
"staff at Direct Gov working to remove duplicates."
"staff at Direct Gov working to remove duplicates."
Wouldn't it be better to merge duplicates rather than remove them?
The Coalition government's E-petitions website remains open for business today but has been flooded with wishy-washy anti-hanging advocates. Yesterday's launch was marred by downtime and a flurry of pro-death sentence petitions following a campaign by Guido Fawkes and the Daily Mail. But the antis are getting organised and " …
And run the risk of a select few bitching that their name is aginast a petition they never signed? There is a difference between "equal" and "similar", and if I was in the shoes of the gov, I'd do exactly what they do: take the decision that comes with the least potential backlash.
I think that the people to blame here are people starting peptitions without checking that there is one existing already, which is inexcusable because firstly the death penaly petitions top the list so can't be missed, and secondly because this leads to a dilution of the votes (i.e. they are shooting themselves in the foot).
More seriously, the text of many 'duplicates' will be different - it's not like bug reports where the all the various ways of phrasing an issue will refer to the same fault.
Someone might be 'for' one wording, but not agree with a slightly different wording - so anyone who had signed the 'rejected' duplicate should be told which one was retained and asked if they would like to sign that instead.
Precision should be extremely important in lawmaking, it's a great shame the last lot preferred to write vague and all-encompassing laws.
(On the downside, it does give them a very sneaky way to effectively delete anything they don't like - have a patsy make a load of duplicates, then remove all the ones with lots of signatures and leave an 'empty' one.)
- There's an idea. How about using Mantis or Bugzilla for Government?
"Bug report: Professional politicians are dangerous to life, liberty and the economy, suggest hanging them all" "Rejected: Berne Convention"
the public did favour a system of preference voting, that might suggest they really weren't fit to vote. The difference between somebody's fourth and fifth preference is likely to be similar to choosing between drinking bleach or drinking disinfectant. The only sensible PR system is AMS. So we WON'T get that!
I think you'll find the reason law is to give judges latitude in interpretation.
When a case has completed it becomes precedent for future interpretation of the law in relation to specifics, and may be overturned or nuanced as future cases are completed.
All to do with having an unwritten constitution apparently.
It theoretically makes it harder for autocratic elements to ride roughshod over our rights, because the intricate web of precedents is too complex!
Not that I'm a fan of the last lot, nor sure I've addressed anything but the 'vague' accusation, but I read a bit about it recently and thought it interesting enough to share.
The 8821 and the 4941 for these two petitions alone add up to 13,762, which is already more than the 13,676 total signatures that you say have been received for all petitions. So does the site allow the same person to sign the same petition twice or does something just not add up?
Every time you vote, you receive an email to register your vote.
If you vote for the same petition twice, when you click on the confirmation link of the second email, it tells you that you have already voted for that.
Given that most people I know have more than one address though, I can sort of think of a way around it...
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the amount of duplicated petitions seems to indicate that this whole thing has been set up to fail. One wonders if that is why the govt allowed so many bring back hanging petitions as it knew it could split the vote and thus make reaching the 100K mark that much harder. Mind you that is also true for the leave EU, get rid of human rights act and of course the keep the ban on the death penalty.
Piss up and breweries comes to mind.................again
Is it the Governments fault, the web site designers fault or the people who insist on making duplicate petitions without bothering to do a basic search first? I mean it’s not hard, just looking at the top 10 most signed petitions would show that you don’t need to create another one.
Then again it could just be a sign of the intelligence of those who want to bring back capital punishment...
Who gets to chose that the remove speed limit, increase to 90 and increase to 100 petitions are all "the same"?
And why oh why oh why can't we downvote some of the more stupid ones?
If we had up/down votes then the list could be sorted by popularity, not just number of votes, so the system would help gauge the mood better.
...are a waste of time. They do provide a thin veneer of "We're listening, honest" for the state. There is only on action the state understands - and that is direct. Which is why the state is so keen to promote e-petition and curtail your rights of protest.
As for the death penalty; whilst it is "nice" to think that one could execute a paedo-rapist ("Think of the children!") we can look to countries that have capital punishment and see just how well it works.
It doesn't. All it does is permit the middle class and elite to "solve" the problems of the poor/underprivileged/sick in an economically expedient manner; and that's before we consider the potential of executing an innocent person.
".....Which is why the state is so keen to promote e-petition and curtail your rights of protest....." OK, I'll bite - how exactly ha the Government restricted your right to protest? The UK has very permissive protesting laws, as long as you abide by the laws. What I'm guessing is that (a) you're from one of those whacky groups that like to clainm they have majority approval, but actually have only the tiniest of loser followings, and (b) your e-petition is one of the ones gettign zero interest.
...protesting near parliament recently? Or wearing a t-shirt with a message near there? How about going on a protest and being filmed and marked out as "trouble" for merely doing what should be your right? Even holding certain political views is enough to get you in trouble - thought is now a crime it seems.
"a) you're from one of those whacky groups that like to clainm they have majority approval"
Nup, I am neither Tory, LibDem, Labour nor pugilist.
"b) your e-petition is one of the ones gettign zero interest"
Nup, don't have one. Don't see why I should validate their charade.
What about the need to register your protest with the police who then decide if it can go ahead?
If you don't register it, just take the example of the kettling you saw at the student protests in 2010 or the blatent provokation by the police for violence (that van planted to be damaged for example) as the resultant attitude towards your right to express distaste at the government of the time.
What about our right to use parliamentary footage for use in satire as a form of protest?
I believe it depends on how it is implemented.
In the USA it is not a deterrent. But there aren't many executions happening there.
In Dubai they are a bit more trigger happy so to speak.
A friend of mine moved there for a while. In London he was going through quite a bit of charlie. In Dubai he couldn't find any at all.
Not sure if they are as strict with alcohol smugglers, but you couldn't find much of it either. There is a licence to buy it from supermarkets, or something like that, for which you can apply after 1 year of residence.
When i visited him, all the wine that was left in the glasses ended up back in the bottle for next time, and he said it was quite common practice because of its scarcity - free zones were a completely different environment, but you couldn't take any at home.
That convinced me even more that, if enforced, it works. Against or in favour, and which crimes should it be enforced for, it's a different thing.
It is still used in many countries of completely different cultures - USA, Singapore, Dubai, China, for example -. A more objective argument would be an evaluation of the results achieved by all those different countries. "But it doesn't work int he US" doesn't seem, to me at least, to provide a full picture.
Only if you place a particularly high value on human life - I suspect that if the wrong "witch" got burnt at the stage in the 1600s the response would have been, "well she must have been guilty of something!"
You CAN have capital punishment as long as your moral/ethical compass is a little bit wobbly - there's almost 7 billion hairless monkeys out there, accidentally terminating one here or there ain't gonna make any difference now is it?
All of them, my good fellow. Providing the "correct" political views are those of right minded non-bastards, i.e. those who don't go in for death penalty, human testing, torture, genocide etc.
To take your argument to it's ultimate conclusion, are you suggesting that an organisation should employ EDL, BNP, all the way up to (neo-)Nazis, regardless of their political views?
You anti fascist fascists (well that's what you sound like) surely don't believe that the Daily Mail only employs people with those views do you? How delightfully naive:-). You'll be telling me next that you think every single employee of the Guardian is a right-on leftie:-)
I'd be very suprised if the majority of their employees who don't write stuff have pretty much the same range of viewpoints as the rest of their population - why should the owners even care what the political views of the security guard on the front door are?
As for the journalists: hell, they are, after all, professional journalists and any writer with a half competent imagination should be capable of writing from the viewpoint their employer requires without having to hold all those views themselves. That's part of what being professional means. After all fiction writers do it all the time...
I was going to start a petition against moronic "armchair-activist" petitions. But my keyboard was out of reach and it would have meant getting up, so I couldn't be bothered in the end.
Perhaps someone could write some script that'll think/vote for me? This website only goes so far in allowing my opinion to be heard on issues I've barely thought about, and can't actually be bothered to do anything about other than browse a website. Influencing government policy shouldn't involve so much effort. It needs to be made easier.
The first port of call would have to be the European Court of Human Rights -- until you've got them to change their ruling so that member states can make their own decisions about capital punishment it's pretty pointless re-instating it here, unless these people want the EU to kick the UK out and ban all trading with us?
OK, so the last bit might not happen -- but I wouldn't be surprised.
I've never been convinced by petitions of this sort. Just because someone collects 'x' names for some cause, that's meaningless unless you have some sort of idea of what proportion 'x' represents of those who may have an interest. And even if you had an idea of what the proportion is, what proportion of those who didn't sign up disagree, what proportion can't be bothered either way, etc.
Surely a much better way of doing it is to collect a For and Against count for each issue. A petition that collects 100,000 votes for and 100,000 votes against, is - perhaps - less worthy of debate than a petition that has 50,000 votes for and 2,000 votes against. Any sufficiently specious issue could collect 100,000 votes across the population of the UK if the organisers were determined enough but what is relevant is how many are against the issue as well.
Of course, all of this is then subject to who has got the best mobilisation amongst their supporters, but you're faced with that either way.
Anyway, just my tuppence-worth... Can I hereby claim a patent on this... is that how it works these days?
... but may be variations on a theme
Hang all politicians
Hang all lawyers
Hang all bankers
Hang all journalists (except El Reg of course)
Hang all commentards (except me)
Or maybe hanging isn't good enough for them.
Behead all politicians
Behead all ... etc etc etc.
"To be successful, petitioners need to score over 100,000 signatures. Their issue will then be discussed by backbench committee which has a limited amount of time to schedule debates – about one day each month that the House is sitting."
... Their issue will then be discussed by backbench committee where it will be laughed-at and ignored no-matter how sensible/good an idea it is.
For one, even if the "bring back hanging" (e-)petition got 200,000 votes, and even if there would be a parliamentary majority in favour, it still won't bring back the noose. For that, the UK would first need to withdraw from just about every European treaty it ever signed: EU, Council of Europe, etc etc.
And if they did that, having a death penalty or not would be among the least of one's problems
Cameron Colley: To 'ban all trading' with the UK would violate other international commitments on free trade, as well as being self-defeating since the EU as a whole runs a significant trade deficit - they'd be on the losing end of that move, both economically and legally.
The ban on the death penalty wasn't in the original ECHR, it's a later addition. I wouldn't object to scrapping the entire lawyer-buffet (though I would definitely want some replacement safeguard of actual human rights in place) but I have read we could withdraw from that extension without giving up the rest at the same time. EFTA/EEA membership (to protect free trade and movement) would seem a better option than full EU membership, too - and, I think, get around any other issues about foreign jurisdiction over UK courts.
I imagine the issue will be "debated" for about 30 seconds by 5 MPs, then filed away for another decade, but it will be nice to see politicians at least paying lip service to public opinion for once.
As I said, the trade embargoes bit was maybe too far -- but ignoring a major EU ruling would make it pretty damned difficult to be part of any others, so being squeezed out of the EU still seems feasible to me. I'm not going to get onto whether that's good or bad -- my point was more that MPs can't debate the death penalty because it is banned, to unban it we'd have to make changes first so the petitions are irrelevant and pointless as things stand.
Also, if we didn't leave the EU then surely anyone implementing the death penalty would be hauled before the courts and jailed anyhow?
"The self-explanatory "Don't listen to idiots signing e-petitions" has 101 self-hating supporters."
That would be me!
I signed loads of petitions (only those I found acceptable) in the hope that I can help make the system collapse by getting so many issues before parliament that they realise what fools the executive have been to implement this system.
When submitting a new petition why can't they just use a moderator to check - maybe some zero paid intern, who could simply reply to the petitioner with "this is a duplicate, numbnuts".
It works here on el reg and sometimes a single story has over 100 comments.
Oh wait, i'm doing that thing again where i apply common sense to politicians.
Surely a petition to hold a debate to retain the ban, is the same debate (albeit phrased differently) to that advocating the reinstatement? If that's the case, all these "anti" petitioners are hastening the day when there will be a debate on the subject.
On top of which, how exactly do parliament debate to leave a law unchanged?
60 million and change populace....
sun and daily fail shifting a couple million copies a day...
need to get a petition to have the OED to alter the definition of majority methinks
(alright i hold my hands up on the x-fucktor thang... actually no i dont! they dot get 30 million odd fuckwits in everyweek do they)
"As of 4.20pm yesterday, the site had received 2,260 petitions and collected 13,676 signatures."
And yet, it's creaking under the strain. I dread to think how much WTF is to be found in that tiny web app. Personally I like the fact that the "ouch, I'm way too overloaded" error actually suggests refreshing that page; I'm betting at least half of the load is from serving the error page repeatedly to swearing users.
Interesting piece, but I think the primary problem is the breakdown of the political system due to an information dysfunction. You can't have rational democratic or republican debate when you can't even agree on the most basic facts. It has always been true that people tend to believe what they want to believe, but the Internet now makes it possible for you (or anyone including the most extreme crazy person) to find an infinite amount of 'evidence' in favor of whatever you want to believe. Okay, so it isn't really infinite--but your time is finite and you can certainly find more 'nice' evidence than you have time for.
Yes, of course it is possible to use the Internet to gather every kind of information. You can read broadly and get outside of your comfort zone. It's even possible to learn things that will change your opinion--but you can just as well spend all of your time reading about a lunatic conspiracy theory with time machines.
While I'm not a UK resident and cannot initiate a petition, I just wondering if any of you Brits want to initiate a petition to see if you can get 100,000 signatures to:
1) Abrogate the Paris Declaration of 1856 that outlaws privateering;
2) License and bond CYBER PRIVATEERS; and
3) Demand that the cyber privateers follow THE CODE outlined at www.cyberprivateer.com?
This is…The Morgan Doctrine
I am surprised at the figures posted regarding the EU referendum. The daily express campaign reached 40000 signatories on the 2nd August.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/262590
According to UKIP it is now up to 75000
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8JUElL0ws&feature=feedu
The government's e-petitions team are doing a great job reporting 2842 supporters and will face some interesting questions when the media find out. Perhaps that they have found that all 2842 supporters are duplicated 25 times. The express will hopefully have evidence to the contrary.
Successive governments have shown that politicians are not there to represent the electorate but the bankers and oil rich who give them such good backhanders. They will never listen to our bleating. The internet makes politicians obsolete as it allows all of us to represent ourselves in real time, we have the civil service to run the day to day matters.
Were yes minister / prime minister comedy or prophesy?