21–30 of 104 posts
An online petition? Damn, they're bringing out the big guns!
For example Turing was given a pardon after JGCumming of HN fame started a petition on there.
It's not perfect, it is "just" a voting site, but we have had a taste of direct democracy - we might just start to like it.
London throws it's toys out of the pram. It's quite funny to see the commentators who never saw this result coming are now the ones with all of the explanations as to why it has happened. Watching them evolve a new narrative in real time is quite funny. Apparently 50% of the country are racists, or so stupid that they have been easily duped by the bad politicians. There couldn't possibly be any other explanations.
Perhaps one of the biggest geopolitical events of a decade shouldn't have been on HN. The irony of you talking about Londoners throwing out toys, then locking your account because one story got through that you think is incorrect... it's delicious.
A map of the petition signatures showed that most came from England’s major
cities, topped by London where there is a separate petition calling on
Mayor Sadiq Khan to declare the capital independent from the United Kingdom,
and apply to join the EU.
I don't think a second UK referendum is realistic and I'm personally pinning my hopes on a second Scottish Independence referendum, but there is no doubt that the close result is being incredibly divisive. I never thought I'd agree with Nigel Farage, but he did say: "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way" Of course, he meant a 52-48 Remain win - but I think the same principle holds eit…
Almost one million people decided the vote. This smacks of sour grapes to me.
Yeah this feels like the "oh shit I didn't bother to go vote because I didn't think it would matter" folks suddenly realizing they probably should have stepped up..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the last thing they will do because then it would encourage every EU country to hold a referendum and do the same thing, which would kill the EU easily. [What I see as more likely is that the UK invokes Article 50, goes through a financial crisis, and then the EU offer to cancel our Article 50 invocation and let us stay in the EU if we join the Euro and Schengen.]
It's not obvious at this point that the EU will still be around a couple of years from now. I think if one more country votes to leave between now and then a renegotiation and some core constitutional changes become more likely. The basic problem is that the Leave side lied about the benefits of leaving, but they were absolutely correct that the core of the EU has become a neoliberal financial dictatorship with rathe…
Why?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They won't, though. The EU elites want to discourage other countries from leaving. If they compromise then others will follow in the UK's path in order to extract concessions.
The main problem is that the British don't even know what to ask for. When examined closely, there really isn't anything actually that wrong about the EU. They could've gotten a lot more in the recent negotiations but nobody knows what that should be. The only specific grievance is EU migration and that just happens to be one of the four fundamental principles.
London throws it's toys out of the pram. It's quite funny to see the commentators who never saw this result coming are now the ones with all of the explanations as to why it has happened. Watching them evolve a new narrative in real time is quite funny. Apparently 50% of the country are racists, or so stupid that they have been easily duped by the bad politicians. There couldn't possibly be any other explanations.
Perhaps one of the biggest geopolitical events of a decade shouldn't have been on HN. The irony of you talking about Londoners throwing out toys, then locking your account because one story got through that you think is incorrect... it's delicious.
I actually don't think that "one of the biggest geopolitical events of a decade" should be on HN if it is not directly connected to Tech.
Here is a more fitting article to be on HN: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24...
There are plenty of other forums for talking about this subject.
In the past, i've found HN Comments about political issues to be of the least quality/value.
The funniest/most interesting part wasn't the call for a second referendum, but the second petition described at the end of the article: A map of the petition signatures showed that most came from England’s major cities, topped by London where there is a separate petition calling on Mayor Sadiq Khan to declare the capital independent from the United Kingdom, and apply to join the EU. I'm not even sure how that could…
If you'd do that, you could achieve any result you want, just by doing it over and over until. Due to voter's fatigue and/or daily sentiment, results will vary, so you can pick a result by deciding when to stop.
It might make sense (though still be questionable) to repeat the vote if major facts changed, but I don't see that happening. The stock market shouldn't have been a big surprise, Cameron's resignation neither, nor the Leave faction retracting some of their promises.
As much as I don't like the outcome of the first referendum, I think it would be fundamentally undemocratic to do a second referendum.