For want of real power, our compliant serfs go cap-in-hand to electronic equivalent of the servants' entrance and beg their masters for attention.
You would think with the experience of the exercise under the previous administration that pursuing this is worse than a waste of time and effort. It simply acts as a lightning conductor, diverting and neutralising political energy. Thus we have this crass effort, on the EU Referendum, phrased as follows:
The Daily Express is crusading to end Britain’s membership of the European Union. We want the Government to arrange for an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU either by means of an enabling referendum or directly so that the British people are once again placed in charge of their own political destiny. We would like this matter debated in parliament."Oh pretty please, dear masters, please, please, please, spend our money on having a totally facile talk-fest, on an issue about which you have no intention whatsoever of doing anything". There is no requirement to doff caps while signing up, but if there was, the fools who framed the petition would do it gladly.
Mind you, this petition has a little way to go to reach the 100,000 signature level needed for the issue to be considered for a debate. Similarly, the pathetic attempt to get a debate on restoring the death penalty gets 1,135 votes, as against 2,642 signatures for maintaining the ban (at the time of writing).
And even then, the wondrous organisers of the petition site cannot get their act together. There are nearly forty duplicate petitions, which will tend rather to confuse the issue. But then, when you have Labour MP Natascha Engel welcoming "the attempt to reconnect parliament with the public", you know it has to be all bad.
COMMENT THREAD
