by Tony Curzon Price
Downing Street has received 1 million signatures on its official petition-collection site from motorists asking not to have their roads priced per journey. "Populism" has been the charge from the press and from environmentalists.
At the same time, "Change for Equality" is trying to harvest 1 million signatures supporting a campaign to give Iranian women equal treatment in Iranian law. The campaign is regularly disrupted, the site is blocked by the Iranian firewall (technology bought from China, I hear), and the organisers are forced to hop from one domain to another to stay accessible (currently look here, here, here, here, here and here).
Lessons in the comparison? Petition-democracy is powerful and meaningful when it is rejected by those in power, not when it sits on servers whirring away at the very heart of government. By that time, you can be sure it has been sanitised. I know which petition I'll be supporting.
