Friday, 30 November 2012

Gaining traction

Back in April, I wrote about the painfully slow progress of the e-petition opposing minimum alcohol pricing. At the beginning of this week, it had still only gained just over 200 supporters. However, following the government announcement, the pace has suddenly quickened, and in the space of a couple of days the number of signatories has tripled to not far off 700 when I last looked.

So please sign it yourself, if you haven’t already, and encourage your friends to do likewise. Also see here if you want to get the widget for your blog or website seen in the left-hand sidebar.

on

8 comments:

  1. Paul Bailey30 November 2012 at 20:30

    One reason why not many people have signed the e-petition Curmudgeon, is that it appears to be rigged. I have just tried to sign it myself, only to receive a message, in red letters, telling me I "can't sign the petition more than once."

    Now I'm adamant that I haven't already signed it, even though I know I should have done before now. I'm not one to give much dredence to conspiracy theories, but I'm beginning to wonder whether something is going on here.

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  2. Cooking Lager1 December 2012 at 11:29

    If you ask most people what they think of the EU they say they want out, ask them how important that is to them and it is way down the list.

    What people think of an issue is less relevant than how important people consider it. The Beer tax petition was moribund until CAMRA put its weight behind it and publicised it to its 140,000 members. No one is publicising this petition, it is mentioned on no newspapers or blogs. People may not like minimum pricing but they care about it less than many other issues.

    Though it may be one factor in Dave losing. Your average prosperous middle class Tory voter likes a cheap bargain on a case of Merlot and doesn’t like a posh twat telling him he can’t have one. Pity that will result in a gormless twat winning instead.

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  3. selsey.steve2 December 2012 at 18:39

    The petition page has been nobbled. Twice today I have logged in to the page and each time the Captcha letters are NOT shown. When I try to listen to the letters/numbers Firefox informs me that the site to which I am taken is trying to do something nasty to my computer.
    Has the Petition been got at?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Curmudgeon2 December 2012 at 19:07

    It does seem to be a problem with all petitions, not just that one. Hopefully it'll be sorted out tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Giolla Decair3 December 2012 at 00:09

    Quite a few people on the Drinkuary event on Facebook are reporting problems with it, but at least they're trying to sign and got 1,000+ of them now who'll hopefulyl be writing to their MP's in January.

    Sorry to delurk and plug a campaign but, it might be your cup of tea so to speak.
    https://www.facebook.com/events/500381096650585/
    and also:
    <a href="http://www.drinkuary.org/>Drinkuary.org</a>
    Given it went from not existing to 1,000 people in about 11 days, the news seems to have touched a nerve

    ReplyDelete
  6. Curmudgeon3 December 2012 at 08:53

    I've signed up to Drinkuary on Facebook under my own name, and I'll certainly do a post some time this week to promote it.

    The captcha on the petition site is still down this morning.

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  7. Cooking Lager3 December 2012 at 11:04

    How irresponsible. I shall be doing dry january and raising money for alcohol concern.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Curmudgeon3 December 2012 at 17:33

    The e-petition site seems to be up and running again now - without any kind of captcha :-S

    While you're at it, please also sign this one against state control of the press:

    http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/42582

    ReplyDelete

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