{"id":199680,"date":"2007-07-05T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-05T21:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/07\/05\/democracy-taken-to-stupid-extremes\/"},"modified":"2007-07-05T16:13:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-05T21:13:00","slug":"democracy-taken-to-stupid-extremes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/07\/05\/democracy-taken-to-stupid-extremes\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Taken to Stupid Extremes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ummm&#8230;This has fiasco written all over it.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Shatner and Nimoy are sure to get Knighthoods.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2007\/07\/04\/brown_e_petions_trigger\/\">Brown calls for e-petitions to get debated in Parliament<\/a><\/span><br \/>By Chris Williams<br \/>Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 15:22 GMT<\/p>\n<p>Gordon Brown has thrown caution to the web, and called for a new e-petitions system which would force Parliament to debate issues popular with internet users.<\/p>\n<p>Buried in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pm.gov.uk\/output\/Page12274.asp\">wide-ranging parliamentary statement<\/a> on constitutional reform yesterday, he said: &#8220;I also encourage this House to agree a new process for ensuring consideration of petitions from members of the public.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pm.gov.uk\/output\/Page12284.asp\">later briefing<\/a> with journalists, the Prime Minister&#8217;s spokesman explained that a consultation would be held on setting the threshold figure at which a parliamentary debate would be triggered by petitions.<\/p>\n<p>As evidence for the consultation, we&#8217;d submit the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2003\/02\/14\/jedis_reach_the_stars\/\">according to the 2001 census<\/a>, 390,000 Britons claim to belong to the Jedi religion. Perhaps quite a high threshold would be best, then.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ummm&#8230;This has fiasco written all over it. On the other hand, Shatner and Nimoy are sure to get Knighthoods. Brown calls for e-petitions to get debated in ParliamentBy Chris WilliamsPublished Wednesday 4th July 2007 15:22 GMT Gordon Brown has thrown caution to the web, and called for a new e-petitions system which would force Parliament &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[997,978,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-politics","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}