Yet again, you prove how little you know about politics. Maybe you should heed your own advice and stick to your own country.

Ok, so one individual letter makes no difference, but organizing many people to make a petition or write the identical letter l does not count either.
According to thisogic, a campaign that would work would have to tell people to all write letters with the same content but a slightly different form and that then would count? Do you really think so? That simply because the letters are a little different makes all the difference? I am highly doubtful about it, but maybe it works - I have not seen such a campaign yet, I guess if it is a novel idea, it should be started then.
My take would be that the people who read the mail will file all these letters under the same topic and put them in the same box - same as with form letters.
The question that really matters is, if the person who is in charge thinks his decision is right or if he is doubtful, if he gives a rats arse about the opinion of the people or if he has the economy, the "greater good of civilization" or the money from the lobbyists in his mind. If he is a truely democratic person, it does not matter if it is a petition or form letters or individual letter - he will get the message in any case, that a certain number of people oppose this kind of project. Assigning an identity to each signature on the list however makes it a lot more credible of course than anything that someone with a valid email adress can sign. So form letters or petitions with full adresses would be a lot better than anonymous lists like this one, but in the end, all of this roots in the belief that the person doing the decisions acts upon the input of people. If he does, a petition signed by a lot of people would tell him to maybe make a public poll before the decision is made, if he does not, personal letters will not change his mind either.

Lets look at it this way...


One person spends an hour writing a letter, and 500 people spend 20 seconds signing it. Read dedication there.

Consider that next to 500 people spending an hour each writing their own letters. Which are you going to consider the more serious group?





If you're referring to the beating police comment, sorry, but not all governments are run by brawlers.

If its on the "Who are they selling to?" comment, perfectly reasonable question. Not every person or corporation is going to bulldoze or destroy them. (crazy as it seems, some companies actually do preserve areas of land)

Again - the question is not so much what the people want, the question is if or if not the person in charge has any interest in what the people want to hear. If he wants to hear, he will consider the 500 signatures (usually it is more like 10000 in such actions) and maybe do a poll. If he does not he also won't care for 500 handwritten and wax-sealed letters. And that is the big fallacy of representative democracy - what kind of democracy is that if the people, the ones who are supposed to be the ones in power (literally) have to crawl in the dust in front of the ones who really have the power? Who am I to be forced to organize hundreds of people to write personal letters, to manage to put up as much work as it would take to build a small house in terms of cumulative work - just to make a voice of the publich heard? It is the obligation(!) of the people who have been voted into positions of decisionmakers to listen to the ones they represent - and not only every 4 years, but on the decisions that have enough importance.

It is not perfect, but we have a system here locally that comes a lot closer to it. The system works like this - if there is a big decision ahead that is controversial, citizens can collect a certain amount of signatures and file a poll request that has to be granted. Then there will be a public poll or vote on that issue and that is binding. It still has the problems of regular majority democracy, but it is a hell lot more democratic than people begging their representatives to actually represent them.

BBC News - Why are we a nation of tree-huggers?

:)

The amount of opposition to this plan is getting huge now, hopefully it should be enough to make the government see reason. Sign if you haven't already :)

Yup, perfect example of biophilia. :)

Way to go! I think, people living in an area that is by its climate and setting originally a forest will expect that subconsciously there "should be a forest" here. Same for people living on the dry plains or in the savannah. I think there is a certain expectation of how the landscape would look like naturally - England used to be full of temperate (rain)forests - people still feel that... But that is just a theory of course ;)

Oh and I was thinking about that "write a letter to your representative" thing... I wonder - who would be "my representative" in a government that I did not vote for?

England was never as heavily forested as Europe - although there did used to be more than there is now. Still, even more of an excuse to keep what we have...

Yes. i have no real good history about britain, but it seems that the highlands were above tree line and the lowlands were heavily forested:
(Simmons 2004 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0305-4403(75)90043-6)

BBC News - Cameron 'to abandon plans to change forest ownership'

This is by no means the end, but it's still a significant improvement :)

This is great news certainly! Gaia shall be pleased :D