12,000 signatures IS a ludicrously high target

The Kent Messenger's Political Correspondent Paul Francis has written in his blog today (http://tinyurl.com/3yju3j2) about the Kent County Council E-petitions scheme. He calls the 12,000 signatures required for a County wide issue to be debated by the Council "Kent E-Petitions "a ludicrously high target". He's right - which is why the Kent County Lib Dem Group tried to halve that figure to 6,000 when the e-petitions scheme was introduced.

Needless to say, Kent County Conservatives voted against that reduction, but promised to review the scheme in December. But as Lib Dem Councillor Tim Prater pointed out during the debate on this at County Council, how can you review how well a scheme works if you set the bar too high to ever see a County wide petition accepted?

As Paul Francis notes "A recent petition added to KCC's online petition page makes just this point and calls for a lower target. To date, it has just two signatures, a rather graphic illustration of the challenge.". What's even more worrying is that Tim Prater is one of those two signatures. Perhaps Paul is the other...