Photograph by 38 Degrees

There wasn’t much in it, but yesterday we lost the NHS vote we’d campaigned on in the House of Lords. 262 Lords voted in favour of a special scrutiny committee for the dangerous NHS plans. 330 voted against. If just 35 more Lords had voted the right way, we would have won the vote.

That doesn’t mean our campaign didn’t have a big impact. Members of the House of Lords were talking about it all day, and there were mentions of our petition all over the media. During the debate, Lord Hunt said: “That is but one small reflection of widespread concern within the community about the NHS.”

But it’s nowhere near over yet. We need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get ready for the next breakthrough opportunity that comes up on the NHS. Yvonne, a 38 Degrees member, said on the Facebook page, “We may have lost the battle, but we have not lost the war!”

Here’s what some other 38 Degrees members have been saying since the news came in:

• Mari: “38 Degrees ‎is a shining star in rather dim times!”
• Anthony: “Keep the spirit up, everything is possible.”
• Jan: “I will most definately continue to campaign…”

Lots more members got in touch with ideas about what we could do together in the future:

• Emily: “Let’s see if we can facilitate LOCAL protests (not just the big city ones).”
• Ann: “It seems there were about 150+ peers who did not vote; I wonder why and maybe we could target these next time?”
• Adam: “The best option is for us to continue campaigning. There may be more amendments during the committee stage and third reading”
• Julie: “We have lost two battles but NOT the war…we actually got a lot of support from the cross benchers and some lib dems re supporting the Owen amendments, so the ground work has been done.”

What do you think about what’s happened? What should we do next together to help save the NHS?

August 2010: Andrew Lansley, the health minister, publishes his plans for the future of the NHS. 38 Degrees members start collecting stories of how the NHS has changed our lives, and why it’s important, using the map tool on the website.

December 2010 – January 2011: 38 Degrees members start organising local get-togethers, to discuss together what Lansley’s plans might mean for our health service. In many cases, local GPs come along and share their thoughts. We start emailing our MPs and discussing their replies.

March 2010: Hot on the heels of our success in stopping the government is selling off England’s forests, 38 Degrees members vote to make saving the NHS the top priority. We launch a new petition, which was quickly signed by hundreds of thousands of us. 38 Degrees members start organising petition deliveries with their local MPs.

April 2011: The NHS petition passes a quarter of a million signatures. Our campaign, along with a huge outcry from other experts and patient groups, gives the government the jitters and they announce a pause in their plans while they hold a “listening exercise”. A Sky News political correspondent claims that a government sources told him the government’s change of tack is “the result of a lobbying campaign by a pressure group called 38 Degrees.”

Thousands of us take part in a survey to decide the priorities for the NHS campaign. We decide we need to really turn the heat up on local MPs. More and more local petition deliveries are organised across the UK.

May 2010: A Sheffield 38 Degrees member, Geraldine O’Connor, who relies on the NHS to treat her epilepsy, secures a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. She e-mails 38 Degrees members asking us to support her. The petition passes 350,000, and a large contingent of Sheffield 38 Degrees members join Geraldine to deliver a great pile of signatures to Nick Clegg.

Thousands of 38 Degrees members donate to pay for eye-catching newspaper ads showing Andrew Lansley with his fingers in his ears: our verdict on his approach to the “listening exercise”. Over 100 more petition deliveries to local MPs take place across the country. Over 25,000 38 Degrees members make their own personal submissions to the “listening exercise”, and on the day it closes we carry a copy of our petition into the Department of Health on a stretcher.

June 2011: The government announces changes to their plans following the “listening exercise”. We’ve made some progress: for example, “GP commissioning” has been opened up to local scrutiny and a wider range of health experts will be involved. But there is still plenty to worry about, and so not surprisingly, 97% of 38 Degrees members vote to continue the campaign and look carefully at what the revised plans will mean for our health service.

July 2011: 38 Degrees members donate tens of thousands of pounds to hire expert lawyers to go through the revised plans with a fine tooth comb. We assemble a legal team including Harrison Grant solicitors, specialist barristers Rebecca Haynes, (Monckton Chambers) and Stephen Cragg (Doughty Street Chambers) and Peter Roderick of dutytoprovide.net. Detailed legal analysis begins.

August 2011: Our Legal team produces two detailed reports, covering changes to the Secretary of State’s legal responsibilities and issues concerning competition and procurement law. The worrying findings are reported widely in the press. The key concerns are summarised here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/content/NHS-legal-advice/

September 2011: Tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members contact their MPs asking them to respond to the concerns identified by our independent legal experts. Senior Liberal Democrat Shirley Williams reads our legal advice and announces she can’t support the government’s changes – making front-page news in the Observer newspaper. Andrew Lansley and a number of Conservative MPs accuse us of misrepresenting our own Legal experts. Our legal experts produce detailed rebuttals. 38 Degrees members are mentioned dozens of times in parliament, and almost half of English backbench LibDems refused to support the government.

The legislation moves to the Lords – and 38 Degrees members start discussing what we can do to influence them. Thousands contribute to the plan, and donate over £50,000 to pay for the new technology and tools we need to put it into action.

A key Lords committee publishes a report echoing the concerns raised in our independent legal advice. Thousands of 38 Degrees members start writing personal letters to members of the Lords, asking them to protect the NHS.

October 2011: Two days before the vote, Lord David Owen announces he will table an amendment to set up a special scrutiny committee to look into many of the concerns we have raised. 160,000 of us sign an emergency petition urging the Lords to back it – gaining huge amounts of attention within the House of Lords and across the newspapers. We come within 29 Lords of winning the vote.

Autumn / Winter 2011-2012: Here are some of the things which 38 Degrees members have said we could do together in the coming months:

· Organise more expert briefing sessions between Lords and our independent legal team
· Travel down to London to meet with the Lords and Baronesses we have been writing to over the past week.
· Sign more petitions and send more e-mails directed to House of Lords – they’re not used to it, and it creates a real stir!
· Turn the pressure back on David Cameron and our MPs – they are desperate for the fuss to die down, we can prove to them that it just won’t if they keep pushing these reforms forward.

We can still win this campaign – if we keep working together!

Over the last few days, thousands of us have been voting on what to do next together to save our NHS. The results of the poll are in and together we’ve come up with a plan for how 38 Degrees members can keep working together to protect our NHS. Volunteers in the 38 Degrees office have spent the last few days analysing every single response to the poll to help decide what we do next.

The results of our vote gave two clear priorities for persuading members of the House of Lords to make the crucial changes to the NHS bill:

• get in touch with emails and letters, asking Lords to make amendments to the bill
• find experts to meet Lords members and tell them what’s wrong with the NHS plans

Over the next few days the small staff and volunteer team will be getting started on turning these poll results into action. What do you think of the results? Are there other things you think we should be doing together?

38 Degrees members work together to decide what we campaign on, and polling enables us to get a clear picture of what the key priorities are. Last month, thousands of us voted on the next set of campaign priorities for 38 Degrees and the results are now in!

Ideas have been suggested on the 38 Degrees Facebook page, Twitter, the blog, on the website and by email. Once a picture started to emerge, a team of volunteers in the office shortlisted the most popular. For more information on how the team sorts this data have a look at this blog.

Thousands of 38 Degrees members voted on the campaigns you thought were most important. Using spreadsheets and other tools the team has listed the results in order of the priority and urgency you felt on these issues.

The results 

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The top results are:

• NHS: Continue the NHS campaign to protect our health service from privatisation and competition law
• Planning: Start a campaign against the recent changes to Planning laws
• Tax-dodging: Demand a clamp down on tax dodging
• Banks: Push for taxpayers to get a fairer deal from bailed-out banks
• Energy Bills: Stop energy companies imposing rip-off increases to gas and electricity bills
• Arms Dealing: Stop UK arms companies selling weapons to oppressive governments
• Forests: Keep speaking up for our forests and challenge future attempts to sell them

What next? 

These results will determine what we focus on in coming months. They give the staff team a clear direction for researching campaign opportunities and developing ideas for action. We won’t be able to do everything immediately. Sometimes we have to wait for the moment when we can effectively create change by moving together.

It’s clear that the NHS remains a big priority, so we’ll carry on working to protect it from privatisation and other threats as the Bill passes to the House of  Lords.

On forests, we’re currently meeting with the Government’s Forest Panel in the aftermath of many successful forest get-together events to hand in our petition and demonstrate just how important the protection of our forests are to 38 Degrees members.

Some new campaigns might also emerge based on things that pop up in the outside world. You can still suggest any new campaign ideas through our member’s forum and vote on the issues that are important to you.

What do you think? 

What do you think of these results? Are there any other campaigns you think should be on the list?

38 Degrees members first started campaigning against Murdoch’s BSkyB powergrab back in July last year. On July 13th Murdoch dropped  its planned bid to take full ownership of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.   Along with our friends at Avaaz, some great campaigning journalism from the Guardian and lots of other groups we’ve shown that people power works.

Over the past couple of weeks, 38 Degrees members has been voting on what our next steps should be with the Murdoch campaign by voting in a poll.

Should we say job done and stop campaigning? Or should we be on the look-out for Murdoch trying new ways to control our media? Or perhaps we have an opportunity now to campaign for higher media standards more generally?

The results 

Overall, 38 Degrees members voted that this should be one of the many campaigns that we run and only a small percentage of members think that we should stop campaigning.

The results on what aspect of the scandal concerned 38 Degrees members most were relatively close. The most popular course of action seems to be to focus on demanding news laws to address problems with the excessive power and influence of media barons.

How much should we keep working on phone hacking and media corruption?

If you think we should keep working on media corruption and the phone hacking scandal, which aspect of the scandal worries you most?

If you think we should keep working together on this campaign, what do you think we should focus on next?

38 Degrees members decide together what we campaign on. Polling enables us to get a clear picture of what the priorities are. Last month, thousands of us voted on the next set of campaign priorities for 38 Degrees.  The results are now in.

We started off suggesting ideas on our Facebook group, Twitter, our Blog, on the website and by email. Then volunteers in the office worked though the thousands of ideas .

Photograph by 38 Degrees

Once a picture started to emerge, we drew up a list of the most popular. Then we all had the chance to vote on the campaigns we thought were most important. In the last few days volunteers in the office have been working through the responses.

The results 

The top results are:

• NHS: Make sure the NHS isn’t run down or privatised
• Banks: Push for taxpayers to get a fair deal from bailed-out banks
• Fuel Bills: Stop energy companies imposing rip-off increases to gas and electricity bills
• Foreign Arms Dealing: Stop UK arms companies selling weapons to oppressive governments
• Forests: Keep speaking up for our forests and challenge future attempts to sell them
• Tax-dodging: Demand a clamp down on tax dodging

People who voted ‘a lot’ for each of the campaigns. Click the image for the full data.

What next? 

These results will determine where we put most of our efforts over the coming months. The give the staff team a clear steer as to where to focus their efforts researching campaign opportunities and developing ideas for action. We won’t be able to do everything immediately. Sometimes we have to wait for the moment when we can effectively create change by moving together. For some campaigns, a lot of members voted that we shouldn’t campaign on them at all.

It’s clear that the NHS is still a big priority for us, so we’ll carry on working to protect it from privatisation and other threats. Already we’re getting some independent legal advice to see exactly what Lansley’s new plans for the NHS mean.

On forests, we’re currently collecting everyone’s answers to the Independent Panel on Forestry’s questions. We’re going to hand them over, so that the panel knows the sheer number of us who are passionate about protecting England’s forests.

The next few months might be a little quieter with summer holidays and parliament in recess. Some new campaigns might also emerge as a reaction to things that pop up in the outside world and taking action can’t wait.

What do you think? 

What do you think of the results and are there any campaigns you think should be on the list?

Photograph by Sally Longstaff

Environment minister Caroline Spelman has announced plans to shoot tens of thousands of badgers. If her plans go ahead, badgers will start being killed next summer. The government says this will help stop the spread of cow tuberculosis. But key scientists warn badger shoots could make the problem worse.

38 Degrees members have been discussing the plans on the 38 Degrees website and Facebook page.  Many think we should get involved. What do you think? Is the government right to push ahead with killing badgers? Is this an issue we should work on?

The government is consulting on their plans right now – there’s still time to stop them. If we vote “Yes” we can launch a huge petition next Monday. But it won’t work unless enough of us want to get involved. So please share your view now:

Do you think we should work together to stop the government’s plan to kill badgers?

YES
NO

The government says the decision to kill badgers is “science-led”. But leading experts have spoken out against the plans. Oxford academic and zoologist Lord John Krebs led a government inquiry into the link between badgers and cow tuberculosis. He says of this plan to shoot badgers: “I can’t understand how anybody who’s looked at the science would say this is a good idea.”

Animal charity the RSPCA have warned that, “This cull will contribute little or nothing to the long-term goal of eradicating TB nationally. Instead it will wipe out huge numbers of this much-loved species”.

We know that when we decide to work together we can change things. We stopped the sell-off of England’s forests by building the pressure with a huge petition, letters to MPs and woodland protests, until the government was forced to reverse its plans. If we decide to work together to protect badgers, we could play a key role in stopping these plans.

The poll closes this Sunday evening, so have your say now:

Do you think we should work together to stop the government’s plan to kill badgers?

YES
NO

What do you think we should do together in the coming months? Over the past few weeks, thousands of us have suggested issues where 38 Degrees members could make a difference by working side by side. Now we need to pick which ones we should work on. Please take a minute to vote on this simple form now.

38 Degrees members throughout the UK have been sharing and discussing ideas for future campaigns. Volunteers in the office have read and analysed all the suggestions and come up with a shortlist. That’s what thousands of 38 Degress members are voting on this week.

How did we come up with the shortlist?

Step 1: The big sift
Thousands of suggestions were submitted on this blog, through Facebook and through the ideas pages of the website. The first job was to sift through all of the comments and suggestions and pull out the ideas.

Step 2: Simple visualisations
Next, some visualisation tools were used so that a picture of what 38 Degrees members wanted to do next started to emerge. The image below is just one view that illustrates what the initial analysis looked like (this visualisation was created using comments from the blog).

Pic: Visual analysis of some of the thousands of suggestions

One of the jobs done at this stage was adding together small piles of similar suggestions. In the example above you can see “Stop Incineration” and “Against incinerators” appear separately but are most likely similar issues.

Step 3: Identifying the top ideas
A further sweep of the data started to reveal some real trends. Reform of the banking system was a priority for members, as was continuing work on the NHS and working to stop cuts to the disability living allowance.

Chart 1: unique campaign ideas

That big green chunk (46.7%) in the graph above  is “other” campaign suggestions. There were a lot of them.

Here are just a few of the comments that came in on the more popular issues:

Diana: “tackling the obscene salaries and profits and tax dodges of big business”

Sarah: “Stop the unfair hatchet job on disability and incapacity benefits.”

Adam: “I’d focus on stopping the NHS reforms first and foremost.”

Matthew: “Campaign to stop the process of fracking. It’s a dangerous and harmful procedure and should be banned.”

Step 4: Campaign types

As a further analysis task, a typology of suggested ideas was also created and visualised (see the pie chart below). In other words, what categories did the suggested ideas fit into. The results can be seen below and show just what a wide range of interests 38 Degrees members have.

Chart 2: types of campaigns suggested

We can’t do everything – we make a difference, and win, because we focus on the big issues we all care about. This poll will help set the direction over the next few months. It will tell the office team where to focus their time researching campaign ideas and opportunities.

Vote now on the simple form – it only takes two minutes.

38 Degrees members have submitted thousands of suggestions and comments over the past fortnight. A picture of what we are all going to do together next is starting to emerge.

The suggestions have been analysed by our team of volunteers at the 38 Degrees office and a shortlist is close to being finalised. The next step is voting together to help prioritise future campaigns.

But first, we all have some work to do to save the NHS.

Right now saving the NHS is our big priority. By signing the NHS petition, more than 420,000 of us have made this clear. This is a crucial week for the health service as the Future Forum reports back from its “listening exercise” and the government sets out its position once more. Together we have piled huge pressure on Cameron, Clegg and Lansley, we can’t afford to ease up now.

The 38 Degrees office is packed full of amazing volunteers and a small staff team. But at the moment, concentrating on making sure we can work together to save the NHS means getting the “what next?” vote ready can’t happen as quickly as we’d hoped.

With a bit of luck, we’ll have a chance to finish to building the poll in the next few days. Then, 38 Degrees members will be able to vote for their priorities on what we should do next together.