by ReaperCub | 2025-07-16 13:14:37+00:00
> How nihilistic and dismissive.

I believe it to be a statement of reality. I am simply spelling out how it is. It is not an endorsement.

Moralising about my assessment does not make it untrue.

> Do you wait for the end of football matches before deciding which team to support, because only the one that won matters?

I also read spoilers for movies before I watch them in the cinema. I am truly awful ;-)

> I advocate against laws I don't like, and try to give people practical advise about how to protest against them, as well as how to circumvent them, and minimize their effects, and encourage them to pass this knowledge on. I consider it a good use of my time, even if not everyone cares to retain that info or pass it on.

I would only bother talking about how to circumvent them. The other activities are a waste of time. It took me quite a while to come to this conclusions (about 20 years) but that is the conclusion I came to. Those who are interested in circumventing it will come and find you typically, those who aren't won't bother.

> Politics is never a foregone conclusion (unless you completely give up and go silent, in which case your opposition has carte blanche to do what it likes)... but like "viral content", it's not something you can always whip in your your favour. People are irrational creatures, and you never quite know what will make them all sit up and take notice. You can never be sure what will set the nation's agenda, and what stories "have legs", until they happen.

I don't believe it is a forgone conclusion. I believe that one has to obtain power to enact change.

I don't believe that anything is "bottom up" i.e. there is a ground swell of public opinion and this peculates up to those in power. I think it is "top down".

> People are irrational creatures, and you never quite know what will make them all sit up and take notice. You can never be sure what will set the nation's agenda, and what stories "have legs", until they happen.

It is actually well understood what makes them sit up and notice. It has been extensively documented.

> For example: the Post Office scandal was a dull boring thing that nobody cared about, and then... an ITV drama made people care? But there have been ITV dramas about political scandals before, and they didn't all have that effect. But that one did. And the writers of the drama didn't just make stuff up, they followed the details of campaigners and journalists who had been covering this for years, even if at times they felt they were shouting into the void.

This only proves my point. Until a major broadcaster in the United Kingdom e.g. run by people with power, money and connections, popularised something only then did people take notice.

> The standard UKGov petitions site has at least some quantum of usefulness in that it encourages people to think about the issue, and if they sign it, they know there are others that agree with them.

I don't think it does. The people that sign these petitions have often already decided that the law needs to be repealed. Ask someone working down the local shop if they even know if this petition exists? Probably not.

> Change is possible.

Not by us. This is a lie told to you to keep believing. It was a bitter pill to swallow that ultimately your voice will go unheard. However it is ultimately liberating as you can direct your energy elsewhere.