Petition, petition, we all fall down

So the clock radio switched itself on at the normal time and announced the headlines from the Today programme: the Catholic church is still pushing the government to give it an exemption from the gay adoption laws, and BA is going on strike. In my wake-up wooziness I thought how interesting it would be the other way round: BA calls on the government, church goes on strike.

But speaking of asking the government things, the wonderful Lady Bracknell has led me to this site. No. 10 has a site where anyone (apparently) can post a petition on any topic they care to name, and people can sign it. Of course, the chances of the Divine Helmsman actually reading any are slightly lower than Germany passing a law that makes holocaust denial compulsory for under-11s, but hey, this is yer real actual people-enabling joined-up e-government, so don't knock it.

Most, but not all the fun can be had by browsing petitions in reverse order of number of sign-ups. I was quite amused that as of today, re-introducing corporal punishment and stopping bull fighting are listed together - scope for a little synergy there, maybe.

There is quite a bit of duplication - at least two people want to grant Steve Winwood honours for his contributions to music (!?) - and mutual annihilation (scrap the Hunting Act / tighten it up even further; give Cornwall independence / make it even more part of the UK; no faith schools / every school a faith school; and so on). But here are some choice nibbles.

• make statutary the teaching of astrology and other pseudo-science in Government-funded schools (on the grounds that they already allow intelligent design)
• ban petitions
• give Christopher Lee a knighthood
  
• stop John Humphrys interrupting people
  
• make the teaching of Anglo Saxon compulsory from age 7
• treat the abuse of ginger haired people the same as any other hate crime
  

But my favourites are some of those aimed directly at the PM himself. You can if you so choose petition Tony to:

• hand over his passport to the Passport Office
  
• become the first British Prime Minister in history to attempt to swim the Atlantic non-stop
• tour Iraq to receive the public adulation and thanks from a grateful population
  
• stand on his head and juggle ice-cream
  

The last of which has 2767 signatures at the time of writing and expires on 16 August this year, if anyone's interested.