They can certainly be effective for garnering support but outside of public pressure which can easily be ignored, they don't make a tangible difference.
Pressure groups can be formed to advocate certain concerns, and they can actually become pretty influential in politics if they get popular enough.
In this country, I believe 100,000 signatures means it must be raised by committees in the House of Commons.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Still, they can just talk about it for ten seconds and move on. Also it probably has to be an official petition on the government petition website thingy. And it would have to be a petition to the government, not to the chairman of a football club.
If it's on the e-gov website, if there are 100,000 signatures, MPs are obliged to debate the issue within the petition in the House of Commons, apparently. Out of curiosity, as a former law student, how does the legal system account for people who may have gotten drunk, and had sex with someone but had been sober enough to know what was happening and then the next day regretted it so decided say that they were too drunk to consent? I'm not saying the woman in this instance did that, but I'm just curious as back at uni after one union night, I ended up in the room of a girl, nothing happened besides a bit of kissing but she didn't seem that drunk.... but the next day she put on Facebook that I'd taken advantage of her. Which makes me somewhat glad we didn't have sex.
Erm, Jesus. If she's been drinking and you haven't then you shouldn't have sex with her. If she wasn't too drunk to consent then you haven't done anything wrong but obviously these things are just one person's word against another's and it's a very difficult situation. Don't take any chances; sometimes women do play the rape card and it can ruin your life. It's one of the most horrible things they can do to a guy and some aren't above it.
Yeah if she says she didn't consent at the time, then it's your word against hers. In reality there'd probably be witnesses to say she wasn't that drunk or whatever, but it'd be a horrible situation to end up in.
Fair enough, thanks I was just curious. For the record, I was pretty drunk at the time. It was Paul Hart's first league win (after 8 games as manager) so it of course it was a special occasion