In just a few days, already over 90,000 of us have signed the petition against government plans to spy on who we email, call and text. Together we’re taking a stand against this Big Brother invasion of our privacy. We’re saying it’s simply not right for the government to be allowed to spy on every single one of us - without any kind of warrant or reason.

Our petition is causing a stir. It’s being reported in front page news stories and MPs are starting to speak out. But there’s a risk the government will still press ahead. If we’re going to stop these Big Brother plans, we need to get the petition past 100,000 signatures and fast.

The more people who sign the petition, the stronger the pressure on David Cameron to drop the plans. Tell your friends to sign the petition using Facebook and Twitter.

David Cameron claims these plans will make us safer. But this is about spying on all of us, not just serious criminals. Human rights experts, academics and even backbench government MPs are expressing serious concerns.

One concerned Conservative MP, David Davis, has been in touch with the 38 Degrees office to say: ”These plans would give the state huge new powers to snoop on ordinary people. They’d be expensive, unnecessary, and a huge invasion of everybody’s privacy. If they are to be stopped, public pressure will be critical – including from 38 Degrees members”.

Together we can show the government that British citizens up and down the country simply won’t put up with their snooping plans.  Let’s grow the petition past 100,000 signatures. Tell your friends and family to sign the petition using Facebook and Twitter.

Photograph by t0msk (Flickr)

Next month, 38 Degrees members living across England, Scotland and Wales will have the chance to vote in local elections. Lots of council seats are up for grabs all over the country, while the election for the Mayor of London is still too close to call. Liverpool and Salford will also be electing a Mayor for the first time too.

Whoever wins these votes will be making decisions which will have a massive effect on all our lives: where we live, how we travel and how safe we are on our streets. But for thousands of people, there’s a risk they won’t get a say because they haven’t registered to vote by 18th April – that’s less than two weeks from today!

Could you have forgotten to register to vote? It’s easy to overlook it if you’ve recently moved house or become an EU citizen. But registering is easy. It takes 5 minutes on the About My Vote website – just fill in, print out and post the form before the deadline.

It’s not always easy to decide who to vote for. Some people have already decided. Others are still making up their minds, and some people might decide not to vote at all. But being registered doesn’t mean you have to vote. It just means that you’ve got the choice when election day arrives.

The registration form doesn’t ask for loads of details. It just needs your name, address and nationality.

People power is the engine that drives 38 Degrees. Lots of 38 Degrees members say that voting is a really important part of living in a democracy. Making sure as many of us as possible have the chance to vote is one way of making sure politicians know they answer to us.

Let’s make sure that every one of us gets the chance to have their say – make sure you’re registered to vote, then ask your friends and family to do the same by April 18th.

Jonathon Porritt  has written a blog to let 38 Degrees members know about Our Forests new report on the future of England’s woodlands. Now, the group want to know what 38 Degrees members think about what they’ve written so far:

“At the moment when the Government withdrew its crass proposals to sell off the whole of the Public Forest Estate this time last year, I expect that the same Sun-style heading came into all our minds: “It was 38 Degrees wot won it”.  And so it was – along with some brilliant grass roots campaigning and an impressive media campaign.

Sadly, as we know, many of the big NGOs such as the National Trust, Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trusts were not involved in that campaign.  Perhaps without meaning to they had even allowed government ministers to think that the proposed sell-off wasn’t such a bad idea after all. That was one of the reasons a small group of campaigners set up Our Forests, as a ginger group to put pressure on the non-governmental organisations to do better next time – especially as many of them are now represented on the Independent Panel hastily set up by the Government to diffuse the intense anger at that time.

But we also wanted to produce a more positive Vision for the woodlands and forests of England and Wales – we couldn’t believe how negative everyone had been about the opportunity not just for improving the existing Public Forest Estate (by giving it a new inalienable ‘status’ and ensuring continued public funding), but for bringing poorly managed woodlands into productive use – and for planting the equivalent of a new Domesday Forest (1 billion more trees!) over the next few decades.

Happily, that vision has been very well received – and we’d now like to find out what members of 38 Degrees think about it.  I do very much hope you’ll have time to answer the few questions that we’ve developed around this.

It’s all in a good cause.  We still need to persuade the Independent Panel to be suitably robust and visionary in terms of its final report to Defra – and your feedback will help us greatly in that regard. This is really the next phase in the campaign – and will ensure that 38 Degrees continues to demonstrate real leadership on this critical issue.

Members of ‘Our Forests’ are  Hen Anderson, Richard Daniels, Gabriel Hemery, Tony Juniper, Rod Leslie, Robin Maynard and Jonathon Porritt.

What do you think about Our Forests report? Which ideas do you like? Are there parts of the report you don’t agree with? And what else should they include next time? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

The government has just announced a plan to spy on us all, to be pushed through “as soon as Parliamentary time allows”. They want to see details of who we call, text and email, and which websites we visit – without any kind of warrant or reason. They want to force phone and internet companies to install special devices to provide all this data on each and every one of us.

Experts are lining up to condemn this idea as intrusive, expensive and ineffective. But we know that when the Labour government announced similar plans a few years ago, a huge public outcry was needed to make them to back down.

So let’s build a massive petition right away, to show David Cameron that British citizens simply won’t put up with the government spying on their every move. Please click here to add your name now

A final version of the plan is due to be announced in just one month’s time. We need to move fast if we’re to get this scrapped before then. A big petition right now could persuade David Cameron to rethink before he commits too deeply. His officials will report the rising number of signatures to him. And they will warn him that he can expect voters to challenge him every step of the way.

MPs from different political parties are already expressing unease. One prominent Conservative MP, former shadow Home Secretary David Davis, has been in touch with the 38 Degrees office to say: “These plans would give the state huge new powers to snoop on ordinary people. They’d be expensive, unnecessary, and a huge invasion of everybody’s privacy. If they are to be stopped, public pressure will be critical – including from 38 Degrees members”.

Add your name to the petition today: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/stop-the-snooping-plan

David Cameron claims this will make us safer. But this is about spying on all of us, not serious criminals. It’s already perfectly possible for the government to monitor people suspected of serious crimes, with proper permission and oversight. And serious criminals will inevitably find ways to hide their online identities.

Most importantly, this isn’t the kind of Britain we want to live in. We shouldn’t respond to criminals by abandoning our principles and scrapping basic civil liberties. We shouldn’t treat every citizen like a potential criminal who needs to be monitored. Help stand up for our right to privacy when we browse the internet or phone our friends – please sign the petition and spread the word now:

Phil Bentley, CEO of British Gas. Photograph by rofanator (Flickr)

British Gas have announced they have dropped out of the Big Switch.

British Gas claim that their decision not to take part is based on the fact that Which? haven’t been transparent about the fee from the winning gas and electricity company, which is around £40.

It is true that Which? will receive a fee from the winning gas and electricity company, of £40 per customer switching. Which? is a not-for-profit charity and these fees, paid by the energy company, will help cover the cost of the technology and customer advice service which Which? are contributing.

38 Degrees is not receiving any fees from The Big Switch. 38 Degrees is funded by small donations from thousands of members, which allow all of us to campaign on the issues which we care most about. You can read more about how 38 Degrees is funded here.

Which? has always been up front with 38 Degrees that The Big Switch requires a large investment in web technology and customer advice, and that they aim to cover their costs by charging a fee to energy companies. The 38 Degrees office team explored lots of different options for organising a collective switching project before deciding to partner with Which?. In the course of our research, it became clear to us that a partnership with Which? would give us the greatest chance of success, because of their track record and expertise in this field.

The switching fee is a standard feature of switching sites like the one run by Which?. It has been made clear on both the Which? site and the 38 Degrees web sites that Which? will be receiving a fee, and will be made clear again to each participant at the point when the deal has been negotiated and they are choosing whether or not to switch.

It’s disappointing that British Gas have chosen to refuse to participate in The Big Switch. But it is also a good example of why the gas and electricity market needs to be shaken up. Many gas and electricity companies are still taking part, and almost a quarter of a million of us are now involved, so we’re still optimistic about getting a good deal.

We’ve always known that The Big Switch represents a challenge to the power of the big gas and electricity companies, and that this is something they’re not necessarily going to be very keen on! However it’s still a bit ironic that British Gas, whose parent company have just announced £2.4bn profits, and their chief executive £1.3 million (before bonus), are choosing to criticise a charity for wanting to recover its costs.

Over the last week, 38 Degrees members have been voting on whether to carry on the fight to Save our NHS. There’s now no doubt about the answer: a huge 96% have voted “yes, we should carry on campaigning to save the NHS”.

More than 45,000 38 Degrees members have also shared ideas for tactics in the next stage of the campaign. Right now, the 38 Degrees office team is reading through all the ideas for how to protect our health service, and seeking advice from experts – including health professionals, lawyers and academics – to help draw up a shortlist of the top ideas.

38 Degrees members have made some brilliant suggestions. Anna, from London says “Make sure that new NHS structures are made accountable to local people every step of the way.” Sarah, from Altrincham suggests we should “Support doctors standing as Save NHS candidates in elections, to keep the issue fresh.”

Once all the ideas have been collated and analysed,we’ll need to vote together to decide what we’ll do next together to save our health service.

In the meantime, if you have other ideas about next steps on the NHS campaign, please share them in the comments section below.

Photograph by IvanClow (Flickr)

It’s incredible! In just a couple of weeks, over 200,000 of us have signed up to the Big Switch – a people-powered effort to stop gas a electricity companies from ripping us off. But if we’re going to take on these big energy bullies and win, we need to be bigger… much bigger.

The Big Switch is making history. It’s a simple idea – using the internet, we bring together gas and electricity customers across the country in a pledge to switch their supplier. Then we work with consumer experts at Which? to negotiate cheaper rates on our behalf. Once we’ve driven the hardest bargain possible, we switch to the supplier offering the best deal.

At the beginning of April the Which? negotiators will be rolling up their sleeves to start negotiating the cheapest prices. That means there are just 72 hours left to sign up to get involved. Don’t miss out, click here to Sign Up.

A quick reminder of how this works:
1. Sign up - join other 38 Degrees members to get a fair deal on gas and electricity
2. Share it with your friends - the more of us who get involved, the stronger our bargaining position
3. Bargain - we work with Which? experts to negotiate with gas and electricity companies
4. Switch - If you like the deal we negotiate, switch easily online

Sign up now, you can always pull out later if you like. Then forward this email to any friends and family who also want cheaper bills.

Paying for dinner with David Cameron: "awesome for your business".

Yesterday, we got yet another glimpse of how corrupt our political system is. The co-treasurer of the Conservatives was filmed giving a rare honest account of how lobbying can work. Donate enough money and you get to have dinner with the Prime Minister.

That’s probably not most people’s idea of a great night out, but the Tory treasurer was in no doubt it would pay off. “It’ll be awesome for your business”, he said.

A ban on secret lobbying would help weed out this kind of sleaze. New rules could force politicians to reveal who they’re meeting and what they talked about. That’s why 38 Degrees members have been campaigning to bring in these rules for ages.

After the MP expenses scandal, public pressure pushed all the parties to make big promises about tackling lobbying. But now it’s time to write the new rules, Cameron has come up with weak rules that won’t solve the problem.

If we speak up together now, we can push him to go much further and bring in a real ban, not just a token gesture.

We know David Cameron is worried about public anger about secret lobbying. Back when a Labour government was the main culprit, he described it as a “scandal waiting to happen”. Now it’s his own reputation on the line. A big petition will show him that the anger will just keep on growing if he doesn’t introduce a proper legal ban.

38 Degrees members have voted to make it a priority to ban secret lobbying because we know the harm it does on other issues we care about. How many secret dinners with private health lobbyists did Cameron have whilst pushing through his NHS changes?

Help stop the rich and powerful whispering in the ears of MPs who are meant to be working for us – please add your name to the petition now.

It's 38 Degrees members like these who decide what campaigns we run

A number of Conservative MPs have recently sent emails to 38 Degrees members, or posted to their web sites, suggesting that 38 Degrees supports the Labour Party. This allegation is, of course, totally false. Here is a detailed response to help 38 Degrees members to get back to these MPs with the real facts.

It is a fundamental principle of 38 Degrees that we are completely independent of all political parties. 38 Degrees exists to put power into the hands of ordinary people, not political parties. Our agenda is set from the bottom up, by 38 Degrees members, not top-down by the staff and board. Our mission is to strengthen democracy by giving the British public a new way to be involved in public issues more directly.

By working together in our thousands we are a loud and persistent knock on the door of anyone who has power to make decisions that affect us all – politicians of all parties, government officials, or businesses. We hold them to account and make sure they listen and respond to our calls for positive change. The difference between the 38 Degrees model of bottom-up people power and the approach of political parties is pretty obvious to anyone who gets involved in 38 Degrees campaigns.

There are now over 1 million 38 Degrees members. We include supporters of pretty much every political party in the country, and many who don’t support any political party at all. It is these 38 Degrees members who set the agenda, voting regularly to decide on the campaigns we run and the tactics we use.

38 Degrees does not accept any funding from big business, government, or political parties. Nor do we give any funding to political parties. And unlike the political parties, we are not dependent on big donors: 38 Degrees members donate the funds required to deliver the campaigns, most recently by raising over £300,000 to fund billboards asking David Cameron to listen to the warnings about his plans for the NHS.

To further guarantee that 38 Degrees cannot be controlled by political parties, every 38 Degrees member of staff is required to sign a clause in their contract undertaking to uphold the political independence of 38 Degrees, and board members sign a similar pledge.

Our record shows how we have challenged politicians of every stripe. At the moment, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in government, it is inevitably the case that many 38 Degrees campaigns challenge these parties and their policies. However, before the 2010 general election, when the Labour Party was in government, we ran plenty of campaigns which took them on. For example:

• 38 Degrees members helped force Gordon Brown to hold the inquiry into the Iraq war in public rather than in secret. We then pushed for Tony Blair to face tough questioning over his role.
• As part of our ongoing campaign for real action to tackle climate change, 38 Degrees members spoke up in favour of emissions performance standards for coal-fired power stations, urging MPs to vote for an amendment to Labour’s Energy Bill which had been tabled by Conservative and Lib Dem MPs.  We even got hold of a secret Labour Party briefing telling their MPs not to vote for tougher emissions performance standards – which 38 Degrees members then rebutted in thousands more messages to Labour MPs.
• After the MP expenses scandal, 38 Degrees members campaigned for a “recall” law which would allow voters to sack MPs without having to wait for a general election.

More recently, it is true that 38 Degrees members have decided to run big campaigns challenging the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government on issues like the plan to sell-off England’s forests and the changes to the NHS, where they pursued flawed policies which have gone against the will of the majority of the wider public. However, challenging some government policies is our democratic right as British citizens!

Other campaigns prioritised by 38 Degrees members have targeted big companies (for example gas and electricity companies) or have supported motions proposed by Conservative MPs (for example a ban on wild animals performing in circuses, and a tougher recall law).

It is both cynical and wrong to dismiss the reasoned, case-by-case approach which 38 Degrees members take to public issues as motivated by the top-down political or ideological approach of the old politics. It is only right that non-partisan people power should be prepared to challenge all politicians from all parties – especially the most powerful, and especially when they get things wrong.

Some of the emails currently circulating from Conservative MPs go on to make a couple of specific claims about 38 Degrees, supposedly to “back up” their allegation that 38 Degrees supports the Labour Party.

These emails distort the facts to mislead the reader. They are strikingly similar, and it seems that they are based on a briefing paper currently circulating among at least some Conservative MPs.

38 Degrees is built on principles of openness and transparency and has nothing to hide. So here are detailed responses to each of these claims in turn.

CLAIM 1:

The email from MPs says “In the 2010 General Election Campaign, 38 Degrees emailed out advice on tactical voting: ‘…The Daily Mirror has published how to vote if you’re in a key seat and your priority is to stop the Conservatives winning…’ and gave a link to the 38 Degrees website as to how to vote tactically against the Conservatives.”

Actually, the full paragraph from the original email said this (original bolding):

It’s up to each of us to decide who we vote for. If you’re still looking for more information, 38 Degrees members are here to help. Together we’ve compiled some alternative sources of information, less biased or at least differently biased. Together they may help you to decide who should get your vote.

• 38 Degrees members have worked together to produce a fact sheet about hung parliaments, addressing the half-truths and scare stories: http://38degrees.org.uk/hung-factsheet
• Vote for a Change  offer another “tactical voting” guide, here: http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/
• The Daily Mirror has published advice as to how to vote if you’re in a key seat and your priority is to stop the Conservatives winning. You can download it here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/mirror-tactical-vote
•  Votematch, run by our friends at Unlock Democracy, helps you match your own views to those of candidates in your area: http://www.votematch.org.uk/

In other words, the 38 Degrees election day email encouraged people to decide for themselves, and pointed them to a number of resources that might help them to make up their minds. That included one from the Daily Mirror which was about stopping the Conservatives, but also another three which were nothing to do with party politics. The email also mentioned that some of the sources were biased.

The overall purpose of the email was to give 38 Degrees members a variety of resources and links which they could forward to their friends to encourage them to vote. This was something which 38 Degrees members had voted to make a priority when they came together to discuss and decide the 38 Degrees election strategy, and the content of the email was shaped by the other priorities set by 38 Degrees members, including the cause of democratic reform.

CLAIM 2:

There are three claims made about members of the 38 Degrees board:

“Co-Founder and Director of 38 Degrees, Henry Tinsley, funded the Labour Party through the firm Betterworld. Betterworld has given at least £125,250 to the Labour Party and £5,000 to Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign. He gave a ‘four figure sum’ to the left wing blog: ‘Left Foot Forward’. Co-Founder and Director, Paul Hilder, put himself forward as General Secretary of the Labour Party in 2011 and writes policy papers for The Fabian Society. Director, Ben Brandzel, described himself in 2009 as ‘dedicated to the Labour cause’.”

These statements seem to have been selectively chosen to mislead the reader about both the role and the nature of the 38 Degrees board and its members.

Most importantly, it is the members of 38 Degrees who decide what we campaign on, and not the board. You can read more about how 38 Degrees members choose 38 Degrees campaigns here. The role of the board is arms-length from the substance and detail of what 38 Degrees members campaign about. It is focused on good governance: to hold the staff accountable, to ensure that staff are properly consulting and involving the membership, and to make sure that 38 Degrees is run with probity, in accordance with the law, and in a genuinely bottom-up way.

Secondly, all board members are required to sign up to maintaining the independence of 38 Degrees. They are bound by rules to prevent conflicts of interest arising, and are present on the board because of the expertise they bring, not because of any political affiliation.

But since a misleading briefing campaign has now been initiated against some of the 38 Degrees board members in an attempt to discredit the activities of 38 Degrees members, here is a fuller description of their background and experience.

Henry Tinsley is on the board because of his substantial experience of running businesses such as Green and Blacks, and his long-standing involvement in campaigning on causes such as Darfur. He also sits on the board of the Carter Center UK, which is known for its non-partisan work in election observation and democratic institution-building.

It’s true that Henry has donated to the Labour party. But he has also supported the Liberal Democrats, who are part of the coalition government. Henry has in fact donated to three different UK political parties in the last three years. He also funds a whole host of other charitable causes, including international human rights.

Paul Hilder is on the 38 Degrees board because of his experience as a campaigner, reformer and social entrepreneur. He currently serves as Vice-President at Change.org, and was previously Campaigns Director of both Oxfam and Avaaz, as well as co-founder of openDemocracy.net. He has worked on democratic reform in the UK and internationally, and published on the opening up of political parties, as well as community empowerment and devolution.

It is true that Paul was considered last summer as a candidate for general secretary of the Labour Party, advocating an agenda of reform and opening up. But he has never held any party office, and if he taken up this post he would have immediately left the 38 Degrees board. He has also worked with city and county councils across the UK led by all three of the main political parties, and participated in the Conservative-led Chamberlain Forum on local democracy.

Ben Brandzel, for his part, is on the board because of his experience as Campaigns Director of MoveOn.org and a board member of Avaaz.org, and one of the leading thinkers on people-powered movements. But Ben Brandzel is an American. Where he has any political links, they are to the Democrat party. It is true that he has supported Barack Obama as US President – but David Cameron says he does, too!

Previous links to political parties aren’t a bar to getting involved in 38 Degrees campaigns, or joining the staff or board. People often get involved in political parties because they care about public issues, and because they recognise the importance electoral politics has in deciding how these issues are treated. But we have very strict and clear rules for maintaining the political independence of 38 Degrees as an independent, member-driven, people-powered movement.

It is interesting how selective the e-mails by Conservative MPs are. This seems to be deliberately designed to suggest a bias to the Labour Party. Not only do they give a misleading impression of the role of the board and the experience of these three members, they neglect to mention the wider breadth of experience represented there. For example:

• Benedict Southworth, the Chief Executive of the Ramblers, former chief executive of the World Development Movement and former campaigns director of Greenpeace Australia, who once stood as a Green party candidate in council elections.
• Gordon Roddick, on the board because of his expertise as a hugely successful businessmen (the Body Shop) and starter of new social enterprises (e.g. the Big Issue), who has in the past made donations to the Liberal Democrats and the Green party.
• Gemma Mortensen, on the board for her expertise in campaigning, coalition building and international human rights, who is currently Chief Executive of Crisis Action and has previously worked for the United Nations and the European Commission.
• Peter Myers, who is on the board for his experience and expertise gained working on special projects with Greenpeace and the climate group, and as director of enoughisenough.org

You can read about all 38 Degrees board members here.

Once again, all board members sign up to a code of conduct which includes maintaining the independence of 38 Degrees from political parties. They do not decide our campaigns – 38 Degrees members do. 38 Degrees exists to put power into the hands of ordinary people, not political parties, and our independence of political parties is fundamental.

Our mission is to strengthen democracy by giving the British public a new way to be involved in public issues more directly. We’re quite new, so it’s not surprising that some politicians may find all this hard to get their heads around. We would also not be surprised if some of those who guard their own political power are starting to think about how they can attack and undermine 38 Degrees.

38 Degrees will continue to be open, transparent and led by our members. If you’ve got any feedback on what more we could do in this respect please leave it below.