Friday, November 09, 2007

Is a Downing Street petition the last resort?

There's an interesting post over at Croydonian about a petition on the Number 10 website. It's not so much the petition itself but the name against it. The petition, raised by a "Brain Souter", says
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Review fuel duty. In the light of ever increasing wholesale fuel prices, the detrimental effect of the dollar/ pound exchange rate and the increasing government revenue, the duty on fuel should now be reviewed".
Is this the same major SNP donor Brian Souter that is also the CEO of the bus and rail company Stagecoach? (a company it's fair to say, that is quite reliant on petrol and certainly impacted by its cost).

Could lobbying Gordon Brown now be so difficult that a multimillionaire businessman who's company recieves multi-million pound transport subsidies from the taxpayer really be so powerless that the only way he can get his Scottish compatriot to listen is to petition him on the Downing Street website?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brain Souter???

it must be a wind up. So far as I know BRIAN SOUTAR is the head honcho at Stagecoach. I suspect he would not sign a petition "Brain Souter"

dizzy said...

Hmmmmm think not.

Ben said...

Erm...

It says Brian on the original petition.

Anonymous said...

I now concede that his name is probably spelt "Souter", but it was YOU who claimed it was signed "BRAIN Souter", which is an error on your part in copying from the Croydonian piece.

dizzy said...

I blame Stella

Anoneumouse said...

Over the past 12 months the price of a barrel of oil has increased from $70 a barrel to $100 a barrel.

However, over the same period the $ to £ exchange rate has moved from $1 = 70p to $1 = 50p

So why is the price of petrol increasing?
.

Anonymous said...

"Is this the same major SNP donor Brian Souter...Could lobbying Gordon Brown now be so difficult...that the only way he can get his Scottish compatriot to listen is to petition him on the Downing Street website?"

Dizzy, Labour loathe the SNP for failing to recognise the divine right of Labour to rule in Scotland. Brian will be in Gordon's book of, "bastards". He probably had to go through some anonymising proxy just to get onto the petition web-site.

James Higham said...

Downing Street petitions greatly concern me because they have no effect and they then have your details. You'll possibly disagree but I think there is good evidence that post 2009 these details wil be of interest to CP controlled facilities under Regional Assemblies.