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Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

This is the area of this board to discuss the referendum taking place in the UK on 23rd June 2016. Also to discuss the ramifications of the EU-UK deal.

Differing views will be respected. Rudeness to other members will not be welcome.

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NikiGio
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Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by NikiGio » Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:23 am

I'm guessing it's like preaching to the converted here - but if you haven't yet, please sign the Revoke Art. 50 petition, currently standing at a whopping 5.6 Million signatures.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584

It can be signed by:

* All UK residents - regardless of nationality
* All British citizens - regardless of location
* Those with an e-mail
* Those with a postcode

Get your family to sign, get your granny to sign, get your colleague to sign! If they don't have an e-mail, just set up a new e-mail for them with Gmail or whatever.

This site shows n. of votes by constituency:

http://www.livefrombrexit.com/petitions/241584

Handy to use when writing to your MP to lobby them to support Revoke Art.50.

For example - at the week-end Mark Field, MP for Westminster and Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, was the first Government minister to pledge that if the Meaningful Vote n.3 fails again and there is a free vote, he will vote to support Revoke. This is probably due to the fact that the petition stats for his constituency look like this currently (see pic):

- Majority: 3,148
- Signatures: 23,841

He's probably done the maths and realised he's unlikely to be re-elected unless he support Revoke. So hold your MPs to account!
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I am not an immigration lawyer. My comments are opinions, not legal advice.

secret.simon
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by secret.simon » Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:51 am

I am not a lawyer or immigration advisor. My statements/comments do not constitute legal advice. E&OE. Please do not PM me for advice.

NikiGio
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by NikiGio » Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:22 am

As usual, there's been a lot of discussion about this on SM.

The fact that the petition can be signed by anybody with an e-mail address is true for all petitions on the Parliament website, such as the pro-Brexit ones too. I'm guessing the Petitions Committe and the GDS team know this and have put measures in place to counteract this, and purge the signatures accordingly - as they advise on Twitter.

Otherwise, there's no point believing or signing any petition ever.

Besides - the fact that Leave Means Leave's Steven Edgington admits on Channel 4 News that he cheated and commmitted an offence by signing the petition three times in the names Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier in 5 minutes doesn't mean that everyone else is a cheat.

The fact that Julia Hartley-Brewer is also a cheat by admitting on Twitter to doing the same doesn't mean that everyone else is a cheat.

The fact that some loser with IT skills may have devised bots that generate multiple e-mail adddresses/false names to rig the numbers doesn't mean there aren't counter-measures adopted by Parliament to purge the tally of these false votes. There are plenty of Brexit-supporting citizens who are rightly condemning them for what they've done.

If you discount all petitions' signatures because of the above, by logic you could also discount all UK electoral votes in general - after all, you don't need to show ID in the UK in order to vote. So fraud can easily be committed if you know someone's name/address. In other European countries, you need your passport or national ID to vote.

After all, the examples of cheating as above are in line with a referendum worthy of a banana republic (or monarchy, in our case) marred by all sorts of electoral irregularities. Something you'd expect from a mafia-ridden country like Italy (I'm Italian by the way), not from 'the mother of all democracies'.
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secret.simon
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by secret.simon » Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:59 pm

The Conversation - Can the Revoke Article 50 petition change the course of Brexit? by Prof. Leston-Bandeira.

The author is a dual Portuguese-British citizen and a professor specialising in public engagement and participative democracy. Therefore, she has worked closely with the Commons Petitions Committee and served on the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy.

I declare an interest: she was one of my professors during my political science studies a few years ago (at a different university to her current one).
I am not a lawyer or immigration advisor. My statements/comments do not constitute legal advice. E&OE. Please do not PM me for advice.

NikiGio
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by NikiGio » Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:30 pm

Very good, clear article Simon - I agree with all of Prof. Leston-Bandeira's points, and especially the ending:

"If nothing else, those allowed to sign a petition are not necessarily the same as those with the right to vote. One needs to be aged 18 or over and have British nationality to vote. To sign a petition, you simply need to either be British or reside in the UK. I’m not particularly worried about Russian bots, and people’s suspicions of a conspiracy when the site went down are laughable, if not sad. The system is in fact pretty robust, considering its rate of activity. The teams behind it are among the most dedicated staff I have ever encountered and have methods for spotting attempts to subvert the process.

A petition is no substitute for representative democracy, and it needs to be coupled with other activity to achieve real change. However, this should not diminish the role it plays as an expression of dissatisfaction, as the Revoke Article 50 petition clearly shows. And in a crucial a week for Brexit discussions, it is still likely to shape the political discourse."


Using much more eloquent language, the article puts forward the essence of some of my previous points: I'm sure there are robust measures in place to counter-act those cheating and playing the system to artificially rig the numbers. I'm not an expert so can't really comment further on which measures, but the Petitions' Committee tweet confirms this.

With regards to the effectiveness of the petition - if nothing else, it has re-invigorated the energies of those fighting this botched Brexit route we're travelling, whether they're pro- or anti-Brexit. Though the petition had been set up on 20 Feb, the timing of it coinciding with May's dreadful speech and Saturday's march is what probably helped it to sky-rocket last week.
I am not an immigration lawyer. My comments are opinions, not legal advice.

secret.simon
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by secret.simon » Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:29 pm

I am not a lawyer or immigration advisor. My statements/comments do not constitute legal advice. E&OE. Please do not PM me for advice.

NikiGio
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Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:18 am
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by NikiGio » Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:41 pm

👍
I am not an immigration lawyer. My comments are opinions, not legal advice.

kamoe
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Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by kamoe » Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:57 am

secret.simon wrote:
Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:51 am
It can be signed by anybody, including imaginary people.
For anyone still not convinced of the validity of an online petition because of the risks of hijacking, and fake signatures involved, you can:

2) Read Andrew White (CTO of Unboxed)'s, paper on scaling, purging and protecting, the petitions service on peak demand:
https://technology.blog.gov.uk/…/scalin ... itions-ser…/

1) Follow him on Twitter. Lots of insightful retweets and replies:
https://twitter.com/pixeltrix
My posts express what I believe are the facts, based on the best of my knowledge, about the topics discussed in this forum. They do not constitute immigration advice.

NikiGio
Member of Standing
Posts: 422
Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:18 am
Location: London
Mood:
Italy

Re: Sign the Revoke Art.50 petition - Open to all UK residents (any nationality) + British citizens (UK or abroad)

Post by NikiGio » Wed Mar 27, 2019 10:09 am

Smashing.
Exactly what I'd been looking for but hadn't found, so far.
👍
I am not an immigration lawyer. My comments are opinions, not legal advice.

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