Keith wrote on Feb 21
st, 2007 at 1:45pm:
Although now 7th (helped by the road pricing petition moving off the list) the rate of signatures has decreased recently. It is now less than the Music and Dance petition above it so has stopped catching it up. Also the petition on photography in public places is coming up fast from behind.
Any ideas how we can give it a further boost? Where can it be advertised more?
I think the point is that although pretty remarkably less than one in one hundred of the people who bothered to sign the anti road tolls petition bothered to sign any other petition on the 10 Downing Street website (which I do find very hard indeed to believe if all the signatures are genuine and most people signing dirctly visited the Downing Street petitions website) at least those signing the road toll petition were people who hated being ripped off by a further hidden government stealth tax. Therefore those 1 in 100 anti road tolls signatories who did bother to look round the other petitions on the site were people particularly likely to object to being ripped off over 084/7 stealth premium rate call charges.
Now that many people visiting the site just want to save the Red Arrows, save the Royal Surrey County Hospital (in both cases meaning spending more money by the government) or have less burdensome regulations for music and dance then not as many of them are going to be those who object to hidden ripoff charges. Also the total number of people visiting the site and signing any petition is now going to be way, way down.
Clearly getting Radio 4 You & Yours or other consumer radio and tv programs to cover the success of this petition would be likely to add a whole load more signatures to it.