https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/b2vmm0/gover...
While the huge number of signings on this petition obviously does reflect _something_, I'm not sure it's actually doing anything meaningful. Likewise the upcoming march this weekend for a Peoples Vote:
https://www.peoples-vote.uk/march
These are now simply ignored. The sheer stubbornness of Theresa May's position as evidenced by her statement last night means we're going to go to the wire on something that's been worked on for years. People calling it a national disgrace are absolutely correct.
I can only hope that the pressure exerted from various angles (petition, march, sane MPs) will result in Parliament revoking Article 50, but I don't see it happening. It would be too prudent for this parody of a political system.
edit: the site's back now. Apparently it runs on Rails with DelayedJob doing most of the grunt work in the background.
edit2: just found the most popular petition on there with over 4m votes and absolutely nothing came of that:
I like the summary of @bootstrapcool on Twitter: “God knows we've tried everything else.[...] A brief use of collective impotent fury and a tiny squeak into the black holes of our futures, but it's something.”
I get the sentiment (as a pro-Euro Brit), but surely the original referendum counts as being listened to in some way?
Even ignoring all the illegality and fraud about the referendum, and ignoring that because it was advisory large portions of british citizens living abroad were prevented from having a say, and ignoring the arguments about 16-year-olds who it would be directly affecting because of the time lags, and ignoring the arguments around the fact that the process/success has been wildly, wildly different than promised,
Ever since the referendum 50% of the population of the UK has had no representation in Parliament and government, whilst being endlessly parroted at that it is the "will of the people" and simultaneously being blamed for everything going predictably wrong.
Democratic governments aren't supposed to have one vote then completely ignore the rest of the population.
(I note it has passed 750,000 signatures in well under 24 hours.)
Ok I get your sentiment and I agree that peaceful protest is just woefully ignored in the UK - but someone with a job and a peaceful life typically doesn't want to risk getting arrested, and potentially convicted, trying to cause trouble on a march.
Things have to be much worse before people are going to start taking that risk, and sadly, while things do not look good, the average Londoner is not yet uncomfortable enough to start doing so.
>Paris has real protests
It may not be your intent but "It's not a real protest if something doesn't burn down" is a bit unfair. If things turn violent/destructive on this march public favour will not look kindly on it in the UK.
Remember the student protests for tuition fees? Those who occupied 30 Millbank were vilified as criminals by _both_ sides. Inconvenient and disruptive for sure - but to the press they are "rioters" and to others in the movement "anarchists who don't represent us".
People have been persuaded by the powers that be that any form of non-peaceful protesting is socially unacceptable and that we should chastise it. Convenient eh? Especially because "Without a path from protest to power"[0] there is never going to be any change or acknowledgement from the government.
Any form of protest that could actually get results is a) too risky for people who are currently comfortable enough and b) intentionally socially ostracised by those in power to discourage it.
Be the change you want to see in the world? But one person in a balaclava setting things on fire isn't going to make any difference to the outcome of the protest without a critical mass of others undertaking the same behaviour for a prolonged period of time.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-march-w...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England
Also the later, and peaceful, Glorious Revolution?
The French make themselves unrulable, while the British have been utterly subjugated by the state. Positive change has completely exited the British imagination, to the point where even progressives can't articulate a positive program, only a defence of whatever happens to exist at the moment.
The fuel blockades of the early 2000's resulted in some significant political action, more than marches seem to have.
[1] https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/m4-m5-blocke...
Since it is illegal, I do not endorse it; instead I will just watch the UK burn itself.
Farage and the rest are no where to be seen (he still collects his salary from the EU apparently though!).
The upshot of all this mess will probably be as unlikely as the referendum result itself. Personally, I'm expecting the unexpected, and can see a total revocation of article 50, resulting most probably from a people's vote (anything else would be undemocratic). I mean, what other realistic option is there that isn't utterly pie-in-the-sky stupid?!
I don't know how this would be political suicide, it is currently the most popular option in polling, and it's not considered to have any greater economic costs than the other options (including reversing the referendum decision entirely!).
2. The idea that it has no greater cost than the options is ridiculous. UK Treasury and economists from all around the world have all come to the conclusion that a hard brexit is significantly more harmful than a soft brexit. And it's common sense since it imposes trade friction on the UK's largest trading partner.
For example: https://www.ft.com/content/4849bf68-1b13-11e9-9e64-d150b3105...
Therefor all the marches, petitions etc. are always/can be ignored in the context of "but the will of the 17M".
"Don't Think of an Elephant!" is now such an old book, and still a lot of people haven't read it. Brexiteers have read it it seems.
This actually should read "Brexit - The will of the 17m + 50m who are okay with this"
This would have read the same if the result had gone the other way: "Remain - The will of the Xm + 50m who are okay with this"
At the end of the day, there was a vote and more people wanted Brexit, than Remain. A democratic process and result.
Pull the other one. This isn't the BBC Have Your Say comments section. People won't just believe that because you've declared it so.
Illegal data theft: https://twitter.com/Nealb2010/status/1059068463933743104
Flagrant violations of electoral law: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journalist/ele... - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/17/vote-leave-...
Blatant lies and disinformation on immigration: https://www.europeanlawmonitor.org/eu-referendum-topics/summ...
General lies: https://www.independent.co.uk/infact/brexit-second-referendu...
More lies: https://minutehack.com/opinions/lies-damn-lies-and-brexit
Further lies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxWiRz6A9E
External interference and disinformation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/why-is...
Putting the question to the people, in a representative democracy, is a terrible idea. they should have known this after Boaty McBoatface already.
In addition UK MSM has some of the most inflaming language in all the news in Europe (and even US). I have my news.google.com set to UK by default and I switch around to other region and languages to get a more complete picture. Every country has screamy headlines. But the UK tabloids (Express, Mirror and Daily) seem to be the absolute fucking worst. Even from just reading the headlines (and knowing that it's BS) fills me with more hate than any other country's news. And I wonder: if _I_ feel so incited by this, how do Brits feel who compared to me have actual skin in the game?
[1] actually on both sides. The leave camp was infiltrated by the radical right and the left was controlled by people who were so arrogant that they'd called anyone a racist who disagreed. Those minorities who are at the fringe and work 16 hrs days (while still on the brink of homelessness) were thrown into the same pot as white-supremacists.
Having watched many Commons discussions, it basically always ends with "but the 17M".
That isn't due to apathy, and it isn't democracy either.
To avoid duplication, the rest of my comment is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19451579
The 50m (not that many - see Khol's reply) had their chance and blew it, and I say that as someone who voted remain and thinks this whole thing is a disaster, and leaving either with the May deal (bad) or the hard way (worse) would both be worse than staying. However, the people had their chance and they voted to leave. That's how democracy works. It's a serious business with real consequences.
If there is a new referendum it should be about the terms under which we will leave, and that's all. Yes the May deal is crap, but any deal we cut with the EU was going to be a horrible fudge. So much for 'cutting a deal with the EU will be the easiest in human history' because 'we hold all the cards'. I have nothing but sympathy for Theresa May. She's made mistakes, sure, but anyone else would have made their own mistakes.
As a German I hope this will be some kind of a lesson for the whole EU and UK and we will hopefully have the UK back in the EU "soon" (don't know how long this might take).
But I think it's important to draw a line now and make a "Brexit". On the one hand to show the consequences to the UK and the other unsteady EU states who might think about using some kind of exit as a vague threat, but, more important, to show the people of the UK that their will and votes are respected. I think that's what's missing in lots of EU states (at least I feel this way for Germany), so this might really be a chance for all of us.
To declare that because a poorly defined proposition sold with untruth and misdirection won out in a vote means that we can't reflect on what is now known is absurd.
Not saying the signatures so far aren't genuine, just that to have the desired effect it'll need to be reasonably free from doubt
So best described currently as `interesting times`.
Implicitly agreeing to the "but the 17M" frame, the Remainers lost the public discussion.
They did, however the response was "50M didn't vote for the status quo"
If you voted for Brexit, and you were born on any day of the year between the 14th of January and the 31st of December, your vote is matched by a vote for remain, a will opposite to yours and equally deserving of consideration.
Of course, they will keep voting until they get the answer you wanted.
(Pending API availability)
Brexit petitions in realtime:
710,563 signed for remain - 65.81% #RevokeArticle50 371,020 signed for no deal - 34.17% #NoDeal
They were started with different context, and the remainer petition might only have traction atm because it is new.
Anyway - yeah, let's just decide everything with online petitions. Totally legit.
What do you mean? To me, it seems she's tried pretty much everything, but the parliament voted down most of the proposals...
Edit: I have nothing but respect for her. She's literally the only person in the wide political spectrum in the UK that's willing to actually deal with this like a sensible adult, and she's been eating a ton of shit for it, barely complaining at all. She sacrificed a lot, her political career is completely over, and for no real result, because she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Read Matthew Parris' reports of her personality (e.g. [1]). He (a conservative journalist) says that almost everyone says she doesn't listen to anyone, speaks in soundbites, is cruel, stupid, unable to compromise and isolated.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/theresa-may-s-bre...
But consider it from a higher-level perspective. Had she done everything perfectly (for whatever definition of "perfect"), would anything be different? The EU is the "problem" here, not the UK parliament. The UK was never going to get what they wanted - free trade with no freedom of movement, nor no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and no border between Norther Ireland and the main island. The only deal possible is something like Norway and Switzerland have.
And the reality is, that neither Tory nor Labour MPs want to remain (because of how the political system works in the UK), either fully (in the EU), or partially (outside of the EU and subject to EU rules). So they (predictably) vote against that (only possible) deal.
Edit: This was, of course, perfectly obvious to all politicians, which is why no one wanted to deal with it.
May has made several easily predictable errors in her handling of this issue. She has steadfastly refused to shift her position in response to events, has miscalculated response to her interventions repeatedly, and has spent substantial time in the past several months publicly blaming everybody but herself for this outcome.
Her political career will be over not because she was "stuck between a rock and a hard place", but because she refused to acknowledge political and technical reality. I have literally no sympathy or respect for her behaviour or position, and I genuinely struggle to see a way in which this could have been handled less competently.
She's been told by the rules of Parliament that she can't have another vote on the same deal. That remains to be her plan.
These sorts of situations are the very definition of what leadership is for. The fact it's nigh an impossible situation is partly due to the path she has chosen and her relative incompetence in her job.
You can feel for her and that's fine, but at the end of the day responsibility to get the job done falls to her and she has not delivered. There are no excuses.
We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay, so unless that petition has more than 33 million signatures then it doesn't prove much does it.
(FYI: I voted remain and think Brexit is completely dumb, but it doesn't change how pointless petitions are for subjects where it's well established what people's opinions are)
I get it's a democracy yada yada, but how are people expected to make such a decision ? It has so many consequences on short and long term, even experts in the field struggle(d) to predict. We're not talking about the color of a national football team jersey or a 1% increase on alcohol tax here.
The vote wasn't about staying or leaving EU, it was about how modern propaganda can tear apart a leading world nation.
You always get the worst of people when you target their irrational fears "they" steal our money (EU budget) , "they" invade our country (immigration), &c.
You get the worst anti-democratic statements from people who believe their own voting to be based on rational thought and everyone else's on irrational fears.
Direct democracy isn't the only form of democracy.
We're all irrational and biased, that's inherent to being human. Some people are more informed than other and there are processes to mitigate biases (direct democracy isn't one of them).
The problem comes from people who have no business in the vote, no knowledge of the issues, are not even aware of what biases are, and drink the propaganda kool aid.
Brexit was mostly about:
- "we spend to much money on EU"
- "too many migrants"
Well first off London only strives because of international financial businesses, closing the borders and making it harder for people to migrate is a death sentence [0]. Since the vote Brexit cost the UK much more than what they contribute to the EU [1], they export/import ~50% of their good to/from Europe [2]
Time will tell, what I'm convinced of is that Brexit was sold on lies. It might turns out good for them, but if it does it won't be because of good planning and well thought decisions, it'll be a combination of luck and really good damage control.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/371c63ba-4b08-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f...
As a fellow EU-citizen I am absolutely horrified by the chaos currently unfolding in the UK, but dismissing the entire voting process while referring to "democracy yada yada" is far scarier than the outcome of a democratic election will ever be.
voting population of UK - 17.6m leave votes = people who didn't vote for Brexit
Which is a huge majority and by that measure we shouldn't leave. I don't agree with that standpoint either, but both your viewpoint and that are misrepresentations.
Those that didn't vote either way, don't count, and shouldn't count.
Percentages in elections are of active voters.
Unless they were prevented from voting some way, their post-facto protests are meaningless.
You can't have your cake (not give a toss about votes and not participate) and eat it (still have your opinion matter on voted topics) too
That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say?
A slim majority of those who voted, several years ago, stirred up by masses of illegal propaganda, especially in the last days before the vote. Now after getting some idea of the reality, the tides look to have significantly changed. Current opinion polls are showing significant majority for remain.(61% in the last YouGov poll)
(Also, it was 17 not 33)
That "61%" is probably about right for what would you'd get for a two-way referendum between Remain and No Deal, or between Remain and May's Deal, but if you were to repeat the Remain-Leave referendum (which would be an insane thing to do - it was madness the first time), I wouldn't be surprised if Leave would win again, by a narrow margin.
"Well, if you knows of a better 'ole go to it"?
A) Should we leave?
B) if we leave, should be we leave even without a deal with the EU?
I.e. two (or more) distinct questions. If you vote no at the fort question, you still get to express your opinion on the second.
I have found betting odd's to be far superior insight than public opinioin polls and with that, ring up a betting shop and ask them what odds they will give that the UK stays as an EU member, that should give you a fair perspective as unlike polls, any mistake they make costs them money.
But for me and many others, polls are futile and so often very very wrong as Brexit and Trump have demonstrated.
Polls before Brexit where wrong, no reasons to trust them now.
It's not going to prove much even then. As a test I just signed this with a fake name, all you need is an E-Mail address and to enter some valid UK post code.
Anyone who's paying any attention to some Internet petition that's implemented like this is crazy. In some other European countries there's online petitions like this, but they'll make you go through the government's official login gateway.
The people behind the petition website are not idiots.
They're not going to have a known fool-proof mapping of names/postal codes to something that's guaranteed to be that person's current E-Mail address.
Which, in the age of allegations of say Russian interference in elections[1] means this sort of Internet poll is always going to be suspect.
It doesn't mean it's completely useless, it's some general way of gauging interest for sure, but the GPs suggestion was that something would change once it passed the 33 million mark. I don't think you can make that claim with a poll that's so easily gamed.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
Sure, they would have to give up a lot of privileges, but these would be scrapped anyway and are mostly counter to the idea of a union.
I am not from the UK and I would have voted for staying in the union. Even if the EU is a undemocratic, bureaucratic moloch that really needs a lot of constructive criticism to improve.
But having people actually want to be part of a union is much more important than any technicalities involving trade, foreign relations and policies.
The lack of respect for the position of Brexiteers had its own effect, no matter how stupid you think their decision is.
Basically the Referendum should never have happened in the first place, it doesn't have a legal blinding ( Correct me if I am wrong on this one ), and I totally blame David Cameron for the current mess.
Well not completely. It allows UK politicians to imitate useful activity around the Brexit.
The two halves are not static. Leave voters are predominately older and enough of them have died to shift the proportion (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-leave-...). It's clear that that Leave was a racist (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/25/483362200...) campaign designed to frighten old people.
>Even if no one had changed their mind since the 2016 referendum, population changes mean that, from 19 January 2019, a majority of voters will back staying in the EU, according to the analysis. By 29 March, when Britain is due to leave the bloc, the Remain side is forecast to have a majority of around 100,000.
Might as well just start banning "racists" and other undesirables from the polls outright if that's the path you want to go down.
One could say the same about May's repeated requests for votes in parliament on her "deal". It was rejected, we need a better solution.
I voted remain but I'd rather crash out with no deal on the 29th than go through this endless uncertainty ad nauseum.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/07/corrupt-vot...
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2018/07/24/conserva...
https://unboxed.co/product-stories/petitions/
e: This came out worded as if I was disproving, I'm agreeing with the grandparent comment and showing my working
At the time it went down, I was seeing 2k signups a minute and rising. I was just thinking how the load handling was impressive when poof it was down.
Back now, though, which is also pretty good. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584
UPDATE: It's down again. 502 bad gateway. I was seeing close to 3k signups a minute when it fell over this time.
UPDATE 2: Seems to be back? Clearly unstable though with these load levels.
Update: Eventually got the email and confirmed my support.
Or in marketing terms they could have use Request / Min.
I noted 3,350 per minute about 20 minutes ago!
Also no worries for posting :)
Then the site started crashing, and it slowed drastically (between 502 Bad Gateway nginx errors :-), at one point one signature in several minutes.
Then it resumed, but only at 20/s, and intermittently.
Now it is clocking up again, but at about 30/s.
It's impossible to be sure, but with this abrupt change of rates, I think it very likely the outage is continuing to affect many people trying to sign it, and will have a significant effect on the total number of signatures that are achieved.
https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/08/16/scaling-the-petiti...
Perhaps, a petition is required to employ a new Cloud Architect, as this is not the first time the Petitions service has had to cope with extra traffic & spew out 502 Bad Gateway error.
"The Government’s policy is not to revoke Article 50. Instead, we continue to work with Parliament to deliver a deal that ensures we leave the European Union as planned"
I have signed, however. Prove me wrong, UK Govt
It's only the politicians now who are trying to save their reputation. Sadly, they are willing to sacrifice country well-being to remain be seen as heroes.
Britain already has "special status"[1] that was given to it in before referendum. No other country in EU has such a deal.
[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35622105
I guess it's possible that there are no popular petitions in the last hour because of the outage.
Currently... "Petitions is down for maintenance. We know about it and we're working on it. Please try again later."
You've made your bed, time to sleep in it.
Real life isn't a video game. You don't get to replay from your last save if you don't like the outcome.
The problem with that: the EU/EFTA is a large economic and regulatory power, with which the majority of UK international trade occurs (60% of imports and 48% of exports). This is basically a consequence of both geographic and cultural proximity. The result is that UK regulatory and trade regimes will be heavily influenced by actions of the EU/EFTA market in terms of regulation and trade policy; the UK will need to remain closely aligned for the foreseeable future. This means that being "outside" that market introduces obvious inefficiencies and costs, with few indications of any economic benefits that may emerge.
Article 50 itself is very short and doesn’t explain any ifs and buts of the process. The courts had to interpret it a few times to determine things like how revocation works, how can extensions happen, etc.
One big flaw I raised with the EU authorita's in 2015 was that it has no provision for displaced nationals. I raised that several times, serveral MEP's from many countries, Tusk, you name it.
The response - nada, nothing, zilch and even too this day, not one single MEP or eurocrat has bothered to fix that glaring flaw that sees and allows innocent nationals to be used as negotiation pawns.
Even now, no attempts are being made or driven to fix this oversight in Article 50 and that kind of lack of priority and care is never going to win votes in the public's eye's. So it could all happen again, causing undue and unfair stress upon innocent people caught up in a situation that could of been totally avoided.
Citation needed. I have read the primary ruling on this[1], and I don't recall anything of the sort.
As the Court notes:
> Although, during the drafting of [Article 50 TEU], amendments had been proposed [...] to avoid the risk of abuse during the withdrawal procedure [...], those amendments were all rejected on the ground, expressly set out in the comments on the draft, that the voluntary and unilateral nature of the withdrawal decision should be ensured.
[1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
" In the second place, the revocation of the notification of the intention to withdraw must, first, be submitted in writing to the European Council and, secondly, be unequivocal and unconditional, that is to say that the purpose of that revocation is to confirm the EU membership of the Member State concerned under terms that are unchanged as regards its status as a Member State, and that revocation brings the withdrawal procedure to an end."
This means that any withdrawal from Atricle 50 can only be proper if this is the true end of the procedure. Otherwise, it would not be "unconditional".
You may be thinking of the Advocate General's initial opinion, which accepted that unilateral revocation would be possible only if it did not involve an "abusive practice", under which the idea of revocation followed be immediate re-notification might be considered "abusive". However, no reference to this appears in the final judgement of the CJEU.
So Britain would try to invoke Article 50, the EU would say “no,” and then...? Civil war? Hard Brexit?
Opinion is divided as to whether it requires Parliament or if the Government can do it without further ado.
The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry
into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the
notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement
with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
Even overflights of EU by UK will struggle - Chicago allows them, but will EU air safety recognize the UK's CAA
There have been various platitudes about how neither side wants this to happen, but not very clear how legally it will happen.
You announce to leave there should be no going back.
I get what you're saying but this poll is to say "Please look at this further" not "Please instantly do this thing in the poll"
