Still only 277 signatures tonight, scarcely any more than when I signed it yesterday.  So clearly only hardcore members of this forum have so far signed.  Depressing.

What this needs is for a couple of major mass circulation papers like The Sun and The Daily Mirror to give the link for the petition in an article about the NEG scam, whilst also clearly the Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Times, Telegraph, Independent Guardian etc mentioning it would all be nice but won't get nearly as many signatures as The Sun and The Daily Mirror.  We need to get it on Page 1 by signatures of the PM petitions website and after that the signatures will snowball as site visitors always look for other interesting popular petitions to sign.

As a start though if Daniel could use the box on the home page of this website that normally mentions government consultations to link to the petition it would be a start and if Martin Lewis would also give the petition a plug in his weekly MoneySaving email it would obviously be worth several thousand more signatures.  In fact posting the link in any popular very busy web forum (i.e. unlike this one) you belong to would help.

loddon as you are an NEG patient why not start talking to the news desks at the tabloids to see if you can get them interested.

Its clear that people having to pay extra to call their doctor is a lot more emotive than people being ripped off about calling Sky or the BBC, which they at least in theory have some nominal control over deciding whether or not they need to do.

loddon wrote on Jul 27^th, 2007 at 8:52pm:


The reporters are still pretty bright people on these tabloid newspapers.  Its just that the style of reporting is, how shall we say, rather different in its approach.

The main obstacle is to get the editor to make space for a serious story ahead of one about tv celebrities or footballers.  Also even if you get a reporter interested your story is still more in danger of being squeezed out by the Editor suddenly deciding that coverage of one of the aforesaid areas is more important.

But I think "doctors are scamming their poor, elderly sick patients" would rate pretty highly on the list of emotive serious stories that they are usually fond of running.

0844 are also a weak spot for Ofcom and the NHS since the code has no historic link to local rate like 0845 and Ofcom's only justification for failing to transfer them to ICSTIS regulation was that they thought an up to £3 per hour ripoff didn't involve a serious level of consumer detriment.

Still under 300 signatures unfortunately but I see that a Peter Bone has now signed.  Could this be the same Peter Bone who is MP for Wellingborough I wonder and if so perhaps he is also well known to one of our other existing forum members.

Passed 500 now.

Or 'Princess Diana' in the case of the Express.

And now we have exceeded 1500 votes!! 

That's 500 in less than 3 days!!!

Also, there seem to be a few Dr. entries which is always good - nice to get some support from GPs!