Saturday, January 06, 2007

Single issue websites - start using them now!

On Thursday evening I had my first attempt at using the party's single issue website tool. I set up a site for the campaign against opencast plans in my ward in Gateshead. The planning application for the site was rejected last year but with an appeal now lodged, the campaign to defeat the plans steps up a gear. I have now produced a petition to Ruth Kelly calling for the appeal to be rejected.

The petition is now on line and is on the site I set up on Thursday evening. The site went live on Friday afternoon and I sent an email to about 800 constituents about it shortly afterwards. Though I was hoping for a good response, I wasn't quite expecting the storm surge of responses. Within 2 minutes of sending out the email, I got an email to tell me the first person had signed it. Within half an hour, I had received another 100 emails!

I sent out a press release about the petition shortly after sending out the email to constituents. It was picked up my Radio Newcastle who phoned me when I was waiting to go into the Kyle concert! They seemed quite amused by this but said they would phone back this morning.

When they did, the journalist spent quite a bit of the time talking about Kylie Minogue and I am wondering if they will carry that in the interview when it is broadcast tomorrow!

No comments: