These are the last weeks of the Blair era, but the Prime Minister has an awful lot to do if he is to leave the British people with any sense of satisfaction.

There are, of course, the big legacy issues on which he is doomed to disappoint — things such as Iraq, education and climate change.

But the voters are also terribly exercised about thousands of little issues and are desperate for Mr Blair to “do something” about them.

They want legislation to introduce a standard-sized umbrella, action to “save Walsall” (from an unspecified threat), rules to outlaw jaywalking in London and a government declaration that sadomasochism is “a sane sexual practice”.

The frustrations of the great British public, expressed through the new medium of e-petitions, are overloading the Downing Street website.

The number of petitions opened on the site has more than doubled since mid-Febru-ary. No 10 still says on its pages that there are 3,381 petitions open on the site. But The Times has discovered that there are now 7,123 open for signature and that number is rising every day. The life of a petition is set by the petitioner when posting it on the site.

The campaign against road pricing was the one that caught the public imagination and created a kind of petition mania. It attracted 1.8 million signatories before it was closed. It also led an unnamed minister to call Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the aide who came up with the e-petition idea, “a prat”.

There are many on the No 10 web team who probably share that view, but they are not willing to express it publicly. The official line is: “It is fair to say that we have been surprised at the number of petitions received.”

Indeed, there are so many that the five-day target for assessing petition applications and getting them online is frequently being missed.

D o w n i n g Street says that, to keep the flood to manageable proportions, it has had to outlaw joke petitions because they were harmless and funny.

The web team said: “We found that more and more time was being taken up considering borderline cases where supposedly humorous petitions risked being seen as offensive or in bad taste. Some users also contacted us to complain about silly petitions undermining the serious purpose of the site.”

One wonders, then, how David Kitchen’s request for the Spandau Ballet song Gold to become the new national anthem slipped through the net. More than 6,200 people have signed up.

Tom Gough’s call for the Yorkshire pudding to become the internationally recognised symbol of the North of England also passed the fun-extinguisher test but has only drawn three supporters.

A similarly tiny number support parents spanking children with “implements”, making Cumbria Scottish, metering the water usage of hot-tub owners and declaring a Bank Holiday in memory of the world’s oldest horse, Old Billy, which died in 1822 aged at least 62.

Given the British obsession with pets, it is no surprise that dogs feature frequently. Geraldine Eaton has attracted four signatories to her plea for Mr Blair to “do something about the many people that give away dogs after having them for many years”.

Paul Coyne wants “small well-behaved dogs on leads” to be allowed in restaurants, but another petitioner, John Heard, advocates a law to “make it an offence for any dog to be in a public place”.

There are, of course, serious petitioners who want intervention in Zim-babwe and an abolition of postal charges on parcels sent to British troops serving in Afghanistan.

More than 125,000 people have signed a call for the abolition of inheritance tax.

But there is also a great deal of cyberclutter — people moaning about recycling, wanting Frisbee to become an Olympic sport by 2012 and urging the disbandment of the RAF.

Downing Street insists that it is not overburdened and that the scheme is a success. A spokesman said: “The service has proved very popular, which is exactly w h a t Downing Street wanted. “It gives us the chance to engage in dialogue with a large number of people and is an excellent opportunity for both listening and explaining.”

No 10 has also found the time to block 806 petitions, mostly because they are duplicates and sometimes because they are offensive or too trivial.

Among those was Steve Shadforth’s plea for mice to be allowed to travel free on public transport — rejected not because it was deemed frivolous, but because it was “outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister”.

Public pressure

1 Scrap inheritance tax (125,000 signatures)

2 Cut burdensome regulation of music and dance (67,000)

3 Drop planned restrictions on photography in public places (65,000)

4 Keep funding the Red Arrows (57,000)

5 Collect student loan interest monthly not annually (53,000)

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