Petition watch
John Beyer of Mediawatch-UK has an ambition. The smut-campaigner with his finger on the pulse of society aims to get one million signatures by Jan 8, 2008 on the following petition:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to initiate urgent action to require the Office of Communication (Ofcom), using its regulatory powers, to substantially reduce the portrayal of fictional violence and the use of obscene language on television.
So, how is he doing? Thanks to Chris at Clapham.org, we can keep an eye on the progress of this important document. At the time of writing, there are 1,707.
Maybe there’ll be a last minute rush…
Somehow I doubt it…
Quick Quezzies:
What does ‘substantially reduce’ actually mean?
Even if they got a million signatures won’t that leave tens of millions who are not offended?
As TV is progressive, what is to stop the amount of violence/swear count going up again in the years afterwards?
If they are not against real-life violence being screened, presumably because of its educational or crime-fighting context, what about non glamourous/exploitive violence in serious dramas and docu-dramas?
This is nothing but one group looking to add a profile-raising feather to their bow after being around for decades and achieving next to nothing since Mary went to the big Whitehouse in the sky.
Pity that Chris is using a logarithmic scale here – I think a standard graph from 0 to 1000000 in thousand intervals would make the point more clearly, even if it was a tad unwieldy with lots of scrolling required.