Support for the OneWight Campaign continues to grow. Over 16,000 signatures have been received at the campaign headquarters to date, but there are still petition sheets all around the Island that need to be gathered in and the signatures added to this ever growing total. It has been decided to leave the on-line petition open over the weekend so that people can still sign up to support the campaign at www.onewight.org.uk.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend members of the campaign team were out and about at Somerfield in Shanklin, the Island Steam Show at Havenstreet and The Grand Donkey Day out at the Donkey Sanctuary; at times Islanders were queuing to sign up to support the campaign. Our thanks go out to those organisations for supporting the campaign by allowing us to be at their events. The campaign team received many comments ranging from expressions of support for the campaign to disbelief and irritation that the Government did not understand the closeness, community spirit and pride of the Island community.
The OneWight Bus, supplied by Southern Vectis and transported by Wightlink, will be travelling up to London on Monday 6thSeptember. It will take a cross party delegation from the Island’s main political parties, a representative from the Chamber of Commerce, Richard Priest who has acted as spokesman for the Campaign and a number of other supporters.
Ian Ward the campaign co-ordinator said:
“Getting over 16,000 supporters in a few weeks has been challenging, but it demonstrates the high level of support we have found wherever we go. Some people say they want two MPs for the Island – that is a perfectly reasonable view, although all local political parties have accepted that is unlikely to be achievable – but very, very few people support the idea of a constituency split between the Island and the mainland. We must now concentrate on getting all the paper copies of the petition back into the office before Monday. If you know of any petition sheets anywhere please get them into the campaign office at 24 The Mall, Carisbrooke Road, Newport as soon as possible.”
The paper copy of the OneWight petition will be presented to Parliament on the evening of 6th September by the Island’s MP Andrew Turner. At 2pm in the afternoon a small delegation will be presenting a printed copy of the on-line petition to No10 Downing Street
