4 ms·

Why is this a petition?

• AndrewDucker 15y ago
  Because in the UK if you get 100,000 signatures on a petition you can get it debated by The House Of Commons.
  • chimeracoder 15y ago
    Whereas in the US, if you get 25,000 signatures on a petition, you get... a polite response summarizing the talking points you already knew, and explaining why nothing will change. That is, if you're lucky - I believe we're still waiting on the promised response to this one: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#%21/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#%21/petition/actually-...
    • excuse-me 15y ago
      It doesn't have to be seriously debated - it just has to be officially mentioned, it's still just democracy window dressing.
      • semanticist 15y ago
        It doesn't have to be debated at all - if a petition reaches the threshold then the committee just 'consider' it for a debate. There was a petition to abandon the recent NHS reforms that reached the threshold and wasn't put forward for debate.
        • chimeracoder 15y ago
          Okay, so it's not really any better than the US system. Incidentally, in the 24 hours after I posted that, they did in fact finally release a response to that petition. It was long after the deadline that they promise for petitions that reach the threshold, and it wasn't much more than a justification of what they already do, but at this point I doubt anybody was expecting anything more.