George Gowing FBPE EUGrandad🇪🇺🥨🇩🇪🇮🇪🇹🇹🐝 Profile picture
Grandpa blessed with being born in 🇹🇹 ending his days in wonderful Bavarian Swabia amongst sensible proud Europeans. Sad to see former 🇬🇧homeland in ashes

Oct 30, 2021, 9 tweets

One of most horrific events I have witnessed was British Petition system after Brexit with call for People's Referendum. How can anyone claim that Democracy exists in UK?
Not perfect, but let me tell you about Bavarian petition held about same time & has to do with this video
/2

2. (Background)
Bavaria 13m pop. 10m voters
Land mass same as Rep of Ireland, 20% of Germany's total land.
86% of land for agriculture & forest. Loads of major rivers incl Danube to Med, Main to North Sea.
Land & Water critical
Own Parliament & MPs.
Want a petition?..
/3

3. Petition, Rules.
1. Write full legal text of law you want & why it is important, what it's aims are
2. Get 25k signatures, hand in for checking if text legal
3. If approved, petition put in town halls 14 days & must collect 1m (10%) certified signatures.
If successful.../4

4. Enact or Referendum
Govt can either accept petition in full or agree with organisers to change bits & can then either enact it or put to FPTP referendum of all voters.
Since 1946, 22 Petitions & 19 Refs.
Most recent 2018/9 was one about land use nicknamed Save The Bees
...
/5

5. Result
Petition got record breaking 18.4% despite massive farmer anti lobby. After a few round table discussions with both sides, petition accepted and enacted without need for a full referendum.
It has massive legal requirements .../6
theguardian.com/world/2019/apr…

6. Consequences
Well on 1st video on this thread you can see the clear river water & here in this video one of the multitude of measures. No slurry or muck allowed within 10 metres of an waterways & even stronger measures as to when they can be put on fields & meadows.
.../7

7. Consequences 2.
Bavarian Muck Laws not (BMW Bavarian Muck Wagon) forbid slurry & muck on fields out of growing season where plants can't absorb it & will be washed into waterways. Nov 1 is such deadline hence tractors very busy right now getting rid of their slurry & muck
/8

8. EU
These measures are in addition to all the EU directives which will soon end much if old spraying slurry all over the place & other measures to decrease water pollution. Lake Constance, 2nd largest lake in Europe, is now drinking quality thanks to EU.
thelocal.de/20130408/48997/

I shd add to above Thread. Last week, next Petition since the Bees in 2019, had its 14-day time in town halls. Got 200k signatures ie falling well short of 1m 10% hurdle for a referendum. It was from the #Covidiots aka Fascists, Scum etc wanting to dissolve Parliament!

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