It's Our City Campaign - Have you Signed?

[Douglas J 10]

On 02/09/2019 at 13:55, Annie Bynnol said:

Hundreds and probably thousands of people from all over this country and the world have signed and/or signed multiple times. 

 

Councillors serving are also vetted, disclose their interest and can be held legally responsible.

 

The Political Activists behind this campaign do not disclose their funding, background, interests or their political ambitions.

 

Without clarity from these Political Activists, I am concerned that this is a back door route by the the unrepresentative and unelectable to gain power.

This is just uninformed babble. And also wrong. Really, someone who spends so much time on here would be able to find out some facts.

[Annie Bynnol 612]

34 minutes ago, Douglas J said:

This is just uninformed babble. And also wrong. Really, someone who spends so much time on here would be able to find out some facts.

You can easily convert the  "... uninformed babble..."  into informed "...babble..." by looking at the online petition here.

What is "...also wrong." is the online petition includes anonymous names, signatures from more than a dozen foreign countries, multiple entries and no indication if they are Sheffield addresses or even on our electoral roll.

[dave_the_m 61]

9 hours ago, Annie Bynnol said:

What is "...also wrong." is the online petition includes anonymous names, signatures from more than a dozen foreign countries, multiple entries and no indication if they are Sheffield addresses or even on our electoral roll.

You keep bringing that up as if it's some sort of proof that the petition is invalid. Any online petition is going to have bogus entries. Have you any actual evidence that the the final result as submitted by the campaign to SCC still has enough  bogus entries to bring the result back below the 5% threshold?

[Annie Bynnol 612]

30% of the signatures of the online petition do not list the United Kingdom as their address. 7 291 out of 10 408

 

How many of the remaining live in Sheffield?

How many the on the current electoral?

 

 

Why have the:

multiple entries

anonymous names

the entries from Australia, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia,  Czech Rep., Cyprus, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Guernsey, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan,  Korea, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Republic, United States and no address at all.

not been removed?

 

Revealing all the postcodes and removing  the non-Sheffield ones.

Take a sample of the remaining entries and match with electoral roll to establish the level of  invalid entries.

Then publish this information so the voters of Sheffield can see how many of them voted. 

Then like all referendums we all abide by the outcome(!).

 

It is the responsibility of the Petitioner to use a process which minimises invalid entries.

It is the responsibility of the of the petitioner to establish the validity of their petition.

 

[dave_the_m 61]

You seem to be (deliberately?) conflating the contents of a website used as one avenue of collecting signatures, with whatever the Campaign finally submitted to SCC, after any filtering, deduplicating etc that may have taken place. If you have evidence that the submitted results were invalid, then by all means share them here.

[Annie Bynnol 612]

44 minutes ago, dave_the_m said:

You seem to be (deliberately?) conflating the contents of a website used as one avenue of collecting signatures, with whatever the Campaign finally submitted to SCC, after any filtering, deduplicating etc that may have taken place. If you have evidence that the submitted results were invalid, then by all means share them here.

The online part of the petition is here.

It contains 10 408 Signatures, 3 117 or 30%   are from: Australia, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia,  Czech Rep., Cyprus, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Guernsey, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan,  Korea, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Republic, United States and no address at all.

This leaves 7 291 (70%) entries with United Kingdom addresses.

Some enter their name and address several times?

 

How many of these are on the Sheffield current electoral list?

Many are not allowed on the register possibly because:

Some- don't live here, 

Some -don't register,

Some -have left in the year it has taken to gather the signatures,

Some -are dead.

 

I cannot be "...(deliberately?) conflating  the contents of a website...".

I am inspecting  one data set  which has two independent fields:

Name:   Are they in the required format? Are they repeated?

Address: Is there an address? Is it a UK address?

 

I am not "conflating" the Name and Address fields I am treating them totally separately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Robin-H 11]

18 hours ago, Annie Bynnol said:

Never at any stage have I said that "... it would mean political activists would somehow be able to infiltrate committees...",  but it is their business to influence committees.

To do that they will target members of the committee who are disinterested, want political favours in other areas, want to be seen supporting some group or other.

 

This is much easier to do in large committees, and in committees formed of bored, uninformed and co-opted members who are far less motivated and far more easily influenced.

Large committees suffer from all the shenanigans which have evolved over the centuries.

 

Influencers, lobbyists, political activists etc, focus on these people and depending on their aim and seek to control their 'committee' members' views and behaviour, q.v.  smoking, abortion, guns, military sales etc. where Parliamentary members were openly delaying and blocking legislation through procedural trickery like filibustering.

 

I am concerned that this Petition, organised by Political Activists will result in the very same Political Activists having far more influence than ordinary Sheffield voters.

This makes absolutely no sense. It is appearing that you have an ulterior motive, although I can't think why that would be. 

 

There is absolutely no evidence that larger committees are easier to influence than smaller committees. Indeed, logic would have it that the more people there are, the harder it would be.. Why do you think the current (few) councillors who do have say about things are any harder to influence than other councillors? Why do you think larger committees would be formed of 'bored' and 'uninformed' members? 

 

There are plenty of examples where this model of local governance has been used. There is absolutely no indication that it has strengthened the hand of 'influencers' and 'political activists' in these areas. 

[Annie Bynnol 612]

33 minutes ago, Robin-H said:

 

 

There are plenty of examples where this model of local governance has been used. There is absolutely no indication that it has strengthened the hand of 'influencers' and 'political activists' in these areas. 

Can you give "...plenty of examples...of local governance..." on the same level as Sheffield City Council?

[dave_the_m 61]

50 minutes ago, Annie Bynnol said:

I cannot be "...(deliberately?) conflating  the contents of a website...".

Ok, let me explain really, really slowly.

 

The Campaign will have collected signatures through various means - a website, paper forms etc. At some point, this data will have been collected by the campaign organisers, and may have been filtered and de-duplicated. For example the web site may provide a facility to the petition organisers to download the data in in a bulk format suitable for  importing into a spreadsheet or database where it can be post-processed. That is to say the data formally submitted to SCC may not be the same as the data on the web site. It may be, it may not be - I am not privy to how the Campaign have managed the petition.

 

From the knowledge I have, proof that there are duplicates and bad data on the web site is not proof that what the campaign submitted to SCC has the same flaws. Again, I don't know either way and have an open mind on the subject, On the other hand, you are assuming that the two are the same, without providing any evidence that this is the case.

[Robin-H 11]

12 minutes ago, Annie Bynnol said:

Can you give "...plenty of examples...of local governance..." on the same level as Sheffield City Council?

The London Borough of Sutton

Reading Borough Council

Brighton and Hove City Council 

Norfolk County Council

Flyde District Council.. 

 

..to name but a few of the early adopters after 2012. There will no doubt have been more since. 

[Annie Bynnol 612]

4 hours ago, Robin-H said:

The London Borough of Sutton

Reading Borough Council

Brighton and Hove City Council 

Norfolk County Council

Flyde District Council.. 

 

..to name but a few of the early adopters after 2012. There will no doubt have been more since. 

The question I asked was included "...on the same level as Sheffield City Council...".

I was hoping for an examples of Metropolitan Councils i.e. the big historical cities with the similar characteristics. Maybe Reading and Brighton as they are unitary authorities but totally different characteristics -the others aren't comparable at all.

 

[Annie Bynnol 612]

5 hours ago, dave_the_m said:

Ok, let me explain really, really slowly.

The Campaign will have collected signatures through various means - a website, paper forms etc. At some point, this data will have been collected by the campaign organisers, and may have been filtered and de-duplicated. For example the web site may provide a facility to the petition organisers to download the data in in a bulk format suitable for  importing into a spreadsheet or database where it can be post-processed. That is to say the data formally submitted to SCC may not be the same as the data on the web site. It may be, it may not be - I am

From the knowledge I have, proof that there are duplicates and bad data on the web site is not proof that what the campaign submitted to SCC has the same flaws. Again, I don't know either way and have an open mind on the subject, On the other hand, you are assuming that the two are the same, without providing any evidence that this is the case.

What you refer to as the "Campaign" is the  It’s Our City! campaign referred to as the Sheffield People’s Petition which is organised by the It’s Our City! Coordinating Group.

The It’s Our City! Coordinating Group, organised the online petition and distributed the paper petition (the same person is named as the on line Petition Organiser and as the distributor of paper petitions).

 

The only hard evidence we have is the online Sheffield People’s Petition which partially anonymous and flawed online petition where a minimum of 30% of the signatories are invalid.

Repeating "may" five times and admitting that you are  "...not privy to how the Campaign have managed the petition." and that you "... I don't know either way "...does not remove my worries about the care taken in collecting eligible signatures.