Get petitioning kids
The government’s latest venture into citizen interaction and the crazy world of teh Interwebs has just been bought to my attention. With the assistance of mySociety.org (the folks responsible for PledgeBank and many other worthy projects) Downing Street have launched an online petitioning system. The site’s currently in beta but seems to be working well (although at the time of writing it’s down for maintenance) and is attracting a lot of interest. There are several worthwhile petitions already active; I’ve signed up to scrapping ID cards and fair-use copying rights so far. As you might expect, the Internet’s lunatic fringe have also been busy - if you’re so inclined you can back the castration of paedophiles and ask the government to intervene to keep the manufacture of HP Sauce in the UK. Whether all this interacting with the proles will actually have any effect on government policy is, of course, highly debatable but at least it’s an opportunity to bask in the warm glow of not being complete apathetic.