The Parky Charter - Getting The Vote Out

Lessons from a wet day at the seaside

The brave Brighton petition team

When we started the Movers and Shakers podcast about living with Parkinson’s two years ago, I am sure none of us expected to end up pounding the pavements seeking votes. But that is what Mark Mardell, Gillian Lacey-Solymar and I found ourselves doing in Brighton yesterday.

Our petition calling for the implementation of the Parky Charter, our manifesto for better Parkinson’s care, has been making steady progress, topping 30,000 signatures in the last couple of weeks. But if it is to lead to a debate in Parliament we need to get 100,000 people to sign by September 10th, and that is going to be tough.

So Mark Mardell came up with a plan. Why not choose a popular seaside resort and arrive mob-handed with a band of supporters to try to get as many signatures as possible in one day? We decided on Brighton, partly because there was a very active local Parkinson’s UK group there but also because it seemed guaranteed to draw big crowds on a Tuesday in half-term week.

We failed to check one thing - the long-range weather forecast. For weeks Brighton has been basking in sunshine but as we gathered at the meeting point on the esplanade opposite the Grand Hotel, the rain was setting in. Local “Parkies” did not let us down - dozens turned up, and representatives from the Parkinson’s UK charity arrived with posters bearing a QR code leading to the petition site. (We had learned that Brighton is a “no-flyer zone” meaning we couldn’t distribute leaflets but we could show the poster to anyone we could stop.)

Try the QR code - it works!

But it quickly became clear that stopping the rare passers-by clutching umbrellas as they hurried along the esplanade was a fool’s errand. We thought we might be allowed to canvass people inside a shopping centre but that was a no-no, so we tried stopping people outside. Many seemed to think we were after donations and rushed past saying “no thank you” but we did manage a few signatures from the captive audience in bus queues. A brief stop in a pub also proved successful, with a group of middle-aged men - and the barmaid - signing up.

With the weather getting even worse we decided to head for the railway station with its covered forecourt as the location for our final push for signatures. What we discovered was that once we got talking to people about Parkinson’s, stressing we were after their support rather than their money, they were receptive to our message. Unsurprisingly, younger people were more comfortable with the idea of using a QR code to get to the petitions site, but we had good conversations with a wide range of people.

Well, they did sign..

We called it a day at lunchtime, bedraggled and slightly downhearted. That is, until we did our sums. It seems that by the end of the day, not only had we blasted our way through the 33,000 barrier but upwards of 500 new signatures had been added to the petition, far more than had been added on previous days. Much of that must have been the Brighton effect.

Imagine then what we might have achieved on a sunny day. So we have emerged energised from our soggy day at the seaside. We plan to do more guerrilla raids on busy locations to gather signatures in our still somewhat unlikely mission to hit our 100,000 target by September. We are also thinking about a competition with a prize for the local Parkinson’s group producing the biggest increase in signatures in one day.

Watch this space - and get in touch if you have ideas for how to get people signing. Oh, and share this link with everyone you know and tell them to sign up for better care for people with Parkinson’s.