Some numerology again.

There is again no sign of a decline, with the number of signatures per day varying between about 1,400 and 2,000 (except at weekends, where the numbers are rather lower). This week, it has not been below 1,700 and it has increased for the past two days so that today the daily rate was around 2,000 (I measure lunchtime to lunchtime).

A week-to-week figure for each day (for example Monday to Monday, Tuesday to Tuesday etc.) gives a good idea of the average expectation if there is no decline but can't pick up likely declines. The figure varies between 10,000 and 13,500 per week since I have been keeping figures.

On the "worst case" assumption that the signatures declined linearly at 200 a day from now on, then we could expect 62,000 signatures by the end of the week after next or shortly thereafter. This would probably allow us to confidently predict a minimum of about 64,000 to 65,000 so long as there wasn't a sudden and rapid decline.

Since there is no sign of a decline at present, we can also predict that if there was no further decline in the signature rate over the next 2 weeks we would be looking at around 75,000. Whether it will eventually get to this level (or even how much further it might go) is basically speculation as it's not possible to make a final prediction until a decline is under way.

The number currently stands at 53,001.

:-)