I’ve now had three petitions rejected by the government’s online petition service:
table tennis hour
found the mighty megopolis of Leddchester
serve real ale at all state function, so we can prove to the rest of the world that as a nation we can organise a piss up in a brewery. (The closer we get to 2012 the more we are going to need that one.)
I’ve even nominated the petitions site for the Scatter exhibition, though it’s not clear in that context that I meant it to be scorned.
As well as being “humorous” my petitions have been rejected because they have “no point about government policy.”
I’d take issue with that – they have point, put satirically* – but first I really need to ask myself why I’ve started on this bonkers one man crusade.
It might be because political power happens in smoke filled rooms, not chat rooms.
If you want to alter government policy you pay a lobbyist, who hangs around in the right bars and restaurants in London till the right minister walks in, sidles up to them, presses the flesh and gets you a meeting.
If you are well enough connected or have enough money, your voice gets heard and government policy gets changed the way you want it**.
Power is analogue, not digital.
If you doubt that, ask yourself where you think the consultants from MySociety spend their time? Exeter maybe, or Dumfries?
Did they win the case, and the contract, to provide Web 2.0 services to Her Majesty’s government by bookmarking things on delicious?
This is such a simple truth that I have to question the good faith of the people who are peddling nonsense like the e petitions.
They are lying to us.
Not about whether Tony Blair reads or cares about the petitions, no one is daft enough to believe that.
But lying to us about how power works.
And that is not very radical at all, is it?
On the other hand, I may just be turning into “Bonkers of Huddersfield”.
*though as the aliens advised in that Woody Allen film "You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes."
** That’s why each US congressman has $20 million spent on lobbying him or her every year.
