Remember the days when you would be walking down the High Street, or through your local shopping mall, and someone would stop you and ask if you wanted to sign their petition? It may have been Greenpeace, Amnesty International, or local residents trying to stop the closure of a park, or cancellation of school dinners. Whatever it was, you could engage with the person, ask questions, and either sign or not. There was an opportunity to ask questions, or challenge their cause.

But the main point is that they were few and far between, and if you did sign you could feel you might have made a difference.

Now, barely a day goes by without there being something in your Facebook feed about someone signing a petition, and inviting you to do the same. So you click on the link, 'sign' with your mouse or finger, then move on to looking at pictures of dogs and cats, more likely than not without even reading the details, or finding out what the originator is trying to achieve, in the same way that people comment on news stories based on the headline. Why should they bother to read the content? Far better to jump to conclusions than to spend time reading.

What do any of these petitions achieve? It's hard to say. There are plenty of stories about things that have happened with causes which had a petition started, but whether or not there is a direct correlation is not stated.

All I can say with any certainty is that they are creating petition fatigue. Please let's stop