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UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

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Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#211

Post by europsucks »

franky47 wrote: post #70
europsucks wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be meaningless, anyway, unless you compare it to the number of people who are opposed to the petition?

I made a progress bar against the NoDeal counter-petition: https://brexit-petitions-count.now.sh (Pending API availability)

It seems the NoDeal-petition is much older. It ends in April, and the Remain-petition ends in August. According to the web site, petitions run for 6 months. So it certainly isn't a counter-petition.

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.

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#212

Post by EForEndeavour »

ahje wrote: post #177
lm28469 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay 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 wa…

Alas, history tells us that the people with "rational" opinions are no better to rule than the ones with "irrational" ones. At least not in the long run. 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.

I think the above poster's point is that plenty of government decisions are not voted on by referendum, and shouldn't be. The consequences of Brexit are complex and far-reaching, more so than countless other types of decisions that are not directly voted on. So why should we expect The People to know any better?

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#213

Post by stordoff »

gmueckl wrote: post #191
stordoff wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my reading at all. It brings _the_ withdrawal procedure to an end - the procedure under Article 50 is terminated. It does not preclude starting another. Indeed, it would be contradictory - the purpose of the notice is to confirm membership is "under terms that are unchanged" -- if the State loses its right to invoke Article 50, the terms _have_ changed.

No, the reading is very clear to me: a withdrawal cannot be lawful if it is made with the intent to continue exit negotiations. If negotiations were to continue the proceedings have not ended. A new invocation of Article 50 can only be made as the start a new and completely independent process. Everything that has been negotiated and decided so far would have to be ignored.

> Everything that has been negotiated and decided so far would have to be ignored.

I'm not disagreeing. The current procedures are brought to close. IF new proceedings were brought, the EU would be well within its rights to say no and that anything it agreed to previously no long applies if the UK tried to rely on anything negotiated previously. It does not, however, prevent those new, independent proceedings starting at all.

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#214

Post by pjc50 »

lazyjones wrote: post #192
lm28469 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> worst anti-democratic statements 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 pr…

> 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. Of course, that's always the other people... > Well first off London only strives because of international financial businesses London isn't the UK and "international" doesn't mean "about the EU-27". > Since the vote Brexit cost the UK much more than w…

Iceland is in the EEA and Schengen. If Brexit was moving the UK to that status it would only be slightly bad - almost identical to the current situation, except with more free movement and no ability to vote on EU rules.

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#215

Post by avar »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #114
avar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...]so unless that petition has more than 33 million signatures then it doesn't prove much does it[...] 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 petitio…

Anyone who thinks they can't quickly and easily electronically check entries against the electoral roll is crazy. But congratulations on wasting your time.

Even if they're doing that it's relatively easy to find what postal code a bunch of British citizens live in (e.g. start with famous people whose primary residence is often well-known). I filled it in with "Fake McFakety" or something like that in a random postal code in London, so I wasn't even trying.

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...

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#216

Post by jonplackett »

colinramsay wrote: post #23
jonplackett wrote: post #21

Petitions for Brexit are completely pointless. 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)

While I think this petition will fall on deaf ears, you can't definitively say "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay", because not all of the country voted in the referendum. Likewise, you could say: 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…

The point I was making is that the petition proves nothing that isn't already know - a lot of people don't want to leave. It's not even a march where people have to go somewhere to show how much they care. it's just a button click - which is an easier thing to do than go out and vote. so it's not worth reporting, it's meaningless.

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#217

Post by SeanDav »

threeseed wrote: post #197
eertami wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Seriously anyone who thinks the Brexit referendum was democratic or fair is either ignorant or naive. And it's scandalous that the UK government hasn't properly invested everything that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

>> "Seriously anyone who thinks the Brexit referendum was democratic or fair is either ignorant or naive."

You may have a point about the fairness - the Government did pump in 9.3 million GBP to push the Pro-Remain position, in the form of a Pro-Remain pamphlet to every household in the UK. This, arguably, was hardly fair as the Leave side could not hope to match that level of expenditure to air their position, yet the people still voted Leave - go figure.

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#218

Post by avar »

gpderetta wrote: post #162
bloak wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to The Economist, Feb 23, reporting on a YouGov survey in December, 49% support Remain, and that number hasn't changed much. However, the 51% who don't support Remain support a variety of different proposals. To me it seems highly unlikely that any particular proposal would beat Remain in a choice between those two options. Remain is the Condorcet winner. That "61%" is probably about right for what would yo…

A proper followup referendum should be something like this. 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.

Doing it this way screws over people whose first choice is a no-deal Brexit, but who would rather stay as a full EU member than accept May's "not quite EU" deal.

This is why you do ranked choice voting, which covers any combination of such opinions.

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#219

Post by coldtea »

megous wrote: post #92
coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I think this petition will fall on deaf ears, you can't definitively say "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay", because not all of the country voted in the referendum. 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 yo…

> Those that didn't vote either way, don't count, and shouldn't count. That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say?

>That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say?

They don't have a say in any other long-term-implementation matter which was voted before they became eligible for vote, so why would this be an exception?

Re: UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

#220

Post by mnw21cam »

corobo wrote: post #81
sbhn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article 50 was triggered by an unelected prime minister

All prime ministers in the UK are unelected.

To clarify, they are elected to be an MP. But which MP becomes PM is more a power struggle than an election.
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