A petition to the Government

MarcusGarvey

Its been said before but I think nothing came of it.

Who thinks organising a petition to the Government is a good idea ?

Not an electronic online thing. A proper one. It would not be a bother for each member to get 20 people to sign a petition.
20 X 1000+ is a lot of signatures.

In some study quoted in a book called the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell it stated that the average adult knows about 40-100 people fairly well. If you got all these people to sign a petition then its going to be a lot of paper to hand to the Government.

I'm sure the government might sit up and notice if they were given that many, and they might help the ODTR by giving the office more legal power.

A petition sheet with 20 lines on it could be stuck up on the website in word and pdf format. People would print it off, fill it with signatures and send it back to IrelandOffline.

Then make a big press thing about delivering them to the government. Have them there when presenting the Minister with the signatures. I've seen the Farm Animal Welfare crowds do very effective things like this and they actually got European Agricultural Laws changed !

dragonkin

I think this is a really great idea + it would generate more publicity for IOFFL.
Maybe ppl could go to stratgic points with the form like outside the local enterprise centre or to tradeshows and such with a big banner syaing
"Do you think you are getting a crap deal from eircom"

DK

Macker

I could fill a couple of them sheets

macker

Marcus_Banned

What you have just said has been ignored before only becaouse of the person that said it. You expcet support for it now just becaouse YOU have repeted it again ? Your right and you will probabully get it too


Marcus

MarcusGarvey

Petitions have been mentioned a few times, I don't care who gets the credit for it, it was Dragonkins reply to Martins post that got me thinking about this.

At the time of previous suggestions other things were in the works. Theres nowt now.

If the committee members are too busy which is fair enough, we all have to keep on surviving the world, others can help to organise this. I'll volunteer if you like but theres not much to do apart from naming a postal address where the forms go back to, then getting the forms all prepared and signatures counted, organising press releases, presenting the signatures after making sure the minister is there to meet IrelandOffline .... oooh errrrrr thats a good bit of work actually.

Heres some references to Petitions.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34441&highlight=petition

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32170&highlight=petition

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31134&highlight=petition

Marcus_Banned

Self praise is no praise at all. Anyone here could have pasted what you did without the demand you have looked for. But dont let me deny you your pat on the Back. Filter that one out.

GoneShootin

i spose this would cost money, but how bout driving one those mobile ad trukcs thru city centres ? with heart breaking facts that will make joe public stop and think

and if its been done then i must come out from under my rock

dragonkin

but how bout driving one those mobile ad trukcs thru city centres ?

It might be easier (and cheaper) just to have a stall or something along those lines. Also its alot more likley people will pick up brochures/leaflets if they can stop and look. Most people are immune to advertisements now that they'll just ignore it.

DK

dahamsta

Marcus (as in /not/ MarcusGarvey), petitions have been mentioned before, but no-one has ever (seriously) tried to organise a written petition. If Marcus (as in MarcusGarvey) wants to organise one, I think that would be very welcome.

If you post again in this thread, it had better be commentary on the actual petition, otherwise I'm going to start deleting your posts.

adam

dahamsta

Gone Shootin, I don't think it has been mentioned before, but as you said, it will cost money, and we don't have any at the moment. Anything that costs money will need a fundraising drive at the time, and that's not on the cards just at this moment. If it becomes necessary, we may look at it again in a few weeks, but for the next few weeks I think we'll be concentrating on reorganising the group and, well, stuff that doesn't cost money.

The Blackout was interesting though, in that we found people actually read the leaflets we handed out, and asked questions. Very few of them got thrown away, which surprised me, and traffic was very much up on the days around it (it cost me a few quid in overages! ). I think that if we were to organise another event sometime in the New Year, it might just be handing out leaflets. If we organised it properly this time - the last time it was pretty much fired together at the last minute thanks to Elana and MS - it could be very successful.

Thanks for the posts anyway folks.

adam

PS. The point I was trying - and utterly failing - to make above was of course that the leaflets costs very very little on the day. The printing costs are minimal and even with just a dozen people in two locations we handed out about 3,000 leaflets. A more organised leaflet campaign would be cheap and possibly quite successful in achieving the aim of simply informing people.

Fergus

There's usually a big Computex/Windows Show/etc in April/May, about 4 months away.. I suppose doing a petition/leafleting outside the RDS during that might not be a bad idea. If we're allowed. I would imagine trying to get participation in the show itself might be a bit tricky given that Esat/eircom are usually the biggest sponsors.

GoneShootin

me likie the idea Fergus, it could pretty ambitious tho. even if the money was there.

but id it were to take place. i would be there, anarchy i say !!