Should gypsies be allowed to jump NHS queues?

Ask Daily Mail readers whether gypsies should be allowed to jump NHS queues and you'd think the answer would be a foregone conclusion.  But that was before Twitter.

On Friday I witnessed for myself just how powerful Twitter is becoming, and more important, how it has the power to harness and mobilise public opinion to create action.

There's a lot of talk right now about how this is happening in Iran - opposition supporters using Twitter to bypass the ban on media reporting from the country and get pictures and information to the outside world.  

In fact, as I write, I'm looking at Twitscoop, a website that tracks in real time the current hot topics on Twitter, and I can see that people are appealing for blood donors to address a shortage in hospitals.  More chilling, I can see trending topics 'rumors', 'clashes' and 'tanks', all clicking through to reports of clashes between police and protesters - being called terrorists by the Iranian government - in Tehran. 

Back to my original story.  On Friday, I was looking at Tweetdeck  - an application that sites on your desktop and allows you to see and post Twitter and Facebook updates - and I saw the word 'Skew' as one of the big trending topics.

Wondering what people would be writing about that included the word 'Skew', I clicked through to Twitscoop where I saw that it was all about the Daily Mail poll on gypsies.  Some of the comments were just about how low The Daily Mail had stooped, but many were taking it further, posting a link to the poll and encouraging people to register a Yes vote to skew the poll.   Because Twitter users can 're-tweet', this particular message was being duplicated and resent around the community, gaining momentum all the time.

So I clicked through to the poll, registered my Yes vote, and looked at the results.  How many Daily Mail readers think that gypsies should be able to jump NHS queues?  As of yesterday 

afternoon, 93% of them do, apparently.  I can't see the result today because funnily enough the poll has been removed.

Twitter helped to get Barack Obama elected; it's helping to highlight injustices in oppressed countries; it's helping the mass of the people and interest groups to spread their messages faster than ever.  Yes, you can probably still find out what Britney's eating for breakfast, but if you dismiss Twitter as just a frivolous fad you do so at your peril.