Wednesday, March 14, 2007
flightpaths
AIRCRAFT DISTURBANCE- HEATHROW
Hi Everyone
You will be pleased to hear that the Heathrow petition has been making good progress, but in the last few days that has slowed a little.
So firstly my thanks to all of you who have signed the petition, and particularly to those who have forwarded this email to others. If you have not, please do not be shy about doing so just send it to everyone on your mailing list. REALLY I do mean everyone you will be amazed that the most unexpected people email you back to say they have signed up, often people you have not heard from for sometime. And of course you do not have to be a Londoner to be concerned about the sheer stupidity of the government policy in this area.
You may be interested in the dynamics of such on-line petitions. For the first week or so the numbers who have signed up have doubled about every 4 days and we were thus on target to hit about 666,000 by the time the petition closes in early April. Reducing this doubling time to just 3 days would ensure we reached the magic million signatures which would really make the government sit up and take notice. And this is still possible provided we keep the momentum building. Once they have passed a certain critical point the numbers really grow quite rapidly.
Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor who specialises in the science of persuasion, was recently expounding his research findings on the key principles of motivating people into taking action. One of these is that "we are most likely to behave in a particular way if we believe that people like ourselves are doing the same". In other words people wait to see that they are backing a winner so you will be pleased to hear that the numbers have doubled, then doubled, then doubled again since I first emailed you.
One of the reasons that road pricing petition was so successful: it was picked up, commented on, publicised, and most importantly legitimised by several newspapers because clearly others were signing up. So you too can help us reach that critical point by being a leader rather than a follower by emailing all of your friends, and also if you have any sympathetic contacts in the media please encourage them to pick up on this Heathrow petition.
Let me refresh your memories as to what it is all about. Please seriously consider signing the "Stop Heathrow Expansion" petition for any of the following reasons
- To help reduce the increasing harmful atmospheric pollution from aviation
- To help reduce the significant loss of sleep to millions who live under the flight path to Heathrow
- To help reduce the risk of a major aviation disaster over London. In no other country in Europe do planes approach their major airport by flying over the most densely populated city centre
- To help improve the education of thousands of children whose school lies under the flight path and whose lessons are interrupted by the noise of an aircraft every 90 seconds
- To help improve the quality of life for millions who live under the flight path and suffer from noise blight both day and night
For those that are unaware of the extent of the misery caused by flights into Heathrow there was a sensitive article in The Times by their aviation correspondent, Ben Webster, a couple of days ago, see
where he also reminds us of the litany of broken promises by successive governments, of both parties, who have pledged repeatedly not to expand Heathrow any further, but then subsequently reneged. Unsurprisingly, unhappy residents are now taking direct action.
So please sign up NOW if you have not already done so, and also please forward this email NOW to as many people as possible, but using only he BCC option so that you do not display their email address to all and sundry.
All you need to do is
- Complete the form and click on the SIGN button
- Respond to the confirming email that will be sent to you
And remember, please do it as soon as possible.
Thank you
Mike Colvin
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