Friday 14th October

I am bombarded daily by Petitions, or requests to put my name to petitions.  Facebook is full of them, my fault I suppose for liking certain humanitarian or left-wing posts, and once I actually signed a Petition (can’t remember what it was now) and I get e-mails, again almost daily, to sign yet another Petition.  Time was when as an enthusiastic youth and a member of the Labour Party, petitions would be passed round at Constituency meetings.  It was almost impossible not to sign there and then in front of everyone, and in truth I probably supported most of them.  Not that that made a blind bit of difference.  I don’t think petitions hardly ever do. I wonder what happened to all those petitions I signed, reams and reams of paper must have been prepared and presented to someone in Government, possibly even to number 10 itself.  And we can all remember the photo’s and filmed reports of petitions being handed in to some lackey at that famous black door.  What happened to them then?  NOTHING.  A snigger maybe that only two hundred thousand had signed, or maybe slight amazement that over a million had, but in my experience Petitions have never achieved anything, least of all their object.  They may have made the signees feel a bit better, just as dropping sixpence into the charity box makes us feel we have done our bit.  But just as with giving to charity the need never seems to be alleviated by the giving, so petitions never (or almost never) achieve their objective (there is always something else to petition about).  They may sometimes make the recipients pause for breath but almost never do they actually do what is being asked.

And now in the internet age it is even easier to sign petitions, just a few clicks and you will be pestered forever more.  The mania for petitions has only been exacerbated by Cameron letting us know that any on-line petition which achieved one million signatures (or clicks) would be considered seriously and even (though I am not sure of the rules) be debated in Parliament.  And so we have petitions to save badgers being shot, and who can disagree with that, but as the smell of cordite drifts across West-country fields badgers are still being massacred.  Stop the War in Syria, of course we should – but the feeble cries of petitioners are drowned out by the sound of bombers taking off on yet further destructive missions.  And so we go on.  But useless as petitions may be, what other means do we have?  In a General Election our smiley-smiley Politicians will promise anything to get elected, and hope over experience we pray that this time we will be listened to.  But with the latest Brexit Referendum still ringing in th M.P.s ears I doubt they are willing to listen that much to what the troublesome electorate might want to say.  Unless and until we have a form of real democracy where people feel that their concerns are at least being heard if not even acted on we will just have to carry on trying to win support by signing petitions.