Is it time for a vote of no confidence in this government?

First topic message reminder :

I've been working with some good leftie friends on twitter to get a an e-petition on the Governments own website for a Motion of No Confidence in the ConDem government.

As you probably know already:- if these petitions get accepted on the site and gain over 100k signatures they have to be considered for a Commons Debate.

The motion we propose to have is :

"We, the undersigned state that this government has not acted in the interests of the people of the United Kingdom.

We require there to be a Motion of No Confidence debate in the House of Commons followed by a vote of MPs in support of the motion"

The idea is that it is left as open as possible so that disillusioned people of all political persuasions will be able to sign it, in order to maximise the support it gets. Also if kept as brief as possible it is more likely to be accepted, as it is less likely to get caught by one of the many grounds for rejection on the government site.

We would very much appreciate any comments and suggestions that people on here have, and especially ideas on how we can spread the word to let the people know it is available for them if they wish to sign it.

Ivan wrote:Famous Labour supporters:-

Lily Allen, Richard Attenborough, Gordon Banks, Melvyn Bragg, Jo Brand, Naomi Campbell, Sol Campbell, Jamie Carragher, Michelle Collins, Brian Cox, Steve Cram, Garth Crooks, Sinead Cusack, Liz Dawn, Nancy Dell’Olio, Clive Dunn, Ken Follett, Dawn French, Alex Ferguson, Mariella Frostrup, Peter Gabriel, Kate Garroway, Robin Gibb, Antony Gormley, Geri Halliwell, Mick Hucknall, Jeremy Irons, Eddie Izzard, Ross Kemp, Beverly Knight, Steve Lazarides, Kathy Lette, Maureen Lipman, Devon Malcolm, Miriam Margolyes, Fiona Phillips, Ruth Rendell, Tony Robinson, J K Rowling, Prunella Scales, Simon Schama, Frank Skinner, Delia Smith, Patrick Stewart, Alan Sugar, David Tennant, Clive Tyldesley, Tracey Ullman, David Walliams, Pete Waterman, Arabella Weir, Timothy West, Kevin Whately, Richard Wilson.

Wonderful list Ivan thankyou

What we could really do with here is one or more people who are kind, nice, decent, committed lefties and not too overloaded already, to take on the task of contacting these people and trying to get them onside, might take a bit of perseverance.

Any takers?

Blamhappy wrote:

Ivan wrote:

Update: the government epetitions site has rejected my submission

Posted by BobEllard 12.34 yesterday.

Yeah, I know. I was just saying that it's a shame.

its a pity

but they have all sorts of rules and regs on there - the one we kept failing on is that is is a matter for parliament, the petition site is for government business. I thought it was just blocking at first - but I sort of get the distinction npw.

Anyway onwards, onwards always onwards

sampbang wrote:So we have twitter, the fb page (not sure if this will do anything).

We need to be posting the petition onto other like minded forums, this could be dificult in itself as not all forums are happy about people coming along a posting links, maybe seen as spam!! also I think email campaign needs setting up, maybe try and get say email addresses for the labour supporters as posted above,

Just a couple of ideas, what do you guys think?

Yes to all of that, I also think if we could get some of the unions/health unions to take it on and run with it.

What we really need is for one or more people to take on each strand of the campaign and lead it so that the load is spread. If someone is leading one campaign, it doesn't mean they can't work in other areas, but I think each strand needs someone to drive it?

what do people think of that approach?

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but even right wing Guido Fawkes seemed to get in on the act today. He was tweeting links to a list of Cameron's U-turns. Normally he ignores all Tory bad news and pushes left wing bad news - he's incredibly biased..

Unlike 99% of posters on here of course????

I'm going to do a twitter callout for volunteers to help, this is going to take a lot more people actively working on it than we thought.

Sampbang - would you be able to do a "help wanted" add on the FB page and link to here?

then if we can get some more people we can divi up jobs - spread the load a bit

The list of different things we could do is quite long

Push it on Twitter -
Get high profile tweeps to push it
Push it on Facebook - create facebook Page,
get 38 degrees support -
get trade union support
get health service association support, RCN BMA etc
get labour party support - either at national or CLP level
get celeb support
media coverage - maybe see if a newspaper would take the campaign on
Linking the Confidence motion petition to other websites such as wikkipedia pages and campaigning websites

I feel to do this well, we need one or more people taking on each strand of the work and persevering with it and coordinate through here.

blueturando wrote:

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but even right wing Guido Fawkes seemed to get in on the act today. He was tweeting links to a list of Cameron's U-turns. Normally he ignores all Tory bad news and pushes left wing bad news - he's incredibly biased..

Unlike 99% of posters on here of course????

I do agree - there's a big left wing bias here. However, if it swung to the right, I'd probably stop coming here.

Could do with some more righties though....just to keep the debates going. I don't mean BNP righties though...or I would stop coming here too

I do so agree. Otherwise it becomes like clay pigeon shooting - without any clay pigeons...

Always happy to have a good discussion with someone on the right as long as it stays civilised.

I sometimes think politics is too polarised, the way I see it society and the market are symbiotic entities, they both need each other working well to thrive.

So you could say that there is room for the left and the right to find common cause.

As a leftie - I recognise that the market has to be the engine of social improvement, providing the money!, which is fine by me, as long as that market is ethical and morally based. Government has a role in stimulating and encouraging that, and where the market is not ethical, in enforcing it.

The market and third sector are intertwined in society, even before big society thinking. There is space for publicly owned, charity and yes even ethical contracted company provision.

But I feel it needs to be within a government coordinated framework otherwise there is chaos and people get left out.

BobEllard wrote:I'm going to do a twitter callout for volunteers to help, this is going to take a lot more people actively working on it than we thought.

Sampbang - would you be able to do a "help wanted" add on the FB page and link to here?

then if we can get some more people we can divi up jobs - spread the load a bit

The list of different things we could do is quite long

Push it on Twitter -
Get high profile tweeps to push it
Push it on Facebook - create facebook Page,
get 38 degrees support -
get trade union support
get health service association support, RCN BMA etc
get labour party support - either at national or CLP level
get celeb support
media coverage - maybe see if a newspaper would take the campaign on
Linking the Confidence motion petition to other websites such as wikkipedia pages and campaigning websites

I feel to do this well, we need one or more people taking on each strand of the work and persevering with it and coordinate through here.

Anyway - back to the main point of the topic!

Sounds good Bob.

I'll try and push the Facebook page, and keep tweeting. I'll also try and find forums similar to this where we can post on.

I'll also try and recruit volunteers on twitter.

I sometimes think politics is too polarised, the way I see it society and the market are symbiotic entities, they both need each other working well to thrive.

So you could say that there is room for the left and the right to find common cause

Hallelujah!!!! Top post Bob.....Wish I had thought of it though

You never know your Vote of no confidence may work. Seem to remember it was a LIB/LAB pact the last time a VONC occurred, so maybe the LIBS are the poison chalice

sampbang wrote:Sounds good Bob.

I'll try and push the Facebook page, and keep tweeting. I'll also try and find forums similar to this where we can post on.

I'll also try and recruit volunteers on twitter.

Great - I'll push the callout as well. We have a problem that we are getting the coverage, but not the signatures only 130 so far - need to get our heads together on that.

blueturando wrote:You never know your Vote of no confidence may work. Seem to remember it was a LIB/LAB pact the last time a VONC occurred, so maybe the LIBS are the poison chalice

Don't get me wrong - I'm a solid lefty, not a soggy blairite or anything like that - just I'm also a realist and I think the market is there, its not going to go away and it does (or should) provide the money for the things I want to happen.

There is scope on the left to develop better thinking on how we can harness an ethical and moral market to provide good quality employment, aid social mobility, empower people and provide the means for social improvement.

If you want to discuss further on this - how about opening a new topic - I'd be glad to see you there.

BobEllard wrote:

Great - I'll push the callout as well. We have a problem that we are getting the coverage, but not the signatures only 130 so far - need to get our heads together on that.

I think it's just a case of getting it out there to as many people as possible. Twitters OK, but with the sheer amount of things like this on there, a lot of people will overlook it. I've learnt this through helping my brother out with a Help4Heroes event he organises. It's easy putting the info out there, it's getting the support, very difficult. This is where the email campaigns, and contacting unions, high profile celebs etc come into it. I wouldn't know to much about doing this side of it, so would be reluctant to do it, wouldn't have a cue where to start.

What would be good, but I guess it would be a completely different ball game, and that's getting signatures off the street, would anyone be willing to go around with a clipboard and getting lots of sigs??

Bob, think recruiting help and getting people to focus on particular areas is a great idea. I'm wary that if we each go scattergun, we're going to fill people's timelines ad nauseam and either get unfollowed or otherwise ignored. I'm happy targeting unions unless anyone has other ideas. Don't seem to have much of a knack for getting celebs to bother!

Might also be worth setting up a central twitter account, so any target tweeting can come from here, instead of us all scattergunning as mentioned.

Sam: The street sounds like hard work, seemingly the internet is going to be hard work too, but I think thats our best chance. Your experience will come in very useful, I'm completely a novice at this

Steve - no me neither - I'm the worst person to go near celebs, "I've never heard of you, but people tell me you're famous for something or other, could you help with this?" doesn't go down too well.

So far we have:


Push it on Twitter -
Get high profile tweeps to push it
Push it on Facebook - create facebook Page <<< Sampbang
get 38 degrees support -
get trade union support <<<<<< Skwalker1964
get health service association support, RCN BMA etc <<<<<< Skwalker1964
get labour party support - either at national or CLP level
get celeb support
media coverage - maybe see if a newspaper would take the campaign on
Linking the Confidence motion petition to other websites such as wikkipedia pages and campaigning websites
Work to recruit more volunteers to take on/help out on the above roles <<<<< BobEllard1

Steve - I put you down for the Health service organisations as well, since it is the same sort of task, is that OK? Please say if not and I'll take you off it on this list.

When I've got some people along to get the other bits moving - I'll take on another role.

By the way I'm thinking of setting up a separate twitter account to base this from. That way we could use auto tweeting apps, I've also found how to do "donate a tweet a day" so I can get that working over the weekend.

I'll try to get the twitter account up this evening, and DM you both access to use it.

I'll work on the auto apps over the weekend. I've been on this allday and feeling a bit frazzed, so will probably take some chill time this evening.

sampbang wrote:Might also be worth setting up a central twitter account, so any target tweeting can come from here, instead of us all scattergunning as mentioned.

Haha! great minds think alike - I'll try to get it up and running this evening and DM you both the access.

blueturando wrote:Could do with some more righties though....just to keep the debates going. I don't mean BNP righties though...or I would stop coming here too

I understand. When you're a lone voice amongst a lot of strong characters, it can be tiring and demoralising. I'll always listen to your point of view though, and I won't respond harshly.

The tone of the thread might be strong for you, but I'm guessing you agree that this administration is not the best...

Plus, blueturando, I think I have a bit of righty about me. I mean, I talk about "chavs" disparagingly! lol

If anyone is on Facebook, could you like and share this page:

https://www.facebook.com/NoToTheUkCoalition

Petition will be advertised here along with other bits and pieces. Thanks.

Also need Admin's for the above if anyone's interested. Would involve posting links to the petition, and maybe articles from papers etc relating to the ConDem government.

Very Polite Request - could people keep off topic discussions elsewhere? - new people wanting to help are coming in, getting confused and going away again.

I've been as guilty of this as anyone else , but please keep it for the campaign

Thankyou

If you are viewing for the first time, its a campaign to get a petition of No confidence in the Government

please scroll up to see where we are at.

blueturando wrote:You never know your Vote of no confidence may work. Seem to remember it was a LIB/LAB pact the last time a VONC occurred, so maybe the LIBS are the poison chalice

Your right there blue the L/Ds are the poison chalice, do you happen to know why they have not worked that out?.

I think we are going to need our own website to base this from - and link outwards to Facebook and twitter from there -

we can then have custom stuff like task lists - who is doing what and what help they need.

also a place for people wanting to volunteer to go

plus a discussion group

I used to be a programmer years ago and I've dabbled a tiny bit in web design. I'll have a go over the weekend and get back to you.

unless anyone has a more recent set of skills to mine?

Sounds like a good idea bob, that way we've got a base. I've got a little experience with wordpress. Has lots of functionality (That's a self hosted one, not a wordpress hosted one, a wordpress hosted site has very limited functionality).

What sort of ideas did you have?

I think we are going to need our own website to base this from

Bob. I hope you're all not going to leave us as quickly as you arrived!

You might like to check out this site for some support:-
http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

I'm followed on 'Twitter' by six Labour MPs and two Labour lords. The fact that they follow a nobody such as me suggests that they like to get involved with the rank and file and might be amenable to a tweet from you:-
@RachelReevesMP, @EmilyThornberry, @KarlTurnerMP, @grahamemorris, @ChriswMP, @TristramHuntMP, @LordTobySays and @SteveTheQuip.

Hi Ivan - don't want to leave I like it here - and we'll keep this discussion board live -

but to organise we'll need some custom facilities - like registration and todo list stuff

We'll link to here for the discussion board and the facebook and twitter accounts

When I have more time I'm also wanting to explore the other boards, this job is growing exponentially at the moment, we came into this completely unprepared and there is loads of catching up to do.

I'll have a look at the link - see what it can offer us. Thanks again Ivan

Thanks for the MPs idea - you are a mine of useful stuff

@RachelReveesMP follows me too, and one or too others - even Grant Shapps would you credit it! he must be a secret masochist

sampbang wrote:Sounds like a good idea bob, that way we've got a base. I've got a little experience with wordpress. Has lots of functionality (That's a self hosted one, not a wordpress hosted one, a wordpress hosted site has very limited functionality).

What sort of ideas did you have?

Haven't really thought it through yet - but i'm broadly thinking

The facebook page can be the shop window

but we need a back office to collaborate with the work - this would be the role of the website


facilities to allow people wanting to volunteer to register
as sort of todo list so people can see what needs doing and set their name against it
Also a sort of help wanted board for people leading a certain area who could do with assitance

its all very hazy at the moment - I was planning to take myself away from twitter this weekend and develop some ideas then present them to others to discuss and develop.

I can do website hosting here for free - I'm a systems geek I love that sort of stuff = though it will take about a week to jig the computers around to make space on a server

but it will take time to develop the organisation ideas - so we can cooperate effectively

I'll dust of my programing and dummy something up.

I know it is more delays - but I feel something of this sort is needed if we are going to get more people involved otherwise we'll just start tripping each other up

sampbang wrote:Sounds like a good idea bob, that way we've got a base. I've got a little experience with wordpress. Has lots of functionality (That's a self hosted one, not a wordpress hosted one, a wordpress hosted site has very limited functionality).

What sort of ideas did you have?

My programming mainly dates back to before MS windows came along! Done a bit of graphical programming, but I still see it as new fangled stuff! I'm a bit too frazzzed to think straight this evening - can we have a further chat about wordpress tomorrow - I'd like to see what it has to offer. Also I'll investigate Ivans link.

I'm going to set up the twiittter acount in the morning as well , I said I'd do it tonight but it just ain't gonna happen.

No probs Bob, my friend Tuborg's paying a visit tonight so not the best time to discuss ways forward, tomorrow it is

An update on the petition itself we have 157 sigs, obviously miles off the 100k, but it's a start, and looking like were getting some interest brewing from some quarters,

Hopefully, as discussed on this thread, were going to get some things put in place.

Facebook page is setup, central twitter account will be created, and also a website.

So we started with just a petition, and things are growing. With the foundations in place, hopefully we can fulfil our goals, or at least make some noise so people listen and take our fight up.

Blamhappy wrote:-
There's a big left wing bias here. However, if it swung to the right, I'd probably stop coming here..

LOL. That makes two of us!

Think a dedicated Twitter account is a fantastic idea. Bob - I'm happy to have NHS as part of my focus. Married to a nurse so do plenty of tweeting about it anyway!

I assume when it's set up we'll all have the sign-in details so we can tweet to our target areas?

Yes I will DM you sign in details - hoping to get some automation going as well - like auto tweeting (could be handy) and I've found how to do a 'Donate a tweet' http://justcoz.org/

Also if you read above - been thinking we might need a back office website to coordinte all this - if you scroll up a bit you'll see my reasoning and initial discussions with Sam

Great - will help in any way I can, but time & family pressures will mean it's limited!

Completely understand Steve, we all give what we can.

also its becoming clear its going to be a lot bigger than any of us thought. We have to pace ourselves.

But I think we've achieved a hell of a lot already - I am really enjoying working with you and Sam.

Have a good weekend - take care

I tweeted the band Lux Lisbon earlier, about using their song Bullingdon Club as our song for the campaign.

If any of you follow me on twitter (@sampbang) you will have seen I've tweeted this song like a deranged idiot.

Guess what, they approve. We can use Bullingdon Club as our campaign song. You don't know how much this pleases me.

If you've not heard the song or seen the video (which is a must) here's the link https://youtu.be/5esbUG4bslQ

This is a massive coup, we have a band endorsing what we are doing.

The sad thing is that this petition will/is being labelled as lefty socialist trash - and is being dismissed by supposed Labour mps as being too radical.....obviously these fake mongers who've infiltrated the labour party want to maintain the established status quo for personal material gain.

Petitions are pointless......refusal to pay bills is the way forward.