UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit
These petitions are almost always met with a boilerplate response. There was a recent one (which I can&#x27;t find as the site&#x27;s currently down) regarding Russian interference in the last UK election, with the government response being along the lines of &quot;we don&#x27;t know what you&#x27;re talking about, move on&quot;. More on that here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;unitedkingdom&#x2F;comments&#x2F;b2vmm0&#x2F;government_response_to_the_petition_undertake_an&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;unitedkingdom&#x2F;comments&#x2F;b2vmm0&#x2F;gover...</a><p>While the huge number of signings on this petition obviously does reflect _something_, I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s actually doing anything meaningful. Likewise the upcoming march this weekend for a Peoples Vote:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.peoples-vote.uk&#x2F;march" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.peoples-vote.uk&#x2F;march</a><p>These are now simply ignored. The sheer stubbornness of Theresa May&#x27;s position as evidenced by her statement last night means we&#x27;re going to go to the wire on something that&#x27;s been worked on for years. People calling it a national disgrace are absolutely correct.<p>I can only hope that the pressure exerted from various angles (petition, march, sane MPs) will result in Parliament revoking Article 50, but I don&#x27;t see it happening. It would be too prudent for this parody of a political system.<p>edit: the site&#x27;s back now. Apparently it runs on Rails with DelayedJob doing most of the grunt work in the background.<p>edit2: just found the most popular petition on there with over 4m votes and absolutely nothing came of that:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petition.parliament.uk&#x2F;archived&#x2F;petitions&#x2F;131215" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petition.parliament.uk&#x2F;archived&#x2F;petitions&#x2F;131215</a>