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On france, we currently have one with 2.1M signatures, gov still said nope (petition against reintroduction of dangerous pesticide, backed by sciencists community)
Don’t you guys have a more effective way of convincing the government?
Yellow vests, Citroëns on fire, Guillotines
Citroëns on fire
A fine tradition
Milk poured all over the streets of Paris worked well for the dairy farmers to the best of my knowledge. Imagine the fucking smell two days later.
The French are first class protesters.
The problem being that the farmers are usually protesting for pesticide.
I signed the petition but I had zero belief it would actually result in anything.
We don’t actually live in a democracy, that’s just something they tell us while they do whatever the bloody hell they want.
Meanwhile Nigel Farage is just racking up these own goals while getting ready to sell the whole country in three years time.
Crossing my fingers for the Corbyn party…
Hmm, I’d be a little more enthused if he wasn’t on the side of Russia.
Not going to defend him on this but hey, if there’s any politician who might do what the people want, it would be Jeremy Corbyn.
Not going to define him on this
Why not? Honestly fuck that.
Sorry, typo, meant to say defend not define.
Oh! Well that’s a totally different slant haha! Thanks for the clarification.
reminds me of my philosophy teacher arguing against someone because my teacher said that we don’t live in a democracy, but a lot of people disagreed.
i still remember the look of disapointment in their face, since they had just told us the definition of democracy😭
I love people who say “we don’t live in a democracy because we live in a republic.” Yeah, we don’t live in a republic either, bitch.
i understand thinking you live in a democracy, but i’ve never heard people saying it’s a republic 💀
A republic has a specific definition but we absolutely do not meet.
It’s a representative democracy, not direct democracy.
It’s Lizard Democracy.
And why should it be that way? You can certainly have a mixed system. In many American states, for example, official petitions can result in referendums to enact laws without the legislature’s intervention.
No idea mate. I think it’s a pretty crap system personally.
Switzerland and Austria too, Germany not
Because the plebs are fucking retarded and change their opinions more often than their underpants. With a representative democracy, you have at least some chance that those in office try to think for more than 30 seconds about a topic before they vote.
If we had a direct democracy in Germany, I bet we’d see a ridiculous amount of racist and anti-poor legislation pass.
Or consider the anti-vaxxers as an example. I want my government policy to be made by somebody who doesn’t think “macrophage” is an insult.
Of all the arguments against democracy, I think this one is probably among the strongest.
In the past, this was solved by giving the power of the franchise only to the upper class, because those people at least had the time and education needed to consider their choices before voting. Of course, such a system would never work in the modern day. It would just result in a country turning into a cyberpunk hellhole.
But on the other hand, giving educated people stronger voting power than uneducated people seems to be a historically unexplored idea. Something like all citizens having one vote to start, secondary school graduates having a second, baccalaureate holders having a third, and then graduate degree holders having a fourth.
Education is tightly connected to parents’ education. A voting scheme like this would cement another aristocracy.
And it’s also against the ‘everyone has equal rights’ thingy we kinda agreed on.
It doesn’t go against everyone having equal rights. It goes against everyone having equal power, which is not the same thing.
I’m also going to make a very bold and very unpopular claim that aristocracy is not an inherently bad thing. Every country already has an aristocracy of some sort, because aristocracy is defined as the group of people at the top of the social hierarchy. Even so-called communist countries have had aristocracies in all but name.
The only difference is that by acknowledging that you can’t get rid of the existence of an aristocracy, you can begin to think about how one might control who is deserving of being in that class of people.
It is natural for intelligence to be somewhat tied to the education of one’s parents. I don’t see anything wrong with that. But at least with education, as long as people are given roughly equal educational opportunities, there will be chances for social mobility, and much more so than today. If you take a look at China’s imperial examination system, as flawed as it was (largely based on the arbitrary memorisation of Confucian classics and essay-writing), it still provided unprecedented social mobility for the time, where any literate peasant could obtain a well-paid job in the imperial bureaucracy and prestige for their family. Yes, already-educated people had an advantage but that is not necessarily a strictly bad thing, as unfair as it seems from first glance.
Let me give a scenario to think about (this is not a proposal but just some brain food): What would happen if we administered a university entrance exam to all seekers of legislative office and gave the positions to the top 100 highest scorers? Obviously the average rich person would have an advantage over the average poor person, because they have better educations, but at the same time, poor people would have a much better shot of actually getting the office than they would under a purely democratic electoral system, and we have the important benefit that whoever does get the job is far more likely to possess basic thinking skills.
Again, not a real proposal, just something to think about. The system described above would definitely suck in reality if implemented as written, and it doesn’t stop smart but malicious people from obtaining power.
Sounds like sitution 1 with extra steps.
Yea, great idea, except that if you think degrees lead to general intelligence you’ve gotta get out more. I know way too many people with specialized degrees who really only know that one thing and half the time they aren’t even good at that. In the US, and many other places, education is something that is restricted and there are many barriers to it which just bring us back to a rich vs poor situation.
It turns out that earning a degree is actually quite simple and more a test of your ability to navigate the schooling process than your ability to learn and apply that information. I went to college and I’ve seen some absolutely braindead people graduate, and I’ve worked with university grads who are smart and also with university grads who are a step or two away from eating glue in the printer room. I’ve met people who never went to any post-secondary education who have a great handle on things but either their career doesn’t require “higher education” or they weren’t able to afford to even think about it.
Example: There are medical doctors and nurses who are against vaccines. A small amount, so few that it’s obvious that they’re completely wrong, but they still exist. There are engineers who can barely keep themselves together, and developers who can’t stop not understanding how the world works. Donald Trump went to a prestigious university and he’s about as stupid as they come, alongside pretty much every Republican.
Just a reminder that downvoting something doesn’t stop it being true.
You are being downvoted for stating a completely unrelated non-sequitur.
“we don’t actually live in a democracy”.
Yes we do. It’s a representative democracy. Look it up if you don’t believe me.
You’re completely missing the point.
Please enlighten me.
the point is stupid and irrelevant
I mean 122,000 out of 60 million isn’t a lot.
Could likely get 5 million to say banning people based on colour is a good idea, but I don’t agree.
Only need 500 (out of 40mil) + one MP sign off for the government to legally have to respond in Canada. They don’t have to say yes but they have to officially acknowledge you at least. I was pretty surprised by how low that threshold is.
It’s only like 10k here too, but the response is always “we have no plans to change anything”
why are you including infants amd people without the right to vote in your figure?
there’s less than 48mill who can vote btw
That’s not the point. The point of this post is that the government didn’t respond.
I read that as the governments response was no. Not that they didn’t respond.
The government in the UK will respond if 10,000 signatures and will debate in parliament if 100,000 signatures.
So they’re going to debate it then because it’s definitely over 100,000.
That ain’t a real petition bro. We don’t use comic sans on government sites.
They did, they said no.
The purpose of online petitions is to provide a means for people to psychologically discharge their righteous anger at something and need to be heard about it, by “doing something”, with a “something” which the politicians can safelly ignore.
It’s a lot harder to ignore large demonstrations and even harder to ignore people activelly campaigning at the grassroots level in their electoral circles to make specific asshole politicians loose their seats, so best have the
plebescitizens discharge their anger on some automated online straight-to-trash People’s Will recorder.Wait until you hear about protests
Just don’t inconvenience anyone in any way.
Being slightly irritating is a terrorist activity now.
but why
Because there is nothing legally binding about petitions.
If petitions (= begging) are the highest level of what people can do between two elections, something about the system is fundamentally broken.
Thats why guillotines exist.
There’s a few steps between begging and guillotines.
But yes, politics exists on a spectrum.
Traditionally it’s
- Soap Box
- Ballot Box
- Jury Box
- Ammo Box
First you talk. Then you vote. Then you use the legal system. And if things are still broken, you use violence.
I’m in the US so I can’t speak for the UK specifically, but it does feel like the rise of fascism and consolidation of power into fewer and fewer people is a real problem that won’t be fixed by asking nicely.
Things aren’t getting worse in the UK, they’re just staying exactly the same as they’ve always been.
There are two parties and they’re both basically identical to each other and they just keep swapping every decade or so. The Conservatives crash the economy, mostly due to piss-pour economic handling and welfare cuts, eventually everyone gets irritated with them and boots them out. Labour proceeds to blame the conservatives for the economic mess for the next 10 years, fail to really achieve anything of any significance due to the inevitable infighting (they’ve already started), and eventually lose power to the conservatives. Then the entire story mess repeats itself.
You get five or six rounds of this and then all the current lot die and you replace them with a new bunch of idiots.
Seriously this crap goes all the way back to the 1930s. We never get a break.
Things are getting worse in the UK in terms of wealth inequality, living standards, civil rights and democratic freedom.
- Soap Box
- Ballot Box
- Jury Box
- Ammo Box
- Pine Box
Sadly, most unhappy people still think that laws must be respected, and guillotining has fallen out of popularity with them quite recently.
Well it does atleast force them to make a public opinion on it, it’s a foot in the door.
Which would be useful if they were also forced to actually provide a somewhat science based line of reasoning for their answer. But in reality its gonna be completely made up reasons not based on any facts.
Not all petitions are based on stuff that’s “factual” or “provable” as well though.
Petition to paint crosswalks in pride colours for example.
Thats true i guess. I was thinking of car traffic restrictions or “one more lane” type stuff.
While I wouldn’t personally mind pride colors on crosswalks, having them be forced to answer “anything” is better than being allowed to ignore it.
Example:
"Painting them pride color will increase the cost of painting them, as it requires new tools and extra colors adding complexity to an otherwise quick paint job with tools used also on other similar road work .
While we agree in the spirit, the cost of doing this outweighs the increased visibility of a minority group, and will therefore not be considered further. "
Yup, it can be a way of getting a discussion started
For Canada the rules are as follows:
The Standing Orders of the House of Commons require the government to respond to every petition presented to the House within 45 calendar days. If the House is not sitting on that day, the response must be presented at the next sitting of the House.
The petitioner, supporters, signatories, and the member of Parliament who authorized the online publication of the e-petition will be notified by email when the response is tabled in the House. A copy will also be found on the petitions website along with the original petition.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Home/AboutContent?guide=PIElectronicGuide
The intern responding doesn’t have the authority to do anything.
Because the government doesn’t give a shit about us
Counterpoint: Brexit
Petition
Bad thing please
Government responded
Yes
deleted by creator
The petition to reverse Brexit got something like 4 million signatures. Response: LOL No.
Brexit it’s referendum because the Tories were scared of loosing power to Frog Face Faeage’s party. So they did a bit of appeasement.
That just proves the point. The politicians will do what serves them best, regardless of what’s good for the people or the country.
Yeah, that’s very true. But they’ll do the bad thing it even if there’s a referendum on it.
Scotland stopped voting Labour into power over a decade ago. If only England had the balls to do it too. Torys and Labour, two sides of the same corrupt coin. Come England, youre better than that. Starmer is a tory cunt. Vote greens, or Libdems, or anyone else buy those two corrupt scum parties.
LabourStarmer is just warming shitface Nigel’s seat at this point
This image is a great reflection of the entire history of the UK, incidentally.
Well they did say yes once in 1215
To the Barons, not the plebes.
The Magna Carta was just a reapropportioning of power amongst the elites, who had the riff-raff fight and kill each other to determine how much power the King would have and how much would the other nobles get.
All but a handful of people were as powerless after it as they were before.
Pretty much - we all put our names to them, but they do nothing.
The best option is to organise writing campaigns to your local MP and indicate that this is the decider on your vote.
More like “This is good thing, please vote.”
What if there was a law that said once something had enough signatures, it needs to be put to a vote?
The only issue I can think of is the threshold being too high and authenticity of the signatures.
We don’t deserve nice things.
