While watching the BBC news today, I saw the item about the large number of people who had signed the 10 Downing Street website e-petition against road pricing and the interview with the originator of the petition.   This made me wonder whether it would be an idea for someone from this site, perhaps the moderator or someone else with a high level of knowledge, to start a petition against NGNs and requiring all users of NGNs to provide, be law, a geographical alternative number with equal prominence.   If the petition took off, not only would it help in terms of showing the large number of people who find the current situation unnacceptable but could lead to media interviews with the petition originator (hence it would have to be someone knowledgeable and happy to have the publicity) hence giving more publicity to the campaign leading to more signatures.   If one Google's on 10 Downing Street, there is a link to create a new petition.   I have to say I did sign a couple of the existing petitions while checking the site and the promised email link on which you have to click to validate your signing does not come back immediately but thought this might be worth a try.  What does everyone else think?

Thanks for that, I have just accessed & signed the existing petition hence that should now be 31 signatories!   The road pricing one has over 190,000 signatories hence my point.   While it may well be that the government will not listen, at least a large number signing the petition would send a message to users of NGNs that those opposed to their use are not just a handful of lunatics but a significant number of citizens.   I intend to encourage all those I know who are opposed to NGNs to sign and I think it would be good if members/users of this site did so as well.

bbb_uk wrote on Jan 10^th, 2007 at 2:20pm:

Thanks to Mr Harrison for starting this. If you are a regular member who wishes to remain anonymous on here, then perhaps you can re-register for the purposes of posting on this thread and discussing the E-Petition.

Mentioning it on here and MSE will obviously mean more people signing it. I checked a few months ago and it wasn't there. There is also no date of publication either.

I think that it's an excellent idea. We managed over 1000 public responses to one of Ofcom's consultations, so with about three months to go, there's potential to rally the troops.

jimjim wrote on Jan 10^th, 2007 at 6:41pm:

With the Iraq war, the public are likely to vote for a different party if they don't agree with it. With media publicity behind the Say no to 0870 campaign people will visit this website and use alternative numbers. This petition should get the media interested if we get enough signatures, even if the government do nothing. The media is key in making people aware.

Can this petition not be advertised with link for everyone to see when we log onto the site. After all it only takes a few minutes to sign the petition and I noted that when I logged in there were only 5 members but 45 guests. If we can get many of the guest to sign it that would be great.

It was suggested it would be a waste of time, but the time invested is minute - certainly a lot less than writing this or any other post!

Lets go for it.

acezing wrote on Jan 10^th, 2007 at 7:22pm:


But you can get free calls to 01/02 numbers (in terms of the marginal additional cost of making that call) - that is the whole point.

Ok you have to pay a modest fixed monthly fee equal to as little as £4.33 per month over 18 months (www.euphony.co.uk) to get unlimited 01/02 and EU landline calls but the marginal cost of making each additional 01/02 call is nil.  That is where various people have been going wrong with the press by suggesting it is 3p per minute for an 01/02 call versus BT's new sneaky 7p per minute (with hidden new 3p connection charge).  But that is only true for BT Option 1 customers - but for customers of BT Option 3 or a cheaper package like Euphony the cost of each additional 01/02 call is 0p per minute versus £4.23 per hour to 0870 and £6.00 per hour to 0871 and £1.80 per hour to 0845 in the weekday daytime.

Coming back to the petition I imagine the road toll one got 180,000 signatures due to Jeremy Clarkson or some other major motoring journalist mentioning its existence in their newspaper column or on their website.

52 signatories is nothing and can afford to be lost.

If the message is not right in the petition we need to make it right by creating our own petition with the right wording and then put a link to the petition on the Home Page of the site and in the number lookup section.

Strongly agree. Have suggested it myself here. It is noticeable that it is quite easy to get into the top few petitions on the petition web site and make an impact.

Also I made the point that for everyone of us that posts to this site hundreds use it to look up numbers who will not see this thread so with a prominent message on coming into the site we should be able to get the petition into hundreds if not thousands.

Please do it.