Cranes around St Paul's flying the Union Jack to celebrate the Golden Jubilee in 2002. The Silver Jubilee prompted the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen. Photograph: Sion Touhig/Getty Images
Now they are actively encouraged by the government's website, it just goes to show that as a means of protest and bringing about change, petitions are almost certainly worthless. Now any sane music-lover must hope that is the case, because if the voice of petitioners is heard, we might end up with Spandau Ballet's 80s chintz-soul travesty Gold as Britain's national anthem in time for the 2012 Olympics - with Tony Hadley handing out medals.
Worryingly, while number 10 has rejected petitions for the PM to stand trial for war crimes, and stand in custard, the permitted Gold campaign has 4,520 signatories (at last count) and is gaining up to 100 supporters each day. They must think they're indestructible.
Trailing well behind on signatures are a number of other e-petitions also demanding a replacement for that awful Victorian dirge God Save the Queen. (Alas, Napalm Death's You Suffer failed at the first hurdle.) Just about everyone wants rid of God Save, it seems, and English sports fans particularly are crying foul because we don't have a national song of our own, unlike Scotland and Wales.
Although the (now disregarded) sixth verse refers to trashing the Scots, God Save The Queen is a British anthem. Its drooping tune was the reason cinemagoers never hung around for the final credits and up until 10 years ago was deployed nightly to torture insomniacs glued to the TV. More recently, Brian May prompted a whole new generation to hate it.
In our family there is a proud tradition of sitting put, arms folded, lips firmly sealed, when occasion arises. As Hendrix said just before subverting the anthem at the Isle of Wight: "Stand up for your country and your beliefs and start singing - and if you don't, fuck you."
Why do we need a national anthem at all at sporting events? Wouldn't it be more interesting if players instead engaged in pre-match freestyle rap battles - bragging or dissing optional elements?
But if we must, just to conform to international protocol, I'd have to join the ongoing clamour for Jerusalem to become England's song, the choice of both left- and right-wingers, Billy Bragg and Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski.
For old Labourites, its status is second only to the Red Flag, although William Blake had not intended it to be a song when he wrote And Did those Feet in Ancient Time (its proper title) as a preface to his 1804 Milton epic. Hubert Parry set it to music for the Suffragettes and Elgar's 1922 arrangement is still the anthem for that hotbed of dissent, the WI Federation.
Even George V expressed a preference for Jerusalem. It's the reinterpretations by the Fall and Mark Stewart and the Maffia that clinch it for me - and the judicious use made of it by the KLF and Monty Python.
William Blake's vision of England's green and pleasant land triumphing over the Satanic mills has endured way beyond the age of empire and deference to our rulers - and, more importantly, Wales and Scotland don't come into it. It's about aspiring for something better, and good old rebellion, not lickspittle servitude. Jerusalem had better be officially adopted, or it's just not cricket.
