• Technofrood@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    Has any petition on that ever actually changed anything? I feel like it’s sole purpose is some kind of pressure release valve and every parliament discussion stemming from it boils down to “No”.

    • solarpunkandrobots@feddit.uk
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      9 hours ago

      At time of writing the number of petitions over the lifetime of the system that reached Parliament and then led to law change or action stands at 0. Its a pointless PR exercise in looking like they care. The law on it doesn’t even require it to enter the commons, merely to be debated in some back room for half an hour by 3 or 4 mps.

      I did see that if you counted up EU stats as a single set of figures instead of country by country the EU would count as the 2nd greatest economy in the world and comfortably ahead of the third. Bet there would much more support for rejoining if that was widely known, it’d show how little chance there is even in principle of making international trader UK work well enough to offset the loss.

      • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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        6 hours ago

        At the time of writing. How many partitions have had the support of a significant % of society compared to electoral wins.

        Because that will always be the argument used when trying to use a partition to change the views of an elected government. Even when those views are not manifesto bound.

        So yep the numbers placed to force response and debate are pointless. They are as others indicate, just about making people think they have a voice. But more importantly is is about allowing the government to say only 100000 disagree with us. Where as 16m voted to leave the EU. So we have the right to ignore this debate.

        Lets face it is 100k could change the view of a government elected by 30% of voters. It would hardly be democratic. These things need to start out looking for the support needed to scare a government into change. Support needs to be built with the population before trying to express that support in such ways. Or at least during that time.

        We need to ignore the numbers provided by the government. Amd instead look to numbers,bers we can beat them over the head with in the media.

    • Mjb@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      The petition system exists to make the people think they have a voice. Much like parish councils etc. Keep the busybodies busy with nothing so they don’t stick their nose in something.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      No. We’ve had 20 years of them I think, and none have done more than spur a conversation between a handful of people.

      I’d like to see the system abolished and force people to get up and do something to get their voice “heard” because then it actually might be.