The most common age for "sex offenders" is 14 years old: still dangerous decades after the fact? Really? On top of that most "sex offenders" would not even be labelled as such at all in most of the civilized world. Furthermore sex offenders have actually a pretty low recidivism rate. The whole crackdown on "sex offenders" is misguided and driven by irrational overreactions and the whole concept should be reviewed and drastically reformed.
In general, deciding if and when somebody is or still is a risk to others is actually pretty hard: you only think it's not hard because you believe in a solution which is "clear, simple and wrong".
Exactly: what people fail to understand is that by making referendums much more difficult to be successful they would actually place even more power in the government and reduce their own power to affect it. These kinds of decisions are very dangerous since once the government gets more power it's very difficult that it will renounce it and it's the kind of decisions which will soon or later bite back
So what supermajority was required for the UK to join the EC back in the 70s?
None, but no majority requires leaving the EU today either. In any case the whole debate of a popular vote being required to join the EU in the first place is a huge can of worm by itself.
Ok. If you impose a very high supermajority to one side, you've effectively already chosen for everyone. The vote becomes farcical. Why should people participate in meaningless pretend elections?
The side getting the supermajority is the status quo. I don't like it much, but the idea of requiring a higher majority or a quorum to change the status quo makes sense on paper, but then you have governments like Italy which plan bothersome referendums at super-impractical dates to try to deter participation and basically try to "win by default"...
This isn't fucking rocket science. It's basic fucking Parliamentary democracy of the sort that the UK is supposed to deliver.
The point of referendums is exactly to get the parliament straight when it's not doing what the people wants.
The UK is made up of REGIONS, each REGION voted in the MAJORITY to STAY in the EU.
That's actually how important referendums in Switzerland work: they are legally binding but to be successful they require support of 50%+1 of the voters and support of at least half of the "states" forming the confederation.
For the record, it is routine in essentially all countries bar the UK who allow constitutional plebiscites that the bar is much higher than a simple majority.
If the results are binding, sure. In the UK referendums are non-binding, so a "higher bar" would be meaningless.
One of my biggest issues with referendums like this is that they are so unbalanced. If remain had won then leave supporters could, and would, push for another go at leaving if there was support for it; however leave get a slight majority and the rest of the country is forced to go along with an irreversible decision with no chance at another vote.
In most systems with binding referendums you cannot simply submit the same referendum again and again until you win: if a referendum fails there is usually a number of years of "waiting period" before you can submit a similar question.
Again, there is no such thing as an "irreversible decision" the country is "forced to go along with": the referendum is non-binding. It's entirely the government's decision to actually leave the EU and they are only forced by their own weakness and incompetence.
Right a 2/3 majority should have been required to stay in the EU.
See that is the problem with super majority decisions, it gives disproportionate power to whomever decides the question's wording.
Think of it this way: what would happen if a super majority was necessary to change elected officials? They would have the position for life.
That's not how super-majority usually works. Typically super-majority is required to accept a change and if the vote fails the status quo is preserved. You cannot simply re-word the question to get around this.
really for a referendum of such a constitutional importance, a higher threshold than a simple majority should be required for any vote-to-change to be valid.
The referendum is non-binding: there is no such thing as a "threshold" required for the vote to be valid because "valid" is meaningless when the government is still the one ultimately deciding how to interpret the result and what the consequences of the result will be, if any.
Even if the door is open if you have no authorization it's still trespassing and this shows pretty well the issue the EFF is raising.
it's pretty clear you are authorized to enter a restaurant and it's pretty clear you are not authorized to enter a random private home which happens to have the door left open.
What about an anonymous FTP server? It could be argued it's like an open restaurant, or it could be argued it's like a private home with the door left open, so if you apply the "trespassing" analogy it's not clear at all whether you are "authorized" or not.
At some point we are going to want drop x86_32 kernel support and just have 32-bit compatibility libraries, but I don't know when that makes sense.
I use Paper by 53.
Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never afraid to break your face.
