Yesterday Health Minister Simon Burns compared 38 Degrees members to zombies – for emailing our own MPs about risks to the NHS!

Have a look at a video clip of what he said about us all:

Minutes after Mr Burns spoke, 38 Degrees members started to respond:

- Sarah: So, anyone that disagrees with his policies and joins together in a democratic group to ask OUR representatives to represent us is ‘zombie-like’? Charming!
- Patrick: He finds us frightening due to the backtracks they’ve had to make recently (BSkyB, Forests, Mega Dairy). This just shows it’s working.
- Monika: Gosh, those politicians must hate the internet by now…the ‘plebs’ have a medium where they can raise their voices even after elections, it must be so annoying for them.
- Martyn: whereas MPs who slavisly follow the party line are full of life?

Add your comments below.

Let’s stand together to show Mr Burns that we’re citizens, not zombies. If thousands of us sign an open letter standing up for our right to be heard, we can publish it as an advert in a national newspaper and deliver it to Mr Burns personally in his constituency.

Add your name to the open letter to Mr Burns now.

It shouldn’t matter who you vote for or what opinion you hold. It’s still an MP’s job to listen to their voters. Our taxes pay their wages, after all!

38 Degrees has only been around for a couple of years. But already there are more than 950,000 of us. By working together we’ve helped change events for the better – like protecting our woodlands, stopping Rupert Murdoch, and standing up for our NHS.

It’s clear that when we work together, it rattles those in power – they’d rather we left them alone! They know that if enough of us stand together the days of politicians ignoring us and letting us down could be numbered.

So let’s tell Simon Burns we’re not zombies, we’re citizens standing up for what we believe in.

Here’s what other MPs are saying about Mr Burns’ comments:

Tim Farron MP, President of the Liberal Democrats, said: “I don’t think 38 Degrees members, or anyone else who takes the trouble to contact me, is a zombie. It’s a totally inappropriate way for an elected politician to talk about their voters. We should be encouraging people to get involved in the political process not insulting those who do.”

Stella Creasy MP, Labour, said: “Campaigning organisations like 38 Degrees are playing a useful role in energising Britain’s political process by encouraging the public to engage with their MPs – it’s up to us to then develop the debate and discussion they start with those we represent, either online or offline and whether we agree with them or not. Rather than calling people zombies and dismissing their concerns, ministers may wish to reflect on why their healthcare proposals have generated such a strong response from their constituents.”

On Wednesday July 13th there will be a vote in Parliament on Rupert Murdoch’s power grab.

Your MP will be weighing up how to vote.  Will they stand up for democracy and decent media standards? Or will they do what they’ve done far too many times in the past, and let Murdoch grab even more power?

If we work together, we can make sure enough MPs vote the right way this Wednesday. We can send our MPs a flood of messages, and make them realise their voters won’t stand for Rupert Murdoch getting even more control.

It’s quick and easy to email your MP, and it only takes 2 minutes.

Get started here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/stand-up-to-murdoch

A vote by our MPs to halt the BSkyB deal would be a huge breakthrough.  The past week has seen appalling revelations of criminal and unethical activity by Murdoch papers.  Now we have a chance to prove that Murdoch’s control over our democracy will no longer be tolerated.

It could be a very close vote. Rupert Murdoch knows that control of BSkyB would mean more cash and more power – so he’s desperate to win. He’s flown into London to start twisting arms.  Behind closed doors, his lobbyists and lawyers are springing into action. But if enough of us work together, we can outweigh their pressure.

Can you send your MP a quick message now?

Find their name and email address here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/stand-up-to-murdoch

38 Degrees members helped secure this week’s vote. We’ve been challenging Murdoch’s plans since they were first announced in July 2010. In the past week we’ve sent over 150,000 messages to the government and to MPs demanding a halt whilst the latest scandal is investigated.  Bit by bit, we’re winning the argument that Murdoch should not be rewarded with more power.

When there’s a close vote like this in parliament, we know that we can work together to swing it the right way. We did it to save England’s forests. We are doing it to protect the NHS. Now let’s make sure our MPs vote to clamp down on Rupert Murdoch and stand up for a better media and a better democracy.

The next 48 hours are crucial, so please email your MP now: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/stand-up-to-murdoch

To share with your friends on facebook click here

To share with your friends on twitter click here

Over the last few hours tens of thousands of us have emailed our MPs urging them to vote against Rupert Murdoch’s plans to take control of BSkyB.

Once you hear back from your MP share what they say in the form below:

You can see what other MPs reply below:

Yesterday marked the end of Andrew Lansley’s sham “listening exercise”.

Over the last few days over 25,000 38 Degrees members have emailed in their concerns to the “listening exercise”. Yesterday 38 Degrees members gave in our massive Save the NHS petition. Check out the photographers and film crews who were capturing the hand-in. The Department of Health even locked all the doors! A few members managed to hand over the petition, but it took a little while.

Some of the photos are below;

The Scottish parliamentary elections are taking place on the 5^th May. 38 Degrees members decided to work together to have their say at these elections. So, we’ve built a tool that makes it easy to e-mail all election candidates in your area at once. It it only takes a minute or two to get in touch and ask them where they stand on the issues you care about.

The election is for both constituency candidates and for ‘party lists’ for each region of Scotland. The tool lets you email your constituency candidates but to contact the party-list candidates you’ll need to contact them separately. The BBC website has a list of candidates for each region. You can normally find address and email for a candidate by searching their name on Google.

38 Degrees hasn’t produced a tool like this before. So it’s likely it won’t be flawless! Please leave comments, suggestions and ideas below.

Yesterday, 38 Degrees members paid for the Artful Dodger ads to appear in national newspapers, highlighting the issue of tax dodging on the day George Osborne announced his Budget. As the attention of the national media was focused on Westminster and the Budget announcement, a group of 38 Degrees volunteers made sure that tax dodging remained high on the agenda by dressing up as George the Artful Dodger and posing for reporters outside parliament.

It worked – we got our message about tax dodging into the media. The gang of Artful Dodgers were featured in live TV news broadcasts including BBC News, this video on the Telegraph website, and today in a huge photo in the Telegraph’s Budget supplement, shown here.

A short film following the Artful Dodgers’ progress around Westminster and explaining why 38 Degrees members are so concerned about the issue of tax dodging in the UK will be available on the website soon.

Several 38 Degrees members have been in touch to say that their MP has replied to them about the forest sell-off – not only saying they do support selling the forests but also describing 38 Degrees as “the Labour campaign website 38 Degrees”.  So I am pasting below a copy of an email I just sent to Charlotte Leslie MP, one of the MPs to make this allegation.

It’s worrying that this seems to bepart of a firm response used by several different Conservative MPs – does that mean it’s a coordinated smear? Or do some MPs just seriously believe that the only reason to oppose forest selloffs is being part of the Labour Party? In any case, just to be clear – 38 Degrees is independent of all political parties.

If your MP has been in touch to claim that 38 Degrees is part of the Labour Party, please let us know and please get back to them to set them straight.

Dear Charlotte,

Several 38 Degrees members have forwarded emails from you in which you describe 38 Degrees as an “Labour campaign website”.

38 Degrees is independent of all political parties. 38 Degrees members are supporters of many different political parties, or none at all. The reason we are running a campaign against the government’s proposals to sell off public forests is because 38 Degrees members asked us to when we consulted them.  You can read a lot more about 38 Degrees here: http://38degrees.org.uk/pages/about/

I understand that you strongly disagree with our stance on the issue of forests office, but I hope you will accept that it is possible to disagree with government policy without being part of the Labour Party. 38 Degrees has in the past campaigned against plenty of Labour Party policies – for example, when the Conservatives were in opposition, 38 Degrees members contacted their MPs asking them to vote in favour of a Conservative Opposition Day Motion calling for Parliament to support the 10:10 campaign. On that occasion, a couple Labour MPs accused 38 Degrees of being a Conservative organisation – I sent those MPs a message rather similar to this one!

I hope now I’ve been in touch to explain you will avoid sending inaccurate information about 38 Degrees to your constituents in the future. I’d be very happy to chat further about 38 Degrees if you would like to do so — my number is below.

Yours sincerely,

David Babbs

This week MPs had their first chance to vote on forest sell-off plans – so we took our Save Our Forests campaign to Parliament. Nearly 100,000 of us emailed and phoned our MPs.We ran full-page newspaper adverts publicising the number of names on our petition. Every single MP felt the heat.

It’s starting to work! We pushed 6 government MPs to rebel and vote for a rethink. MPs from all parties stood up to talk about problems with the sell-off. Even David Cameron has started making vague hints that he might be willing to back down.

Every single MP heard from hundreds of us this week. But a lot of them will be hoping the fuss will now die down. We need to get back in touch quickly, to prove we’re here for the long haul. MPs need to know we’re watching them and we will keep watching them until our woods are protected for future generations.

The next time MPs vote on selling off our woodland, it could be a make or break vote to pave the way for privatisation. We need to keep the spotlight on every MP. They need to keep hearing from us by e-mail, on the phone, and face-to-face.Together we can make them realise that if they vote to sell off our forests, local voters won’t forgive them.

Click here to find out whether your MP voted to save our forests, and get back in touch with them.

The government launched its “consultation” today on how to privatise England’s forests. Here are a few first thoughts:

- The Public Bodies Bill is currently in the House of Lords and its current wording gives the government powers to sell off up to 100% of the English forests without any further involvement from Parliament.

- Even if this government is stopped from selling-off the forests this time, the Bill would allow any future government to do it at any time. Can we really trust every government in coming years to keep that promise?

The fact that the government is now going into spin overdrive, offering warm words, spin, and a few genuine concessions, shows that our campaign is beginning to work.

- So that proves we need to keep going – if even more of us get involved, we can win!

- The more of us that get involved in the campaign, the better the chances that we keep our precious forests safe for future generations.

- It’s good news that it looks like the government has made the concession of saying a small amount of the Public Forest Estate will at least not be sold off to private owners. But the reason so many of us have got involved in this campaign is because having 600,000 acres of publicly owned woodland all across England is a precious thing – we want to see all of that protected, not just a few famous sites while the rest is sold off.

- The best way to protect all our forests is to keep them in public hands — that’s why we will keep campaigning.

The public wants our forests kept in public hands for future generations – yet the government is only asking for our views on how to privatise it.

- The opinion poll last weekend, which 38 Degrees members clubbed together to pay for, showed that 84% of the public want the forest kept in public hands – so why isn’t the government offering this as an option?

- 1/4 million people from all around the UK have signed a petition against the forests being sold off.

- The government is pushing through changes to the law to enable privatisation, and has already embarked on selling off 15% of our woods.

If you haven’t yet passed on the petition to your friends and family, please help to spread the word and be part of the campaign to save our forests. Together, we’re going to keep the pressure up with rallies, letters to MPs, adverts and local meetings until the government abandons their plans and agree to keep our forests safe in public ownership.

Please share your comments/ideas below.