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Web Petition For 2nd EU Referendum Draws Huge Interest (ap.org)
From an Associated Press report:An online petition seeking a second referendum on a British exit from the Europe Union has drawn more than 1.6 million names, a measure of the extraordinary divisiveness of Thursday's vote to leave the 28-nation bloc. The online petition site hosted by the House of Commons website even crashed Friday under the weight of the activity as officials said they'd seen unprecedented interest in the measure, which calls on the government to implement a rule that stating if that if "remain" or "leave" camps won less than 60 percent of the vote with less than a 75 percent turnout "there should be another referendum."According to reports, this is the biggest surge of support Parliament's website has ever seen. Looking at the keywords people were hitting up on Google after the news first broke, it was clear that a considerable portion of the population was clueless about the whole situation.
How cute, the democratic result didn't go our way so we'll make a new referendum with skewed option balance. This surely will make our way the only way!
How could anyone have remained clueless with the wall to wall coverage? More importantly, why should anyone that apathetic be taken seriously now?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
This is a perfect example of why life changing decisions should be by a super majority of votes, 60% or more. Making such a big change like exiting the EU on the whim of a 50% vote is moronic. :/
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
I hope this serves as a warning for the ignorant people considering a vote for Donald or Hillery.
There corrected that for you.
Just to be clear... Are you talking about Brexit, or the Democrat sit in to vote again on removing Due Process?
About 22 million of people voted for "stay". They can have all of them to sign the petition, they still remain the minority. This is supposed to be they way democracy works, or is internet changing the rules ?!?
You know what? Tough shit. You had plenty of time to research the issue *before* the vote. But no, it only occurred people to even do something as paltry as a freaking google search, AFTER the vote had already taken place.
It's about fucking time people actually started taking responsibility for their actions. It's this "Oh whoopsie! I didn't mean to do that! I want backsies!" bullshit that is the reason why the entire world is deteriorating before our very eyes.... because people can't be bothered to spend two lousy seconds to stop and think about what they're going to do, before they actually do it.
What's the phrase? Measure twice, cut once? Well guess what... That little rule applies to a hell of a lot more than just cutting wood.
But of course, I'm just pissing in the wind. (Which is amazingly difficult to do from a squatting position, let me assure you...) The average person isn't going to make any effort to change, and the world is going to get even more fucked up than it is now.
The only thing that is going to happen is that those with both the foresight and the means to protect themselves, will hunker down and wait while everyone else blows a gasket and likely start killing each other.
You do realise, that it is a petition from the citizens, not the government. I guess, many of the signers were disappointed voters who believed the bullshit about giving the EU money to the NHS. Unfortunately for them Farage changed his mind after the vote.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
A supermajority requirement is to politics what hysteresis is to control loops. It's not even an analogy, just two words for the same concept really.
The result was very narrow. The turn-out was relatively low for such an important decision. A lot of people are expressing regret, the victorious side instantly reneged on a number of promises and the predicted economic meltdown that people didn't believe would happen happened.
Given all that, a second opportunity to vote, especially now that young people are realizing that if they had bothered to turn out they could have overcome the baby boomer vote stealing their future away, seems like a reasonable request.
Even if it isn't granted, Scotland will likely leave the UK, and maybe Northern Ireland too, so they have the power to reject the result anyway and it's not fair to deny the rest of the UK the same opportunity.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Jesus Christ. You people have had independence for less than 24 hours and you're already freaking out and looking for a mommy and daddy to save you from the big bad world. You Brits really are a bunch of pansies.
Your comment is ignorant. There's no proof whatsoever that going against free trade had hurt anyone. Call it protectionism or whatever you want. In America we've had NAFTA and WTO free trade agreements that have killed the American labor force. I've seen it since the 1990s. The corporations lead a strong PACs that want you to believe how much better off you are now than going against their wishes. People like Romney fill their pockets at the expense of the middle class.
You people that support free global trade are the same ones whining about H1B, product dumping, and speaking to foreigners whilst calling Concast.
Can't have it both ways folks.
A recent web petition revealed that a large majority of US citizens want Muslim immigration stopped.
I find it hard to believe that the majority (50%+1) of US citizens even participated on the petition, let along the vast majority.
And if it wasn't the vast majority actually participating, then you fall into statistics. And statistics require methodology. What was the methodology for the sampling? What was the error margin? Standard deviation?
No wonder you are posting anonymously. You are a moron.
morcego
No one really wants to be free. It's much safer to have your betters make decisions for you.
Me: Because if you don't, nothing will change
That's a stupid reason. Change is not good if it's not for the better.
And note that earlier, Cameron went to the EU to ask for some relief. It's my understanding that not only did they say "no", they treated him disrespectfully. (And probably were chuckling to themselves saying "what 'ya gonna do - leave? HAH HAH HAH!)
Yeah no shit. Cameron was basically going and asking:
Hi, you know that club I'm in that I pay membership fees for that are used to run the club? Yeah, I'd like to pay less but I'd like to keep all the benefits of being in the club please. Oh and while you're at it, I'd actually like bigger benefits too, thanks.
I can't imaging why that went down badly.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Due to the stock exchange crash after the vote UK has lost more money than it has paid into the EU budget for the past 20 years. It is like cutting the nose to spite the face.
But by all means, go. UK has caused far more problems to the EU than it was worth.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
To give you an idea how fickle and overrated referendums are as a form of democracy, if we had waited 5 years enough old people would have died to give the opposite result.
In a few years the result will no longer reflect the will of the people. In fact, it probably doesn't today, now that the truth has come out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah really. *I had no idea that Trump would actually become president [telegraph.co.uk] just because I voted for him!*
Trump analogy usage aside (#), the interesting thing about that "regretful Brexit voter" story is it appears on the Daily Telegraph website; the Telegraph being the quintessential "quality" broadsheet rag of the right-wing, conservative, "Middle England"- and indeed, "Little Englander"- demographic whose stereotypical reader is a retired colonel in the English home counties.
In short, the paper whose readers- and editors- you would expect to be among the most enthusiastic Brexiteers.
Guess now it's all over there isn't much to lose, given that even Nigel Farage announced the morning after that the "£350m a week for the NHS" figure the Brexit campaign had been spewing about was actually BS. (##)(The same figure that pretty much any unbiased observers had been saying was BS for weeks, but if you repeat a lie enough...)
Anyway, yeah. I bloody regret that she and her countrymen voted that way as well. I also regret that there wasn't an easy way to have her live with the consequences of her decision while I didn't have to. Believe me, I've no sympathy for any of the Little Englanders who for years swallowed (and regurgitated) the endless anti-EU propaganda that used it as a whipping boy for everything under the sun while failing to acknowledge its successes. Oh, what? You didn't really want to leave the EU despite years of saying you did? You didn't realise the consequences of voting leave?
Fuck off. It's too late for you to start crying now. You shat the bed; now you have to lie in it.
(#) It's a legitimate analogy, and makes a point I already suspected regarding Trump voters' "we're voting for him to punish the establishment" mentality. But as someone who lives in Scotland- i.e. currently part of the UK- you'll forgive me if I'm currently more interested in the actual story than its reduction into an analogy for US-centric purposes.
(##) As if- even if they *did* have that extra £350m- UKIP would spend it on the NHS they're ideologically opposed to. (Given UKIP's stereotypcal popularity with defecting members of the right wing of the Conservative party- a faction which is itself known for being blatantly anti-NHS, what the hell would anyone expect?!)
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Legal perhaps, but not a valid reason. It's it's completely anti-democratic unless your petition has the support of more people than voted to stay, and all the people signing the petition were verified as being eligible to vote.
It's the equivalent of losing a contest and then continually shouting "I want a do over!" or "No fair, I wasn't ready!" or "Best N out of 2N-1!!" until you get the outcome you want. It's pathetic, grade school, childish shit.
Another European here. Basically what you said, except the exact opposite.
Most of what you say should result in you looking inward to your own country, not outwards to the EU. Welfare is alive and well (pun intended) in many EU member nations, as is societal integration, pensions, and ... wait what job losses? Unemployment has been steadily dropping the past several years, it's low as it was in 2000 there was this niggling little thing called a global recession in between in which the EU fared quite well compared to many industrialised nations.
There is quite a bit of bureaucracy, but that's the only thing I'll agree with.
As for breaking up the common currency. Pass thanks. Ideally we combined the central banks to prevent each country screwing with the system, but really screw going back to the driving for 1 hour and having to have 3 difference currencies because ... reasons.