Evening Mail mayoral petition going backwards...
Those who are still following the Birmingham Evening Mail's elected mayor campaign (yes, there aren't many of you left...) may well have missed a small revelation in an article on 6 July.
Apparently there have been only 5000 signatures to their petition to date. (The Mail's whinge relates to the fact that they aren't allowed access to the electoral register to check the names, of course they could purchase it or go to their local library to inspect, but the law is quite clear on who can have access to the full version).
But 3 months ago the editor claimed, in an email, that there were 6000 signatures to their petition. So not only has the collection rate decreased, but its going backwards! Maybe by the time its being going for 12 months they'll be back to zero.
You can also tell by the number of articles appearing in the Mail that interest is peetering out. Maybe they'll just have blank articles in a few months time?
posted by Radders @ 13:40
4 comments
4 Comments:
The London mayoral debate may well re-ignite the fire in some people.
But the way the Mail had you thinking last year, the whole city wanted a mayor anyway. Didn't it? :)
The current London talk will go a bit quiet while the tories try and select.
I have still not been stopped in the street, or asked on a doorstep about an elected mayor for Birmingham. But people want to talk about getting the basic services right, not about how you organise the political bureacracy to deliver the services.
In Oxford it went backwards too. The signatures are only valid for twelve, or maybe eighteen months. So by the time they thought they had got enough they discovered that a whole load were no longer valid.
They were only saved from going back to get them resignedbecause the council agreed to hold a referendum as a favour.
Jock, this has gone backwards after only 5 months, so the initial signatures haven't "timed out" yet (they do so after 12 months)!
We're not holding a referendum until there is a clear mandate to do so. 5k sigs is less than 1% of the eligible electorate.
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