Asking for a second referendum isn't about being a "bad loser" or undemocratic - quite the opposite

So, the unthinkable happened and Brexit won. This has triggered many people to sign a petition calling for a second referendum. This is not a daft as it seems, as the referendum itself is not legally binding and had no firm actions attached to either result. Indeed, back in May Farage suggested that the Leave camp might do the same if Remain won by a small margin.

However, this request has triggered a flood of outcries from Leave voters, with accusations of Remain supporters being “bad losers” or failing to embrace democracy because the people had spoken. I saw this one on Facebook from a second-degree contact, for example:

Why is this even a thing?! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36629324

The people voted democratically and Leave got over 1.2million more votes. If you don’t like that, tough, you lost. That’s how democracy works. If you think that should be overturned, well maybe the voting system of North Korea will be more to your taste? I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you.

Apologies for the rant, I just wanted to say something about these childish people who can’t take “no” for an answer.

It is a valid question and, whilst I think it was meant rhetorically, here is my answer of why this is “a thing”…

The North Korea analogy is interesting. Imagine a vote in which leaders lie to the population, supported by propaganda machines of a biased and controlled media. Imagine this succeeds in getting the population to vote against their best interests. That is not democracy at work. That is a powerful elite, manipulating the political landscape to their own ends. That is major sections of the Leave campaign. (Not all: there were some genuine reasons for voting Leave. This is not about that - it’s about whether the people voting Leave were voting for those genuine reasons.)

This is not about being bad losers. This is about being passionate about the terrible decision that we are on the brink of. This about genuine fear of economic collapse, fragmentation of the UK and Europe, the rise of right-wing nationalism and xenophobic/divisive agendas, the collapse of the Northern Ireland peace process, the loss of workers rights as we “deregulate” and hand more power to the powerful. Look at America with its lack of decent holidays, parental leave or free healthcare. Not for Britain, thank you.

Imagine a bus and the occupants had voted to jump a ravine as a “shortcut” - despite mechanics, physicists and engineers warning that it probably won’t make the jump, and geographers pointing out that the probable landing point is further away from the destination. If you were in that bus and convinced it was about to plunge you all to destruction, you would scream pretty loud to reconsider.

Nor is this about elitist arrogance of the middle classes. Being confident in the overwhelming consensus opinion of experts who have studied certain fields for years - including all the uncertainty of outcomes - is not arrogance. Some rich privileged bloke in a suit, who studied Classics without any formal training in economics or law, believing that he knows better than those experts - that’s elitist arrogance.

Regular laws in the UK go through several readings and often get sent back to the Commons for a second vote. This has much more far-reaching consequences and unlike those laws cannot be undone, so the idea of some reflection and an “are you sure?” vote is not remotely undemocratic.

Democracy is about the will of the people, it is not about blindly seeing through the results of every single vote no matter what the consequences. If, as I and many others feel, a vote does not truly reflect the will of the people then damn straight it is our democratic right and responsibility to fight the result. (Politically, not physically, of course.)

The request is not to keep voting until Remain wins - it is to keep voting until there is a big majority. It is asking for people to be certain of their choice. If the Leave campaign are so confident that the people have spoken, they should have no problem with letting them speak again.

We, the people, all want what’s best for our country, not for our “leaders”. I suspect the majority on both sides actually want the same things - the disagreement lies in how to achieve them. When the leaders of the “winning” side have demonstrably lied about the consequences of their victory (and are now rapidly back-tracking, having not expected that victory), the anger, frustration and ire at the reaction of the “losers” would be better directed at those leaders, who now need to be held to account.

Should we give those who now realise they were mislead the chance to change their mind? Should we give those fools who feel that they should have voted and now regret not doing so the chance to undo their mistake? Normally, no. They would get their chance come the next election, and maybe they will have learnt their lesson. But here, there is no next election, no chance to make amends for a mistake - hence we are asking for one.

You may feel that people do not deserve a second chance. You may feel that we should be stuck with the decision even if it transpires that a majority actually oppose it, once they are in a position to make an informed decision. After all, them’s the rules, right? Well, that would be a victory for bureaucracy, but it hardly seems in the spirit of democracy.

Perhaps we Remainers are wrong. Perhaps the Leave supporters really do understand the implications of their choice and would do the same again, now that the reality is beginning to bite. Perhaps the EU and immigrants are not just scapegoats for problems with different solutions. So be it. But let’s not be so gung-ho as to sell our nation’s future down the river because it would be too painful to take a long, hard look at the manner in which we have just conducted the most important political decision of our generation.

To get Britain out of its current mess is going to take both sides working together. That means talking to each other, not shouting at each other. To have a chance of success, that solution needs more that 52% of the nation on board. So, do the democratic thing: keep the conversation going until we reach national consensus. Sign the petition.

When will the UK do something about its primate pet trade shame?

Much as I enjoyed my visit to Monkey World and really like what they are doing, it is nevertheless sad that a primate sanctuary is needed at all. With their work in South-East Asia, it is easy to forget that many of the animals rescued by Monkey World actually come from the UK. Monkey World clearly does not forget this and one of the things the keepers ask of visitors is to sign their petition against the UK pet trade. It’s not just that primates in the UK are being kept in wholly unsuitable conditions - it’s entirely legal do to so. Caring organisations like zoos (including Monkey World) have to provide standards of care that private owners simply do not. This is a legal loophole that must surely be closed.

Following our visit, I started looking for additional online petitions on this issue, as I figured there must be some. Looking on HM Government’s e-petition site, I did discover one that closed in February 2012 to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which was actually created by Monkey World founder, Alison Cronin:

Primates as Pets Petition

I would like to state my opposition to the LEGAL trade in primate as pets in Great Britain today. We believe that is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that any captive monkeys receive a standard of care that meets their behavioural and physical needs regardless of whether they are kept in private homes or pet shops. We are asking the British Government to issue guidance to local authorities, responsible for granting licences for these exotic pets, to use the same standard of duty of care as they would for primates kept in zoo or wildlife parks (the Zoo Licensing Act 1981). If a monkey is deserving of a certain standard of care in a zoo or wildlife park, by definition it is deserving of the same standard of care in a private home or pet shop. We would like our concerns addressed by the Goverment and Select Committee immediately.

Number of signatures: 4,229
Created by: Dr Alison Cronin, MBE
Closing: 29/02/2012 12:04

Just as disappointing, a “Primates should not be kept as pets” petition on the Petition Site earlier this year garnered a measly 3,057 signatures.

It’s not just Monkey World calling for this. The RSPCA have also called for a ban:

Dr Ros Clubb, senior wildlife scientist for the charity, commented: “We must stop this growing trade. It has become far too easy to pick up a monkey over the internet, especially since you don’t need a licence to keep many of them.”

How can anyone look at these creatures and think that keeping them “in tiny, indoor cages, in solitary confinement” is OK? Please, sign the Monkey World petition.

Support the Glasgow Skeptics in their fight against quackery

As some of my previous posts have indicated, I am not a great fan of Homeopathy. It is based on flawed principles that have been demonstrated to be wrong, it violates the Laws of Physics and it puts people at risk of harm and even death. It is quackery of the highest order and an embarrassment to a supposedly advanced post-Enlightenment society.

Sadly, however, we have a pro-Homeopathy MP on both the Commons Health Committee and Commons Science and Technology Committee. Furthermore, although not promoted on the NHS Choices website, this proven sham remedy is still available on the NHS despite having no evidence that it works other than as a placebo (what with them being nothing more than sugar pills).

One such NHS-funded travesty is the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital. The Glasgow Skeptics are understandably saddened by this threat to Reason in their backyard and have set up a petition to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to withdraw funding for Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital:

The Deputy Chairman of the junior doctors committee of the British Medical Association (BMA) has called homeopathy “witchcraft” and “nonsense on stilts”, whilst the BMA conference declared in 2010 that homeopathy has “no place in the modern health service”.

The NHS Choices website states that “there is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition”, whilst the BMA's director of science and ethics, Dr Vivienne Nathanson, has said that “the funding of the homeopathic hospital should stop”.

It is therefore requested that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde withdraw funding for Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital.

You can sign the petition at change.org, here. They deserve the support of all right-minded individuals who want publicly-funded medicine to be evidence-based.

(Sadly, thanks to "Bad Pharma" not even medicine that appears to have evidence for efficacy is necessarily any good. If we cannot even dump the stuff that is proven to be crap, how can we hope to clean up the more complex mess of biased evidence?)

Evidence-based medicine needs your help!

This is turning into a week of petitions, with another important cause that needs more signatories. This time, is not rhino horn or pangolin scale quackery that's the target, though, it's real evidence-based medicine.

I've blogged before about Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Pharma, and how legal loopholes allow big drug companies to get away with heinous crimes of data massage and selective reporting of clinical trial results. The AllTrials campaign to make clinical trial data more available and transparent is in full swing and has the backing of hundreds of organisations including big names like the MRC, NHS and, encouraging, GSK. This is a big one, not just because the issue at stake is so important to all of us but also because it stands a real chance of success.

They have tens of thousands of signatures at the moment but want to break a million and get support from more international companies and professional bodies. If you haven't signed already, please do. If you have, please encourage others to do likewise. As Ben Goldacre and Tracey Brown wrote in an email recently:

"We are on the threshold of significant change, but we now urgently need help from all of you to make this a reality."

Save the Pangolins!

The picture on the right is a pretty shoddy one I took in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (more on that later) to remind me to write a post about pangolins because I think they're great. (There's a better Wikipedia photo by Valerius Tygart, below, of a tree pangolin). This is not really what I had in mind but it will do until I get to write a proper one, as there is currently a Care2 petition to the Prime Minister of Vietnam to crack down on the illegal trade in pangolins. It's not just rhinos that are endangered due to the supposed healing qualities of their body parts. (Pangolin scales, like rhino horns, are nothing more exotic than keratin - like finger nails.)

I'm not sure how much good these things do but the Thai Prime Minister vowed to end the ivory trade last month following a large WWF campaign, so it can't do any harm. Look at this guy and tell me that the world wouldn't be diminished without him* - then sign the petition:

*In the interests of full disclosure: (a) the tree pangolin shown is not one of the two threatened species - the Sundra pangolin and the Chinese pangolin - in Vietnam, and (b) I don't know if it's a he.