Roads petition nudges 400k sigs
Road charging is the big issue, say drivers
Quarter-million say no to charges
It's over ten times bigger than any of the other 1,700 petitions submitted to the site since it opened in November 2006, and is now being mentioned on over 1,100 sites, according to search engine "Alltheweb".
Roberts' petition states: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy."
"This level of support for a petition against road pricing shows that the public are massively against the whole concept," said Nigel Humphries of the Association of British Drivers (ABD). "We believe it will quickly grow towards the 1 million mark as media coverage increases."
Roberts, an account manager from Telford, Shropshire, began the petition in November shortly after joining the ABD, and e-mailed the link to about 30 friends and colleagues. He did this on his own initiative -- the ABD has no full-time staff and relies on its members to drive forward campaigns on issues that motivate them.
When the ABD discovered the petition and realised it had been started by a member, a banner was placed on the ABD site, which is visited by tens of thousands of people interested in transport and road safety issues. The petition passed 50,000 at Christmas, and 100,000 in the first week of 2007, as people felt strongly enough about the issue to encourage others to sign. The speed with which the 350,000 mark has been passed shows this growth is accelerating, said the ABD.
PistonHeads first reported the petition when it launched in November 2006.
"I have always reacted strongly against the idea of paying per mile to use the roads," said Peter. "It is going to be unfair, and will limit our personal freedom and economic activity. It will be colossally expensive to implement and time consuming for drivers as they work out how to minimise the cost of their journeys - or even whether they can afford to travel at all.
"Road pricing has nothing to recommend it, especially when fuel duty already charges people according to how far they drive. This all seems blindingly obvious to me -- so starting the petition seemed the logical thing to do."
Unlike traditional motoring organisations, the ABD has always taken a resolute stance against road pricing in all its forms. This position has now been fully vindicated by the scale of support for this petition amongst computer literate people.
"We think this petition will radically change the political scene," said Humphries. "Hardworking people have become alienated from politics because they don't have the time or inclination to struggle with its complexities. When they do try to put their view across, rational, well argued points are fobbed off with nonsense -- spin, platitudes and stonewalling. So they give up, believing the world to have gone mad. Their silence clears the way for a small number of extremists to dominate policy making with their own agendas.
"The e:petition initiative gives the people a new way to make their point, and to know they are not alone. We welcome this new political era."
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bloody hell, come on everyone that hasn't signedExactly! If you're trying to hold down a job, bring up kids, keep a house in order and actually have the slightest amount of leisure time, you're at a massive disadvantage in terms of getting your voice heard compared to someone who has twenty-five hours of lectures and coursework per week to get through, or worse still a weekly trek to the job centre.
Give people a way of getting their voice heard that takes only a few minutes, and what a surprise - you get a picture that more closely resembles majority opinion. Of course at the moment the petition is still restricted to informed people with access to the Internet; but the latter group is growing every day.
It's probably a fairly safe bet that since the petition is getting too large for the "hardline group hijack" excuse to be workable, some canned survey or conjecture will attempt to "prove" that millions of people without regular Internet access are unanimously strongly in favour of road charging.
This is where the 'counter pettition' comes in I think.
It attempts to take away the excuse that there is nowhere for the people in favour of road pricing to voice their opinions. I think the total number who have signed that one is about 80...
This is all about a government that perceives a necessity to control you and me every moment we are out and about.
If the issues are traffic, roads, or the greens, then a smple mechanism is already in place -- fuel tax.
God that article is just shocking, I expect more than that from the Times. Just goes to show that no matter how many people disagree with the government and the editors on Fleet Street they will still do what they want. Lets vote the feckers out for the love of god...
Ok, that petition is amusing, but it completely devalues the proper petitions
If this stupid petition gets a large number of votes, then the govt will be able to say "Look, internet idiots will sign up to anything, so clearly the large number of people who signed up to the anti-road pricing petition are just having a larf and we can ignore them!"
Better to do a 400,000 car go slow around parliament and Downing Street!
I don't think you would get that many people nor would you be very popular creating a traffic jam while protesting about a Government initiative claimed to be there to reduce traffic jams. You would look like the bad guys the extremists.
For most memebers of a the public the imposition of road charging would be an annoyance, that they would gumble at but ultimately do nothing about. Essentially what the petition says is that a lot of people disagree with road charging and that imposing it would be unpopular.
To quote Ghandi:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
I would say that the anti road pricing cause is at about the second stage by now. The most effective method of fighting road charging is that everytime the government makes a move on it start another petition get 1,000,000 people to sign it. Eventually the government will get the point.
Ok, that petition is amusing, but it completely devalues the proper petitions
If this stupid petition gets a large number of votes, then the govt will be able to say "Look, internet idiots will sign up to anything, so clearly the large number of people who signed up to the anti-road pricing petition are just having a larf and we can ignore them!"
You think they wont also bring to the attention that "Some of the people who signed the congestion petition have also listed their names on other petitions such as this!".
They'll omit to state that this represents less than 0.5% of the people, but the point will have been made and the damage done.
Better to do a 400,000 car go slow around parliament and Downing Street!
If all 400,000 people are genuine then surely the answer is non confrontational civil dis-obediance. If 400,000 people simply said no to fitting a tracking device after democratically making their views known on petitions and through the media such as these then just maybe the government would have to sit up and listen- hazy memory but isn't that what brought about a u-turn on the poll tax (but with confrontation)? Almost makes me envy the French attitude to public demonstrations!!
How far up the Government's ar5e are they??
that wrote that article it will invariably lead to speed monitoring and all sorts of other invasions into our lives. the raod charging will just be the beginning. look what happening with the congestion charge. extensions, £25 for 4 x 4
now now.... modbot
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