Your ideas and suggestions for the Final Say campaign

Send more thoughts to us at finalsay@independent.co.uk

There have been a number of fascinating ideas and suggestions submitted to The Independent’s new Final Say inbox by readers eager to do more to help the campaign. Below is a selection – and please do continue to send them our way!

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I would like to propose that you promote your petition across all EU countries, probably with the support of other national newspapers. This would allow EU citizens to let the British people – and the government – know that the fellow Europeans want Britain to stay.

We Europeans all need to act united and protect our joint values and economy – now more than ever, considering the global situation.

I wish you all the best and that the campaign will be successful and lead to a new referendum – in which case I trust the British people to reconsider the 2016 decision.

Barbara Operschall

Vienna, Austria

I would like to see a critical question introduced into the debate, because I have felt, right from the word go, that David Cameron gave the electorate the EU option not because it was the right, proper and necessary thing to do, but because it was a key manifesto pledge that could see him retain power. So the EU vote never had the credibility in the way in which, for example, the Scottish Independence or Alternative Vote referendums did.

The key question that should have been asked then and, indeed, I believe should be being asked and promoted now is this: “Do you think there should be wholesale reform within the European Union?” I am not a betting man, but my guess is that, had that question been put, around 75 per cent of those who voted, whichever way, would have ticked the Yes box.

JR Simms

Address supplied

I suggest that students at all UK universities should be encouraged to register to vote. It is the younger generation that face a diminished future under Brexit, yet at the time of the 2016 referendum many of them had not registered to vote or weren’t motivated to vote.

Efforts at every level should be managed to engage the young to have a say in their future – and not to refrain from doing so because they feel disenfranchised.

It should be emphasised that the following benefits are likely to be diminished under Brexit: study and career opportunities for young people; scientific and research programmes; and cultural ties and exchange programmes.

Tim Gunn

Address supplied

My marketing strategy for another referendum would be to emphasise that the original was a missell by career politicians seeking to strengthen their hands. It was certainly not an attempt to improve the lives of the average British citizen. We must have the right to end the debacle and that we have witnessed in Westminster since and those who have propagated misinformation and mischief should be held accountable.

Alistair Beckett

Address supplied

As an expat living in Spain for more than 30 years, and prior to that in France, I belong to the diaspora that has no say whatsoever in this matter, not to mention a final say. I did not have the right to vote for having lived away for too many years.

Whether or not I return to live in the UK is of little importance. However, what does matter is my nationality, my right to stay where I am, with my children, and to continue my life as I have been living it until now, apart from being able to come and go freely between my place of residence and the UK. My case, and that of many others, is being given no obvious consideration, with the focus lying on trade, the economy, the NHS, immigration, and so on. And if it is, then it is being kept very quiet.

Those of us who live throughout Europe should have the right to say something about Brexit because we are among those who will be affected in one way or another, and to know what our options will be: keep our British nationality while still living abroad? Change to that of the country we live in? The talk all seems to concentrate on who can or cannot go to the UK, not to what those of us living throughout Europe can do.

I greatly appreciate this initiative by The Independent. Thank you for giving me somewhere to at least make this comment on a matter that directly affects and concerns me, and many like me. It seems very unfair to subject so many people to so much worry – inside the UK and out.

Careen Irwin

Spain

Could The Independent please point out that 700,000 Brits in the EU were denied the right to vote in the 2016 referendum on their future due to the 15-year rule?

No one talks about us, but we are directly affected. Other advanced democracies allow their citizens living in other countries to have the right to vote all their lives. Why not us?

R William Main

France

Is it possible to send a press release about the Final Say campaign to all local papers in the UK?

Also I’m sick, sick, sick of hearing that old people (over 60?) voted to leave. My friends all voted Remain, and I’m 89

Keep at it! I’d like to see this country come to its senses before I’m forced to push up the daisies.

Ann Donnelly

Address supplied

I’d recommend some sort of gathering: “Put your money where your mouth is and join us in Parliament Square”, for instance.

It was lethargy that allowed the Brexit voters to win. I think people would go the extra mile to make up for their mistakes during the referendum.

Even if 10,000 (2 per cent) of your 500,000 turned up, it would generate significant coverage for the campaign.

Andrew Hills

Address supplied

Why don’t we have a Twitter storm on a certain day, and publicise when and what time? #WeAreCorbyn just had one and it was phenomenal!

Lyn Infur

Address supplied

My suggestion for maximum coverage for the petition would be to advertise it on a red “battle bus” and take it round the country. The petition details should be huge – but the bus should also set out the bogus Leave promises. It’s not a new or an original idea, but it seems to work. If you could get as many high-profile celebrities as well as politicians to travel with it, it would get publicity on all the news channels – even the biased BBC! I’m sure some wealthy celebs might be tempted to donate on the cost. Of course, what is really needed is for 18 million people to sign it. Who knows, the battle bus might start the avalanche. No Leave politician could then say they were honouring the will of the people.

Jennifer Godschall Johnson

Address supplied

My suggestion is you get your 500,000 supporters to write to their MPs, pointing out that as an MP they have a duty to do the best for the country and protect UK citizens. By allowing a potentially hard Brexit, they are damaging the country to the extent that it will take at least 20 years to recover.

Malcolm Howard

Address supplied

I believe that there has to be a parallel effort to the online petition to show the government that people are really serious about that final choice. A nationwide effort to get people out into schools, universities, hospitals, offices to ask people to sign – whether it’s online or in person. I think of it as a last-minute, “nothing to lose” movement whose mission it is to try and prevent a terrible calamity for our country – galvanising the young, the old, men, women, people from all walks of life who know that this is our very last chance.

It might sound a very difficult task, too labour intensive, but it need not be. It would simply work by creating a ripple effect – every single person persuading another to sign the petition would make a difference. If any organisations that have signed could ask each of their members in turn to ask two, three or even four others – family and friends – to sign that would make a huge difference. Entirely grassroots this could be massive. One million students have parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and friends. It might sound overwhelming but we have got to fight.

Gudrun Dalibor

Address supplied

I think you should target groups who don’t use social media – for example, run a campaign called “My gran wants a final say” and get youth to take a pic of themselves with their granny. Or target social care agencies and get carers to raise awareness of your campaign with their clients.

Cathy Yoganini

Address supplied

How about an A6 poster for car windows? And what about a template letter direct to the prime minister, so that she can actually hear from “the people” instead of making assumptions about what they think?

Helen Bore

North Yorkshire

There needs to be the biggest march ever in London. A huge poster and billboard campaign. A concerted lobby by industry and services.

Industry and services need to talk directly to their workforces. There should be any possible legal contesting of the situation and passive resistance to make governing difficult.

The campaign needs a figurehead – Farage did it for the Brexiteers, but the Remainers had none.

Kevin Botting

Address supplied

I signed straight away. I am not on social media but sent it to all my phone and email contacts.

What happens next? As a 61-year-old retired GP, I am happy to go onto the streets and chain myself to a railing.

Mandy Claiden

Address supplied

Liam Fox is definitely the fox in the Brexit henhouse with his claims of Brexit.

Perhaps Fox can undertake the “Brexit challenge” by demonstrating the safety of hormone infused beef, GMO food, chlorinated chicken and chemically washed and sanitised US eggs by eating such food for 30 days while being independently monitored.

It’s likely most foxes, if given a choice, would refuse US chlorinated chicken and US chemically washed and sanitised eggs and avoid hormone infused beef and GMO food.

If real foxes would avoid hormone infused beef, GMO food, chlorinated chicken, chemically washed and sanitised eggs, irradiated food and highly processed fake food almost totally made of synthetic ingredients then so should humans.

Safir Ahmed

Address supplied