The new e-petition scheme will inevitably revive the great contentious issue. But to what end?
There are certain issues that just do not go away. It doesn't matter how definitively they appear to have been settled. They fester away beneath the surface of public life and every now and then burst through like boils. One is Britain's membership of the EU, which, though approved in a referendum of 1975, is still much resented by some. And another is the death penalty, which, though "permanently" abolished in 1969 by a large majority of the House of Commons, now looks likely to come before it again. This is thanks to a government initiative under which people are invited to petition parliament, via the internet, about subjects of their choice. Any subject of a petition with more than 100,000 supporters then has to be considered by the House of Commons for debate.
Government's e-petition website crashes on first day
The government's new e-petitions website crashed as people tried to sign a range of petitions including ones calling for the return of capital punishment, withdrawal from the EU and the legalisation of cannabis.
The Directgov website went live with a list of e-petitions on Thursday morning, but repeatedly crashed through sheer weight of numbers as it opened for business with the first tranche of e-petitions.
There were more than 1,000 unique visits a minute, the equivalent of 1.5m visits a day. Government sources said this was far more than the old No 10 e-petitions site had received under Labour.
By late afternoon, support for the retention of the ban on capital punishment totalled over 2,000 people, and there also seemed to be a small general shift to liberalism, with more than 400 supporting some form of decriminalisation of cannabis.
The leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, has given an assurance that he hopes petitions with more than 100,000 signatures will get the chance to be debated and voted on in the Commons.
Click here to read the full article
Source: The Guardian, August 4, 2011
The government's new e-petitions website crashed as people tried to sign a range of petitions including ones calling for the return of capital punishment, withdrawal from the EU and the legalisation of cannabis.
The Directgov website went live with a list of e-petitions on Thursday morning, but repeatedly crashed through sheer weight of numbers as it opened for business with the first tranche of e-petitions.
There were more than 1,000 unique visits a minute, the equivalent of 1.5m visits a day. Government sources said this was far more than the old No 10 e-petitions site had received under Labour.
By late afternoon, support for the retention of the ban on capital punishment totalled over 2,000 people, and there also seemed to be a small general shift to liberalism, with more than 400 supporting some form of decriminalisation of cannabis.
The leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, has given an assurance that he hopes petitions with more than 100,000 signatures will get the chance to be debated and voted on in the Commons.
Click here to read the full article
Source: The Guardian, August 4, 2011
Responsible department: Ministry of Justice
A petition to call on the government to retain its position regards the abolition of the Death Penalty for all offences. That the British people note that only 58 nations currently use capital punishment, as opposed to 95 which have abolished it, further notes the un-retractable nature of such a sentence in incidents of miscarriages of Justice, further notes the death penalty does not reduce crime or act as a deterrent and in US states which practice capital punishment incidents of homicide are higher than US states which do not, further notes the higher cost of capital punishment compared to life imprisonment, believes that British Justice should not be in the same league as China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria which do practice capital punishment on a routine basis and that the death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights and an affront to the values of British Justice. Click here to sign the online petition. (UK citizens or residents only)
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