Seem to be asked an increasing amount lately to sign various petitions on a wide variety of subjects
Often seen reams of paper being delivered to number ten and other places of officialdom,left me wondering if they ever make a jot of difference
Have a strong feeling the answer is no
I don't think anyone ever takes any notice. Letters to MP's are likely to have more of an impact. I think the feeling is that anyone will sign a petition even if they're not really on board with what their signing. It takes more effort and conviction to put pen to paper.
Worked for me about 5-6 years ago when I wanted a mini-ramp in the park in my village 
Got pretty much everyone to sign it and they finally agreed to get us one in. Nice mini as well. It's gone now though - dunno why. I was riding it happily over the easter holidays, came back a few weeks later and it had disappeared - just in time for me getting a bmx again 
I would say that they help to gauge public opinion. Certainly if there are lots of petitions with lots of signatures on a given subject, then it can suggest strong public opinion. And of course the opposite is also true.
Obviously politicians are unlikely to support a position purely as a result of petitions, but why would they ignore completely any feed back concerning public opinion ? I can't imagine it would be very useful for them to do that.
I reckon petitions do what they are suppose to do - register people's opinions. But no more than that. So yeah, I would say they work.
I receive a number of petitions at work. The reason we don't pay them too much attention is because we will often get the fors and the againsts and on closer inspection, see the same names on both. We've also just had new instructions on dealing with petitions. In a nutshell, don't bother if it will have less than 1500 names on it. (depending on what you're after)
Also, writing to local councillors or local MPs generally means the letter will take longer to get to me and then back to them so they look like they're the ones with the clever answers. (unless the answer is "no" and they'll then let me write back to you directly).
Remember that list of BNP members that found its way onto the web a while back? Some of the those names and addresses were apparently people who'd simply put their name to a petition.
I don't sign them out of principle, if I feel strongly about an issue I don't really want my name added to a list of people who were too polite to say no, and have likely not given much thought to the issue at hand. My main beef with petitions though is that the number of signatures collected has no context. You could present a petition with a 1,000 signatures, but how many people did you solicit for those signatures? 1,001? - that would be evidence of a pretty strong public will. By what if you'd asked 2 million people to sign and almost all of them refused? Those 1000 signatures don't really mean much then.
Anyway we all know the real way to effect change in a modern democracy is to start a facebook group call "I bet I can find a million people who want / don't want {insert something glib or inevitable}" and then refer to this as a 'campaign'.
You mean if i join a facebook group protesting against Israeli aggression, Netenyahu doesn't immediately change his policy to one involving love, peace and fluffy bunny-rabbits?
Pah! Bloody internet!
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