UK government ignores e-petitions

THREE MONTHS after it launched the idea, the British government is religiously ignoring its e-petitions just like it does with the real thing.

Downing Street set up an e-petition page in the hope of interesting people in the concept of popular democracy. It would also mean that less of them would be pounding on the door of Number ten with a collection of signatures at odd hours of the day, annoying the policeman.

Punters go to the site and create a petition on a subject and hope that other people will agree with them and electronically sign them.

According to the Beeb, more than a million people have signed e-Petitions since the service was started. However, so far none of the ideas have made it into government policy.

More than 600,000 signed an e-Petition to scrap plans to replace road tax with pricing based on vehicle use. The repeal of the Hunting Act was also a popular subject with 22,000 signatures. A Downing Street spokesTone claimed that e-petitions were "proving to be a popular way for people to get their views heard" yet the spinner did not indicate if any of them were even being looked at.

This has left observers, such as the BBC, writing stories about the petitions that were turned down because they were too silly. These included a call to ban broccoli as an edible foodstuff and reclassify it as a toxic substance.

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