In Laura's recent thread 'All this banning reptiles talk' much was discussed about our over-riding concerns regarding the potential harm codes of practice could do if written by the wrong people.

FOCAS have a petition on the 10 Downing Street website but only 855 have signed so far. This is not many considering the millions of pet keepers in this country!

The link is here Petition to: Support Pet Keeping. so if you agree - get signing!! The closing date is 8 March!

Signed, laura can we sticky this hun?

I signed this when it first came out in March of last year, and as you can see here, we started to keep a watch on it

http://www.prokeeperslobby.com/petitionspage.htm

855 sigs as of the 9th january 2008, well the last count check l did was on the 19th December when we only had 833 sigs back then.

So an extra 22 sigs have been added and attained in 21 days [3 weeks, averaging 1 sig per day.

If you look at the Dec count of 833 we had achieved 15 sigs in 33 days.

This should not just be aimed at the Internet market, but the actual landbased market.

Look at the petition below submitted by Roger Davis 2028 sigs after 12 month - better than this.

Why, because people thought they could sink the RSPCA - NEVER.

Smoking, 20K sigs, did it stop the government?

NO

So lucky us, we have 855 sigs.

Or look at the Skunk Descenting petition 29 sigs as of the 19th December and still the same today.

Sorry, but internet petitions are only good as the marketing to support them.

We have none, yet if this was something the antis had placed up, well blow me down with a feather they would have 1000 times this number already.

Joys of the industry.

R

Furthermore, just for the interested....

For these petitions to be looked at properly, they have to have over a certain number of signatures.

Whilst they will all be reviewed, legal requirement, if only a few signatures are present, then what would you make of it?

What is a worthy sig figure?

A mere 100K.

So here we are just 8 weeks away, potentially a possible 56 more signatures or if we are really lucky, we might attain 1000 total, we might!

But it will be washed under the carpet and will show that the keepers apparently do not care.

But it will come down to lack of the right marketing supporting the petition, due to extreme lack of funds.

R

I also signed this way back last year when it was posted up by Nerys if i remember correctly on another forum.

The thing that bugs me is that even if every person on each of the forums was to sign this petition we could have 10 times the number currently signed.Lets face it there are forums out there with over 3000 members on them but what do these people do.................................NOTHING.


I know this sounds harsh but if we want to save our hobby we have to do something about it now not in a couple of years when the legislation has been put forwards and then passed.We have to make sure this legislation does not come into fruition.

I dont see why pet keepers arn't signing up

Do they think it will never/could ever happen?

This is exactly the problem hun.

People tend to think on the basis of whats one more signiture going to make but if everyone thought ok lets get this going we would and could have a much larger voice and hence influence over what is going on in our hobbies

Greenphase is spot on.

People think that their sig makes for nothing.

But it does, if as stated you were to look at the forums alone, right across the board, we could easily attain about 30-50K of sigs, if we also added the equine, avian and aquatic market forums, then we would be looking at well over 100K - and that is a fact, not a lie.

I look at the EPS legislation, now this stands for the Euopean Protected Species legislation, here we have a wide range of animals that affect certain UK keepers.

We started a campaign it is still running.

I posted this campaign on another forum, and all the non eps keepers refused to send in a letter, why?

Because it did not affect them directly, because they had no eps livestock.

But it does you see, without unification between the sectors, we can never ever unite.

With the standing together, we make for a voice much louder than that of the RSPCA alone and we would sweep the floors with the anti's.

But sadly we do not unite, and this will be our decline.

R

well im sure people on here will sign, thats why i want to make it a sticky, so its at the top, and more likely to be seen.

ive signed it