Originally Posted by
vtectom
Why?
Well the reasons are numerous, but let's stick to the main ones:
1) e-Petitions are a ridiculous, innefective and lazy way of petitioning; not helped by often being poorly written, ill thought out and having no end goal other than to 'ban this' or similar which would be a completely unworkable 'solution' (I'll call it a solution but really it's a suggestion that would never be approved or be in a bit state to be approved)
Almost half of petition requests submitted to the site by the public are rejected before they reach publication stage. When it promises that "if you collect more than 100,000 signatures, your e-petition could be debated in the House of Commons", few realise the weight of significance behind the word "could". Many petitions exceed this threshold and lead to no debate. In reality, they are passed to the backbench where, in the absence of an MP with a reason to champion the cause, they suffer death by committee. Of course, if you happen to move in the same social circles as an MP, you could just bypass the task of convincing 100,000 people a cause is right and convince just the one.
Directgov not only creates false expectations, it actually puts a stopper in campaigns. It may have replaced faked signatures with the convenience and reliability of a digital age, but for a campaigner this comes at a high price. When thousands of people put their name to a cause on Directgov, this data becomes the sole property of the government – whose very actions they are challenging. Even in the rare case of success, the person who started the petition has no way to inform those who signed it, never mind mobilise this mass base of supporters to take a campaign forward.
2) This bit really peeves me
There are innumerate cases of people knowingly moving within close proximity of motorsport venues, only to try to have their planning permission revoked or have them closed completely when they take exception to the noise.
O RLY? U Y NO EG? Innumerate cases, no examples. Is that because, actually, the facts aren't quite as clear cut as the writer would have you believe? For example in the case of Mallory Park (which, let's be honest, is really about the only example that's even remotely credible to use as to my recent memory there's no others that have been at immediate threat due to noise nuisance complainants - even Brands Hatch which backs onto housing estates doesn't have this issue and has more action days than Mallory, too) - were the complainants complaining about the noise specifically, or something else? Well let's have a look:
Kirkby Mallory residents complained that the previous operators of Mallory Park had
increased the number and duration of events in recent years.
The simple facts are that Mallory's nearby residents didn't take exception to the noise - they took exception to the track operators deliberately and consistently breaching their planning permission and not taking the resultant noise complaints seriously. If they'd have continued to act within their permissions and not been so nonchalant then the outcome would have been somewhat different.
So what this comes down to then, is not a simple case of not putting up with the noise, but a case of the motor racing circuit operator thinking it was more important than local residents in its use and enjoyment of the area, deliberately ignoring planning rules, and creating a noise nuisance that went on for longer, more often than they were permitted to, without consultation. Does that sound fair?
It's the equivalent of moving next to a quiet airfield, only to have them expand into a Gatwick sized operation without consulting anyone.
3) The outcome of the e-Petition as proposed a) wouldn't fly anyway and b) would be to protect one type of business operation from legal liability to Nuisance in tort. Why would you be so naive, single minded and petty to believe that a motor racing circuit is as important if not more so than an airport or a train station, for example? To bring about a change in law to protect a motor racing circuit has with it extremely dangerous precedence.
It's not a long way off me buying up the Victorian terraced house to the side of you, and building a 2 storey extension right to the boundary that takes all of your natural light from your kitchen and dining room - and then saying 'well, if you wanted light and views you should have bought a house in the country; you must have seen that something like this could happen' and then me being protected in law because I've been perfectly reasonable.
Anyway, stupid petition is stupid.
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