For the same reason the carbon footprint of every Elon rocket launch is being attributed to SpaceX even though some other entity "paid out of their ass" for many of them.
Because it takes two to tango. In both cases "all the credit" or "all the debit" goes to the manufacturer for making the product AND the customer for paying for it.
Goodness, I hate to be this guy, but do these petitions ever actually help? I can’t think of one that I’ve followed up to the debate that has been successful in anything except getting a solid “no” from the sitting government.
Direct action, enough to be villainised by the media, seems to be the only way that politicians will actually listen — though even then its a massive uphill struggle.
American here, but I feel the same way. I live in California, and I'm left-leaning, but I feel like I have no voice. This state -- and my city -- have so many problems, but I don't feel like I have any effect on the politicians who are failing to solve them.
And that's bad enough without getting into how powerless I feel to affect anything at a national level.
For the past few decades, Americans, and especially college-educated professionals, have been sold a distorted view of politics that essentially amounts to watching sports.
Most of us have never seen a working example of democracy. We have just sort of tacitly accepted a kind of benevolent dictatorship in most institutions, from our workplace to open-source (and please correct me if I'm wrong here, I know that there is a kind of democracy in forking and collaboration, but as I understand it, voting democracy isn't really found anywhere.)
I was just watching Car 54 where are you? the other night, and in it, you can see the members of a fictional police union voting on absolutely everything, from union dues, to where to host the christmas dinner. People voted, made speeches, and ran for office, and all of this within like a tiny local. This kind of general participatory democracy seems as quaint as the black and white film it's played on.
My advice to you is to join something. There's a number of civics activists trying to push for some local issue, like transit, or housing, or raising funds for a local hospital; all else failing, you could always volunteer for your local party and get to know the candidate. It's a really good salve to that feeling of general powerlessness.
Then, instead of feeling powerless, you'll know you're mostly powerless, but at the very least, you won't be alone.
The Tories have been in power since the year before I could vote.
I’m not 100% on the same page as Labour by any stretch, but I’m yet to experience government as an adult that isn’t in total opposition to almost all the values I hold.
I was a teenager from a poor working class family then, I’m now a homeowner earning a comfortable wage. I still think they’re dishonest, self-serving cretins.
In the Netherlands, a petition was required to force a national referendum. Online or offline doesn't matter. You needed to reach some percentage of the Dutch population in signatures, I'm not sure about the exact number, but they did and we had a referendum on mass surveillance and people voted against.
That's when the government decided these things are kind of a nuisance and abolished the whole concept of referenda, even advisory as they were
I love the ruling party
But anyway petitions aren't necessarily useless, also for media attention on a topic if it goes well
