This is my 52nd update.

Once this promotion completes its views, we will temporarily close for a ‘fallow’ week, it won’t hurt, in fact a week of inactivity will help the long term success of the petition and will reset the scope from ‘Global’ to ‘Local’ and target certain regions to bypass change.org’s 'flawed' UK trap.

During the week off, I will randomly reset the scope to ‘Local’ and target Darwin, Australia, just to see what happens as an experiment and will update you all once we are ready to reopen for new signatures.

A week off from the campaign is no bad thing and helps change.org (and the health/overall success of this petition) in the long run, plus I can spend my extra cash on meals out, groceries, toiletries and more too.

Since my last post, we have, fortunately, managed to gain a random international signature from Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) which incidentally was also the first to signature since July 1st) and we are slowly inching our way towards our next goal (I have tactically renamed the petition to “Fix Easter to March 22nd in 2043/54/65 BEFORE WE DIE – WE URGENTLY NEED 467 SIGNATURES” as a way to kickstart momentum after again being completely stuck on 411 signatures for an entire week from July 1st to July 8th but we will still have a week off for the benefit of change.org prioritising other campaigns, we’ve had a long four months of non-stop campaigning so the recent slowdown was the wake-up call our first of many breaks was needed (and not a ‘hydration break’!).

I did not realise this at the time, but the petition I am trying to overtake with 485 signatures (as well as many NYC Orthodox petitions I have already outcompeted) have their scope set to ‘Local’ (specifically targeting the New York City department of education), yet, it is only shown to US users during a paid promotion and despite being set to local, I was able to sign it myself because visibility of it in the UK was not blocked, completely disproving the “local scope” theory and I unknowingly gave it an organic international signature from the UK!

I close and open my other petitions/projects so will do that for the first time ever with this one!

Our timeline so far has been (including the general slowdown):

·      February 27th – Petition born!

·      March 25th (earliest Easter date many Protestant/Catholics will see without petitions) – hit 100 signatures

·      April 13th (Orthodox Easter Monday which should have been a bank holiday) – hit 200 signatures

·      May 9th (latest possible date for Orthodox Easter, last seen in 1983) – hit 300 signatures

·      June 3rd – Comfortably hit 379 signatures at express train speed, overtaking a NYC Orthodox petition

The general slowdown:

·      June 13th-14th – The brakes came on and the petition got stuck at 396 signatures

·      June 16th – Got stubbornly stuck on 398 signatures, was forced to break my promise about not posting any updates until hitting the 400 milestone, with my dedicated Work Document update unused.

·      June 18th – Managed to hit 400 signatures after a very big struggle!

·      June 24th – Hit 409 signatures, where the petition got stuck until July 1st

·      July 1st – 2 people signed and hit 411 signatures where the petition got stuck until July 8th

·      July 7th – Changed tactics and renamed the petition in an effort to gain more signatures

·      July  8th – Managed to break the 411 trap with a rare signature from Abu Dhabi!

I have started a brand new spin-off petition about the ‘UK echo chamber’ and the unfair 3 email per week limit which unfairly hurts campaigners in a crisis if signature counts get stuck, I understand why the limit is needed but because I had to post multiple updates when my petition’s signature count got stuck, I had to navigate the crisis alone as there was nobody to support me as I campaign independently from my family.

I think that my mention of Scottish bank holiday differences in my previous campaign updates has contributed to the large number of signatures from Scotland on my CSV spreadsheets, I also think my trivia mention of the flightpath to Aberdeen played a part in the number too!

We have signatures from Wick, the absolute top of Scotland, all the way down to Kent and Cornwall (the UK’s hidden and unrecognised fifth nation). We also have signatures from directly under the flight paths of UK domestic flights (we have supporters in York and Newcastle), directly under the Heathrow to Aberdeen weekend flightpaths!

I specifically chose change.org for this petition rather than the UK government website because the UK government website often rejects petitions related to fixing the date of Easter and the UK government website only accepts signatures from the UK.

Due to the general slowdown have brought my immediate target forward and my next goal is 467 signatures before 485, to represent one signature for every year between 1818 and 2285.