Petition watch

Cba to scroll that other thread

1.83m...

There are a lot of Brits abroad who were mightily pissed off that they didn't have the right to vote. And of course people taking last minute holidays before no deal transport chaos. 

no chance - this is a demonstration that the will of the people is not united as May attempted to tell us in her ridiculous speech - just about the only thing that unites the whole country is despair at her and her handling of the entire brexit mess - this applies to brexiteers and remainers equally.

The Petitions Committee has tweeted about that, they are only updating about every half hour to reduce load on the site.

Now at 3.08m

That's about 750k people signed up since 7 this morning.  So about 150k an hour.

"Also interesting that more people apparently would not prefer a 2nd ref than want one:"

Probably because, like me, they have no longer have confidence in folks' ability not to press the big red button labelled "do not press under any circumstances unless you essentially want to f*** up everything".

what will we get to folks?

what with the publicity of the march tomorrow (albeit it is for peoples vote rather than outright revocation) I am guessing 5m plus.

i think 4m for sure and 5m if we’re lucky. 

TMPM will just ignore it of course. She ignores Parliament- she won’t have any problem blowing off an online petition. 

I see the latest poll says 13% in favour of Mays deal  - hilarious in the context of her abomination on Wednesday night claiming she was speaking for the people.

Arbiter, from your own link:

Viewing non UK locations with over 100 signatures shows not only an insignificant contribution but also clearly demonstrates natural behaviour by ex-pats signing from abroad, with France showing 10,563 signatures as the largest non-UK group.

  • There is nothing to suggest bots based outside of the UK are impacting on this petition in terms of numbers of signatures and the figures of non-UK signatories are not significant.
  • The data available suggest that signatures are largely genuine and non-domestic signatures are indicative of ex-pats signing the petition.
  • We suspect that efforts may have been made to deny service to the petitions website, preventing users from signing the petition but restrict our view to suspicion in the absence of verified information.
  • It is clear that disinformation is being spread to attempt to discredit this petition by known disinformation actors.

Lady P - As I said you can spin it the way they do.  But I struggle to rationalise how they can state "non UK locations ... shows ... an insignificant contribution" when they don't know where 60% of the signatures come from.

I mean my understanding was that the Russians, Chinese , Koreans etc. didn't normally admit where they're from (albeit in the spirit of fairness I would have thought state hackers would be more likely to actually be showing as from the UK).

Arbiter, I don't think it's compulsory to put your postcode on the form when you sign. I imagine large numbers of people simply signed up with their email address.

So you think all just self reported?  I'd kind of assumed it may be pulled at least in part from IP address.

In which case fairy muff that explains the 60% absence of data - but really blows a hole in the "There is nothing to suggest bots based outside of the UK are impacting on this petition" unless you really think people writing overseas bots would feel obliged to make their bots enter an overseas country into the relevant data field...

Yeah, I'm quite happy for there to be an investigation to determine whether there has been significant foreign interference in this petition...when the investigation into the foreign interference in the actual referendum has been concluded.

There is no evidence that the Russians have interfered in this petition though, whereas there is an awful lot of evidence that they interfered in the referendum itself (which was, of course, far more significant than a petition), and which the government is ignoring.

Why?

Indeed.  I suspect because its a very difficult thing to really do anything about.

I mean all of those people turned up and voted to Leave.  The Russians didn't have troops on the ground press ganging people.  They weren't hacking into voting machines and registering votes for people who don't exist.  I don't think there is even any suggestion that they were involved in any Tower Hamlets esque trickery is there?

They simply persuaded people (illegally and in large part through lies / misinformation) to vote a certain way.  Clearly illegal - but they genuinely convinced people to cast legitimate votes.

Our laws by their very nature don't generally overturn results because of that sort of thing - principally because you have no way of knowing what the result would have been otherwise.  It doesn't even make sense to re-run the vote given we've got the square root of fvck all chance of preventing the Russians from meddling in the next one either.

Were I seeking to sow discord and disharmony in the UK, boosting the numbers on a viral petition (that is going to be ignored anyway) would definitely be something I would be doing.

Arbiter, the thing that will cause the most "discord and disharmony in the UK" is a catastrophic no deal Brexit. Anything that might prevent that from happening is fine by me.

Pretty incredible that you just say "Nothing anyone can do about the Russian interference in the referendum....shrug" and then in the same breath you get worked up about the possibility that not all the signatures on this petition are genuine.

Also worth pointing out that "our laws" are clearly not equipped to deal with these cyber attacks on our democracy and that is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, not brushed under the carpet because it's too difficult to think about.

Woolas was directly involved and barred from public office and Rahman was false votes wasn't it?

Both rather different situations. 

Take the US position where some are advocating automatic disqualification of candidates where evidence is found of e.g. Russian interference.  Clearly nobody advocating that has spent 30 seconds contemplating the consequences - you'd just end up with the Russians making "clumsy" attempts to interfere in favour of everyone they didn't want to get in.

And its mostly a sad "shrug" in both directions Lady P.  The petition has no chance of influencing the outcome of the Brexit process (the march actually might and I'd rather there was more press / focus on this and less on the petition).  More generally what is going to fvck us in this process is tribal factionalism. 

Inane (on the basis they carry no weight and will simply be ignored) petitions circulated on twitter and facebook are part of the problem not part of the solution.

Education?

Reasonableness?

Respect for people who hold views you disagree with?

If we are (really) lucky (at a UK level) the current situation might irretrievably fvck both the Tories and Labour. That could be a good start in breaking down some of the “them and us” endemic at high levels. 

Or maybe it’s just the last days of Rome and social media has fvcked us all with its divisiveness. It all feels a bit Black Mirror to be honest, a genie that we aren’t really going to find a way to stuff back into the bottle. 

Yes but I’m increasingly coming round to the view that the only option short term is large swathes of Labour and Tory MPs putting their country ahead of their party - and we’ve seen fvck all evidence of a willingness to do that. 

Maybe I’m too cynical and a quarter of the people who voted Remain spending 2 minutes to sign an epetition (and mostly not bothering to show what constituency they’re in) will convince the saner members of the big parties to destroy their own partys’ ability to rule for the foreseeable.

I do think the March might at least have some impact on that front though so I’m not irredeemably cynical. 

But then the club wasnt great and was going to close at sometime anyway and when sober in the morning most of them will appreciate money not wasted on overpriced drinks

except that the closure is only for that night and the club will re-open the next weekend. if you don’t go out, you miss out on the socialising and fun that comes with mixing with lots of people.

you also realise that the cost/benefit analysis is far too simplistic if measured purely on the price of a drink, and that isolating oneself is unhealthy and might make you temporarily better off cash wise but makes you poorer overall in terms of connections and exchanges of ideas

Over 5mill now

 

IN BREAKING NEWS 40 MILLION OF THE ELECTORATE, YES 40 MILLION, HAVE NOT, YES NOT SIGNED THE PETITION ! THAT IS 8 OUT OF 9 ELIGIBLE PEOPLE HAVE NOT SIGNED and back to the studio... 

This online parliament petition currently has received 25% more signatures than any other in UK history.

The 2nd highest was 4.15m calling for a 2nd referendum.

3rd highest ever was 1.6m registering their displeasure at Trump’s proposed visit.

I wouldn’t go down the cul-de-sac of comparing it to GE or referendum turnouts. I think you’re smart enough to know better than that.