The Wardman Wire

Greenpeace is hosting a facility on their website to send mass emails to Members of the European Parliament via an automated form.

It is one thing - and absolutely fine - to encourage the public to lobby Members of the European Parliament. It is not fine to supply a form to send emails to 60 MPs at the click of a mouse. This is a distortion of our democracy, and needs to be stopped.

The story so far

Asking Questions of Greenpeace - Where are the checks and balances?

Bad Website Ideas - Greenpeace hosts 236,840 email “Spam” facility on website

Who should I complain to?

I have complained to my MEP about what Greenpeace are doing, and also encourage you to complain to your own MEP and to Greenpeace. The following are some useful contacts:

• Contact your MEP(s) via the Write to Them website. Unlike Greenpeace, this website will only let you email your own representatives.
• Greenpeace Website Team to complain about their hosting of a mass email facility: webteam@uk.greenpeace.org
• Greenpeace Supporter services to complain about Greenpeace encouraging supporters to send lobby MEPs other than their own, and participate in automated mass emails to MEPs: supporter@uk.greenpeace.org.
• Greenpeace general public information contact email address: info@uk.greenpeace.org . This is the official contact email address on Greenpeace’s registration with the Charity Commission.

The Greenpeace Blog

This is the comment I have left on the Greenpeace blog:

I’ve seen a lot of Greenpeace publicity stunts over the years, but this takes the biscuit.

To quote your own blurb:

“We need 400 members of parliament to sign the declaration by June 10th. You can help by asking UK MEPs to sign (unlike MPs, MEPs don’t receive many letters from the public, so every letter really does carry weight).”

You are encouraging your supporters to use an automated email facility to pretend that they have put in the time to lobby 60 individual MEPs.

Do you really think that MEPs won’t notice?

Suggesting that supporters lobby their own MEPs is one thing and is part of the democratic process - but to host this SPAM facility on your own website is incredibly stupid.

You are showing your contempt for the proper democratic process and undermining your own credibility at the same time, while giving MEPs opposed to you a list of your supporters willing to be part of a dishonest lobbying machine.

Astonishing.

Of course, Greenpeace might take the facility off line more quickly if lots of people started sending emails using it about how Greenpeace is spamming our Members of the European Parliament with emails which purport to come from individuals. I leave this course of action to those who choose to do it - if you do, keep it short and sweet and be prepared for some flak back from MEPs.