It's always fun to watch the government pretend it understands the Internet. That fatuous fiasco of e-petitions, for example, which gives every British citizen the right to create and sign petitions online, as well as the right shortly thereafter to receive an email from Number 10 saying, in essence, "fuck you and your cosignatories, it ain't gonna happen". (Have you ever signed one of those things? Have you seen the responses? For a taste, see the list of previous petitions, which include a list of "open", "closed" and "rejected". It's not merely by ommission that they don't keep the list of petitions that have resulted in action or policy change.)
The latest is a social network / discussion board / poorly thought-out and ill-defined pseudo-web2.0 project that lets people have their say about ID cards. Surprisingly enough, the board contains little other than people pointing out what a deplorable idea ID cards surely are. See here, for example. So this post is just to say thanks, HMG, for spending my taxes on this. I assume you looekd into the matter carefully and established that previously there was no facility anywhere on the web for people to comment on ID cards.
Update: and a brilliant comment from my dear friend Rick; the genius is in the last line, my emphasis)
"I wrote a letter to Lord David Blunkett (back before his fall)
saying what a great idea ID cards were and suggesting perhaps they
could incorporate RECCO technology into the card, so that in the event
of a major disaster British citizens could be swiftly located under
rubble and retrieved. (I don't support ID cards at all, and was up to
mischief, but believe I succeeded in maintaining sincerity in the
letter).
Mr Blunkett's response? A mass-mailed letter: "I'm sorry to hear that you do not approve of ID cards, however..." If they won't even listen to their supporters, who will they listen to? Worse still, if they presume as default that the electorate is against them, under what authority do they act?"
Not even writing direct to the Minister responsible has any discernible effect.
I wrote a letter to Lord David Blunkett (back before his fall) saying what a great idea ID cards were and suggestnig perhaps they could incorporate RECCO technology into the card, so that in the event of a major disaster British citizens could be swiftly located under rubble and retrieved. (I don't support ID cards at all, and was up to mischief, but believe I succeeded in maintaining sincerity in the letter).
Mr Blunkett's response? A mass-mailed letter: "I'm sorry to hear that you do not approve of ID cards, however..."
If they won't even listen to their supporters, who will they listen to?
Worse still, if they presume as default that the electorate is against them, under what authority do they act?
Posted by: Rick | 29 August 2008 at 13:51
I thought you had a great point in this post about the petitions site about the Open, Closed or Rejected petitions but after I visited the site with the hope of sending them a snotty email, I think you missed the point a little bit.
Rejected would contain all the petitions like 'Gordon Brown should suck my cock'
Closed doesn't mean no action was taken, it just means closed.
Posted by: Mark | 30 August 2008 at 21:06
Mark - really? So please point me to just one closed petition where the printed response says that the government has taken on board the petitioners' concerns and taken action that it would not otherwise have taken.
Posted by: Seamus McCauley | 31 August 2008 at 10:20