.
As a country we have mainly dealt with prejudice and discrimination. We have legislation covering race, religion, age and sexual orientation. You would think we had it sorted, but no, there is a group of people who continue to suffer — mainly in silence — but no longer, or so hoped one hopeful petitioner who, we can assume, had ginger hair. So “Make picking on people with red/ginger hair a hate crime” was the title of one rejected petition which specifically asked: “To make picking on people with red or ginger hair a crime.” Sadly, for this red-haired person, his particular petition will not be debated but he clearly had tapped into the zeitgeist as his rejection was on the basis that “there’s already a petition about this issue”, which is quite a common reason for rejection. He was pointed to another petition which was more eloquently worded and which asked Parliament to “Make hair colour a protected characteristic covered by hate crime legislation“, stating: “We want hair colour to be made a protected characteristic to protect people with red or ginger hair from discrimination. Hate crime laws should also be extended to cover offences motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s hair colour.”
An old chestnut, which appeared in my last article on rejected petitions, is school toilets, or restricted access to them. Someone requested Parliament “To make schools allow students to go to the bathrooms during lessons“, asking: “What if someone has some sort of special needs the school doesn’t know of and doesn’t let them go? It will make them super embarrassed about it. Also what if a girl was on her period? She will obviously have to go to the bathrooms to do whatever that is needed.” This was another example of a petition rejected on the grounds that there was already one on the same topic. Maybe so but I searched Hansard in vain for any debates on the topic. In fact, the subject of toilets has barely arisen in Parliament except for one mention by Tory leader hopeful Kemi Badenoch who raised the issue of public toilets in July 2022.
One rejected petition requested “The Police should use water cannons and tear gas at demonstrators and protest (sic)” reckoning that “Water cannons (sic) and tear gas are often used in conjunction with other crowd control methods, such as batons and shields. They can be especially effective at dispersing large crowds or crowds that are resisting arrest”. What astonished me most about this petition, with which I have a modicum of sympathy, was not that it should appear but that it was rejected because: “It’s about something that the U.K. Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.” If not in the Government’s purview, then whose?
The above are, remarkably, some of the more serious attempts at raising a petition. Clearly from someone who was used to burning the candle at both ends came “Make mondays (sic) start at 10:30 for work and school” because: “If you do this, then it will give people time to adjust and wind down before the first day of the week, making their attitude to working better and increasing their productivity.” The fact that both school and work were mentioned makes me suspect that this came from a teacher who makes the best of the weekends.
As a former duck enthusiast who kept a few as pets I was not sure what to make of the petition — rejected because “It’s not clear what the petition is asking the U.K. Government or Parliament to do” — requesting that we “Don’t class ducks or pigs as live stock (sic)so it’s easier to have them as pet’s (sic)“. And that we should, therefore, “Class ducks as household pets”. As far as I know nothing can stop you from keeping a duck as a pet, although the petitioner may have a point about pigs as, according to GOV.UK: “If you keep a pig or ‘micropig’ as a pet, you’re considered a pig keeper” and that leads to a world of pain and regulations. Trawling through rejected petitions is educational if nothing else.
Finally, my favourite among the most recent rejects was one asking Parliament to “Increase the number of police officers on a motorbike“, which compounded the ambiguity by requesting Parliament to: “Vote for Increasing the number of police officers on a motorbike.” The reasons, according to the petitioner, were that taking this action would “allow quick capture of a thief who usually is on a motorbike too”. The person clearly had not considered the time it would take to get several police officers on to a single motorbike, nor did the person suggest an optimum number. We will never know what Parliament would have made of this request as the petition was rejected because “It was created using a fake or incomplete name”. Shame.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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“Now it’s more like 80 to 90 per cent arrive in a pushchair, dummy in mouth and wearing nappies, unable to take off their coat or eat with a spoon,” Sorry, but although lockdowns were evil, these particular problems will have little, if anything, to do with lockdowns. Even the pushchair…we’ve had a long period now in which children have been able to walk outside with their parents quite freely. These problems are due to deficiencies in parenting and in fact had been observed before lockdown as well. The only thing that can be levelled at lockdown is that some parents will use anything as an excuse.
Was there ever a time when parents couldn’t walk outside with their children as much as they wanted to?
Not any time that I can remember. At least not in this universe.
I don’t know. I remember a tale of a woman on the Southbank out with her toddler being approached by the police and frantically doing star jumps to claim she was exercising (lockdown #1). It may have been utter bull, but others on reading this may think “I’m not chancing it”
Also, these things were never banned but people thought they were, which was enough to stop them. And some police thought they had the right to accost people too, which is shocking & outrageous & they should be fired immediately for horrendous overreach. Nazi scumbags like that are not fit for positions of responsibility of any kind.
Seriously some police should go to jail for this and other human rights abuses.
I do agree that it’s not at all uncommon for parents to seek to offload responsibility that should be within the remit of the parents to primary schools at every given opportunity. However, there is much more that can be levelled at lockdowns than this. It is empirically evident due to various assessments of mental and development health, and how it has deteriorated across the nation, that the intuition that locking children away in their homes, restricting access to their peers, etc, will harm their health in all sorts of ways, has been proven correct.
While these problems may have existed prior to lockdowns, on both sides of the proverbial pond I might add, alas they have clearly grown (what’s that word again? EXPONENTIALLY!) since then. Lockdowns were gasoline on the fire. The stricter and longer the lockdown, the worse it became. Truly stranger than fiction.
You may well be correct in your assertion but I don’t care. I am more than happy to add this child abuse to Bozo’s charge sheet. Any little scrap serves our cause.
I agree with perhaps 90 per cent of this article’s content, except for one glaring fallacy throughout. That is that the author tends to conflate the effects of lockdown with the effects of the pandemic, and refers to each as the causal agent of these harms interchangeably, thereby suggesting that “pandemic = lockdown”, i.e. there are no other alternatives.
It is suggested in several places, expressed in various ways, that the pandemic affected children’s education to the tune of putting them way behind academically and developmentally. The evidential truth, however, is that the pandemic, as in the impact of the virus, had negligible effect on children, but the lockdown, however, possibly affected children more so than any other demographic.
It is a very dangerous thing to suggest within wide-reaching media that it was the pandemic that had such a devastating effect on children, when in fact it was the lockdown and the restrictions on children’s education imposed by the government that was responsible for this: If the idea that an inevitable respiratory virus was the main causal agent for the suffering of children and their families is ingrained into the collective consciousness, it becomes a handy means for the state to dodge accountability for the mayhem they caused, when in fact any number of alternatives (eg. the strategies outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration) could have been proposed, other than the Xi Jinping model!
Indeed, that is true. And it doesn’t even require a full lockdown to do damage to children either. A combination of nonstop doom and panic mongering (which leads to some degree of “voluntary” lockdowns imposed by fearful parents) and/or prolonged school closures can be almost as bad as a full lockdown as well. Had they adopted the “flu strategy” from the get-go, and no panic mongering, that would have had the least-worst outcomes overall.
Yes, like the pre-pandemic preparedness documents that were honed to perfection over decades and then hastily thrown on the fire!
Exactly. Given how often this government has told us that they are following a new scientific method now understood to be ‘The Science’ you are not telling me that amongst the many doctors and professors enrolled in ‘The Science’ they do not have one or two who could have outlined the many dangers to our children of lockdowns?
Bu#lshyte!
The Mail should of course refer to the “shamdemic” and “government human rights abuse”. Being collaborators though (including printing that disgraceful Hancock piece) they will never do that.
If the coerced consensus was right, it would be naturally contagious (from Livestream #130)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zgr15VxtYg
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Lockdowns, the Trojan horse “gift” that keeps on giving, it seems. The ongoing long-term consequences, which were totally foreseeable by literally anyone with two brain cells to rub together, is truly a slow-moving tragedy in progress, and a travesty as well. Infancy and early childhood simply cannot be re-run, nor can any other stage of development for that matter, and the damage is done. While obviously we should all say “NEVER AGAIN!” and really mean it this time with regards to anything even remotely resembling lockdowns (and of course school closures too), to prevent further damage, I am sadly at a loss when trying to come up with solutions to repair the damage already done.
If you don’t feel absolutely outraged right now, check your pulse ’cause your might be dead! (Or brainwashed, which is basically the same thing for the soul.)
Don’t worry – I feel absolutely outraged.
Whilst I agree that the lockdowns were appalling for children, if your 4 yr old can’t speak properly; can’t walk anywhere and isn’t toilet trained, it’s YOUR fault.