Mary Reid

Many of Banksy's wall paintings have appeared in his home town of Bristol as well as in East London.  

Are they art or vandalism? They certainly are amusing and high quality works, and some (but by no means all) are painted with the permission of the building's owners.

This one appeared unexpectedly on the wall of a listed building near the Civic Offices, and a Conservative councillor demanded its removal.

Mark Wright, a Liberal Democrat councillor (below), set up an online petition to save it and got over 3000 signatures.

So the naked man, caught in compromising circumstances, still hangs uncomfortably from the trompe-l'oeil window.

I learnt about this fascinating use of a new technology to support an ancient medium at a conference yesterday in Bristol. 

Bristol was a leading participant in the National Project for Local e-Democracy and, with Kingston, developed the e-petitions pilot. You'll see great similarities between their system and Kingston's.

There is now sufficient interest in online petitions for Bristol to run a whole conference, sponsored by ICELE (the successor to the National Project), largely devoted to it. 

Tom Steinberg was the keynote speaker as the inspiration for all those excellent projects run by MySociety, including, of course, the No 10 petitions site.

I gave an overview of e-petitions in local government, with some of the history and gave this quote from the Local Government White Paper "Strong and Propserous Communities".

Petitions are one of the most popular forms of civic engagement. Many local authorities have developed ways of dealing with petitions systematically, so petitioners know that their voice has been listened to and taken into account.

For example, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames introduced e-petitioning to run alongside its paper petitioning process and provides an on-line mechanism for raising and signing petitions, posting information, debating issues raised, and monitoring progress of the petition through the council.

It has proven to be an effective tool for increasing citizen involvement in, and the transparency of, council decision-making. All local authorities should consider how they deal with petitions systematically as part of their wider policy for engaging with communities.