The British government’s ePetitions site has gone live today and failed spectacularly.  Even this late in the day it’s still crashing more often than not as it’s not been scaled adequately for the feeding frenzy that was inevitable for its launch.  Should have hosted it in a cloud with some other online services that have an annual peak later on in the year and used the latent capacity.

Sorry, should have posted a geek alert.

I’ve signed a few petitions tonight.  Obviously I think they’re all important in one way or another otherwise I wouldn’t have signed them but these are my top three so please sign them too!

• Britain wants referendum to leave EU
  The Daily Express is crusading to end Britain’s membership of the European Union. We want the Government to arrange for an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU either by means of an enabling referendum or directly so that the British people are once again placed in charge of their own political destiny. We would like this matter debated in parliament.
• Creation of an English Parliament
  That England be given within the framework of devolution the same national political institutions as Scotland, including the creation of a Parliament, the office of First Minister, of a Government and a dedicated civil service for all of a united England. At present, England has no purely English national political institutions and thereby suffers from unfair treatment within the UK. The creation or revival of a English Parliament will answer the question ‘Who speaks for England?’ and should ensure that the interests of all the people of England are given higher priority and greater care. As John Bright famously said: ‘England is the Mother of all Parliaments’. It is well time that England regained her own Parliament.
• Reinstate the hereditary peers
  A petition for the reinstatement of the hereditary peers to the house of lords, whos right to sit and vote in the upper chamber was abolished under the house of lords act 1999.

The reasons why we should have a referendum on membership of the EU are obvious.  We’ve given away our sovereignty, our wealth and our resources to the EU.  The sooner we’re out of it the better.

The reasons for an English Parliament are similarly obvious.  It is a travesty that English still doesn’t have a government of its own and a national insult.  England is the last colony of the British Empire, we need to throw off the British yoke and start running our own country for our own benefit.

Reinstating the hereditary peers is something I’ve written about several times.  I have always believed it was a regressive step to abolish hereditary peers and the fact the the House of Lords is now full to bursting with politically appointed peers as reward for donations and services rendered backs that belief up.  Only hereditary peers can give us the randomness and independence of though that is needed in government.

If any of these petitions reach 100,000 signatures then it will be debated in the House of Commons.  100,000 sounds like a lot but the road pricing petition started by Peter Roberts on the old Downing Street petitions website got almost a million signatures and according to the bods that ran that service, the petition did actually get well over 1m signatures but the site couldn’t cope with the demand and they weren’t all counted.  100,000 signatures is a lot for a petition but it’s not a number that can be dismissed easily.

Of course a debate doesn’t mean a change of policy and one MP (I forget who it was and where I read it) said that MPs should “lead on policy” not listen to what the people want.  One thing’s for sure – if they don’t already want to change policy a 100,000 signature online petition certainly isn’t going to make them!