There seems to be a prevalent notion within UK establishment circles, "we are being attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works. You see used for example to defend the supposed impartiality of the BBC.
The BBC has never been impartial to internal concerns - domestic politics in particular. Leveson Inquiry recommendations not being implemented is the tip of the iceberg in relation to the extent of client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
The thing is, the BBC is incredibly partial, depending on which area of the BBC we're talking about.
BBC News on the web vs BBC News the programme, vs BBC worldwide (which is a seperate org inside the BBC), then there's regional BBC and the prime time talk shows (the hard hitting Andrew Neil and co).
So, when someone says "the BBC is biased against the left" or "the BBC is biased agains the right"; ironically they can both be right, and it's not an indicator of impartiality. It depends on which section of the BBC we're talking about.
And you're totally blind to the bits of the BBC you agree with; you will think those bits are the impartial ones.
It is a loyal state broadcaster. If it had been up to the BBC, then the Prince Andrew story would have been buried. They tried to bury it several times but the Americans don't take orders from Buckingham Palace.
Their coverage of the Scottish independence referendum was laughably biased and often clueless.
They do seem to have an odd attitude towards Nigel Farage (UKIP & Reform) though, and kept putting him on Questiontime and the radio. It seems unclear why they would promote him so much given much of their other content.
I used the BBC just an example. Starmer seems to have the same attitude. If both Farage and Corbyn, and Polanski and whoever is leading the Conservatives and LibDems are attacking me, then I must be super in the middle i.e. I must be so doing it all super right!
I don't think Starmer really knows what he is doing one way or another. The Island of Strangers speech out flaked Farage to the right.
Dominic Cummings had a bunch of interview appearances online. His experience in office when he was working with Johnson (and many Ministers in general) is that they don't actually understand what they can and can't do in the job. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar situation is present under Starmer.
I think we can fairly easily dismiss Cummings' views on anything. He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit, and that the the best team to carry out that out was to be headed by Boris Johnson.
He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
> He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit, and that the the best team to carry out that out was to be headed by Boris Johnson.
Not exactly. I think you need to listen to the interviews.
Dominic Cummins has solid rationale for why he believes what he believes. I would need to listen to them again to remember what he said, but what you are describing was too simplistic.
Also his opinions on Brexit have nothing to do with some of the things he said about how COVID was handled.
> He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
> That has never been his opinion. There are many interviews with him on YouTube and I suggest you listen to them.
I've viewed and read an interminable number of interviews with Cummings.
He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out), b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected, and c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.
> I've viewed and read an interminable number of interviews with Cummings.
The statements you have made don't really line up with the interviews I've listened to.
The context around the events and what his involvement was and was not, is important.
You are leaving out key information that he mentioned in many interview appearances.
> He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out)
Without re-litigating everything. It may have been different if the politicians and those that worked for them hadn't frustrated the process. I was genuinely disgusted by the attitudes that many of the politicians had after the Leave won. That was my interpretation of what happened. Your obviously differs.
It also says nothing about the validity of his other statements, which is what I was referring to.
> b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected
Yes, but the way you are talking about it is omitting events both before and after the 2019 General Election.
Theresa May had been ousted by the Conservative Leadership. Earlier she ran an awful election campaign, squandered a huge lead in the polls and had to form a coalition Government with the DUP to maintain a majority.
Cummins said he was contacted by Johnson because Johnson had a minority government and couldn't call a re-election. His first job was to get Johnson out of that Quagmire, then prepare for re-election. He decided to help Johnson under certain guarantees / conditions. Which tells me that he didn't actually trust Johnson.
He claims to have been gradually forced out by Carrie Johnson and his team shortly after the election.
If you are being hampered by the Prime Minster's wife on the agenda that you are supposed to implement. It is likely to fail.
I've actually experienced something similar in my career where I was being blocked (for political reasons) by another team. It makes getting anything done impossible.
So there is no reason to believe he is lying, back tracking or retconning events.
This is because his statements about Carrie Johnson's involvement line up with other accounts from other people that I've heard during the time period shortly after his departure.
> c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.
It not about it being an approval or disapproval of his government. Often you must work with people that you would rather not to, to achieve things.
His feelings about the Johnson government doesn't change his the validity of his statements about how Whitehall operate while he was present.
His comments about ossified organisations lines up with my past experience of working in both ossified Public and Private orgs.
His account of the events around COVID match up with the timeline of events, and I re-watched old interviews of him and he hasn't backtracked at all or changed his story around what happened. He has mentioned things he couldn't mention at the time e.g. his residence was broken into and he was advised not to mention this at the time.
I have no reason to not believe him, since his statements match up with both what I have experienced and a known timeline of events.
I think your dislike of Cummins and his involvement with Vote Leave. As a result is clouding your judgement on the validity of his statements about how Boris Johnson behaved and how Whitehall operates.
Generally there is a lot of stuff in his interviews that I've seen that quite honestly changed my opinion of him (which was somewhat negative). I believe he is telling the truth.
Any answer I give would be found unsatisfactory so there is little point in bothering.
I've already stated my impression of what happened in Parliament leading during that time period, it was obvious that people were being obstructionist and that alone doomed any hope of a positive outcome.
OK dude. You’re bothering to respond so you could just properly respond. It’s entirely possible that I have gaps in my knowledge and can hear a new argument and find it reasonable, since I’ve spent almost no time debating Brexit. Obviously I’m now just going to assume you don’t have a decent argument, which you will point at and say “see!”. It’s an easy cop out for you. What’s the point in expressing opinions if you’re going to refuse to put any weight behind them whatsoever?
> What’s the point in expressing opinions if you’re going to refuse to put any weight behind them whatsoever?
I did a long detailed response in this thread where I spent a lot of time detailing why I believed somebody's assessment of about about Dominic Cummings was incorrect (I actually listened to what he had to say). So I've already have put weight behind my opinions.
Your reply on this topic is essentially leading to a re-litigation of Brexit which happened a decade ago now, which isn't anything to do with Dominic Cumming's observations on how Whitehall worked while he was present during COVID.
Brexit isn't something I wanted to get into, but both you and the other person I was replying to seemed to be focused on Brexit when it isn't the topic of discussion. I made that abundantly clear in my long reply to them.
TBH. You can do a web search or ask an AI the various exit strategies that were present at the time. Many scenarios were proposed before and after the vote. This was discussed to death at the time. Loads has been written about it. Why do I have to summarise something that is easily found via a search engine for you?
You don’t have to, but it would have taken less effort than your responses so far. If you’re not interested in someone’s question then you should probably just ignore it rather than write paragraphs about why you’re not interested in it, but you do you!
> You don’t have to, but it would have taken less effort than your responses so far.
Actually it wouldn't. There are many arguments from fringe figures to more mainstream with various rationales. Much has been written about it.
> If you’re not interested in someone’s question then you should probably just ignore it rather than write paragraphs about why you’re not interested in it, but you do you!
I answered your question. The way I answered while a bit sardonic is supposed to make you think a bit. Obviously you don't appreciate it, but it isn't in bad faith.
Not everything has to be some sort of logical back and forth debate to get the point across.
> He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit
I don't want to start another Brexit debate or even take position on it. However I'd like to point out that the key with Brexit is the plan on what to do afterwards and that is what has been completely lacking.
Whatever one's opinion of Cummings, he did put forward a plan and that plan was never attempted (probably too bold, shall we say, for politicians to touch it). I am not commenting on whether that would have worked or not, but at least he put forward a plan and strategy. On the other hand, Bojo's "plan" for Brexit seemed to have been limited to becoming PM...
> It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.
Regarding Cummins, Why exactly? Dominic Cummins is articulate, seems to be quite intelligent and seems to be very fact/data orientated. I've also heard him describe how he would action particular policy.
Therefore I find it hard to believe he had didn't have any idea on how to execute his plans.
I think one issue we are having is that more and more things are said to be impossible to implement to the point that nothing happens... There is a lack of ambition, boldness, and leadership.
Yes there are simplistic solutions but, on the other hand, more often that not I think that claiming that issues are extremely complex is a way of avoiding doing anything for whatever reasons. So, it depends.
I think that the UK won't solve its issues until it gets a PM with a bold plan and great leadership, whatever side they may come from.
I mean where is Sir Humphrey Appleby when you need him!
Johnson's incredibly colourful reaction to Starmers trade deal, in that he was 'acting like an orange-ball chewing manical gimp', speaks volumes about the discourse around Starmer.
Hislop is particularly scathing, albeit cynically pragmatic, since Starmers appointment - "“Keir Starmer is the man who likes to sit on the fence unless you don’t like fences and then maybe he can find a hedge, or if you don’t like hedges he’ll find a wall."
“People have suggested Keir Starmer is very boring, but I think that’s partly his superpower, in that being interesting in the way his predecessor was manages to lose you elections.
“You have to be careful when you dismiss people as boring. Everyone thought John Major was boring, but then you had him for two elections.”
When Ivor Caplin, the former Labour MP that, among other things, attacked Musk for talking about Pakistani rape gangs, was arrested for pedophilia [1], this is the article they published - no photo, no name, no party affiliation, and no followup article - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg45y4r0yngo
BBC omits identity of Nigerian murderer from article about how he killed his wife [2,3], making it entirely about "gendered violence" instead. Readers can't make the incorrect inference if you simply withhold information from them.
BBC omits all criticism of Starmer from their reporting on his meeting with Trump [4].
When Farage's private bank account was closed due to his politics, the BBC first simply took the bank's word that this was entirely due to financial considerations. When Farage obtained internal documents of that bank, explicitly saying he met financial criteria for an account, but it was closed despite this due to his politics, the BBC issued a correction article trying to imply his politics were merely "also" considered [5].
BBC uses all-white stock photos to warn about obnoxiously loud phone use on trains [6].
But makes sure to use a racially-diverse cast for the 1066 Battle of Hastings [7].
This is not the only such instance, nor a coincidence, by their own admission: Moffat even talks about the idea he mentions above — the excuse of “historical accuracy” that some people often give to justify an all-white cast — “[W]e’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’” [8,9]
[5] "On 4 July, the BBC reported Mr Farage no longer met the financial requirements for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. The former UKIP leader later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered." - https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66288464
I've no idea what Dr. Who, murder-reporting, period dramas or stock photography choices have to do with the Labour party, but I'll pretend you're arguing in good faith and address what I believe to be the point in your copypasta.
The most empirical and robust study regarding bias was performed by Cardiff University in 2013. Its major finding regarded the dominance of Conservative party political sources in BBC coverage; in coverage of immigration, the EU and religion, they accounted for 49.4% of all source appearances in 2007 and 54.8% in 2012.
The data also showed that the Conservative Party received significantly more airtime than the Labour Party. In 2012, Conservative leader and then Prime Minister David Cameron outnumbered Labour leader Ed Miliband in appearances by a factor of nearly four to one (53 to 15), and governing Conservative cabinet members and ministers outnumbered their Labour counterparts by more than four to one (67 to 15).
In reporting of the EU the dominance was even more pronounced with party political sources accounting for 65% of source appearances in 2007 and 79.2% in 2012.
In strand two (reporting of all topics) Conservative politicians were featured more than 50% more often than Labour ones (24 vs 15) across the two time periods on the BBC News at Six
This is evident right up to the 2019 election - BBC Question Time editing out audience laughter at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fumbling responses, and soft-shoeing his ascendancy by excusing him from the tender mercies of Andrew Neil - unlike his opposition.
Wait a news channel gave more air time to the current prime minister and his cabinet, the guy and team with the power, than someone else. Consider me shocked!
Have you considered that by choosing different time periods you get different results.
Maybe the BBC bends the knee to whoever is calling the shots, that's what it looks like to me.
Cardiff University is extremely unlikely to be neutral, and a study done more than a decade ago tells us little about the state of the BBC today.
The OP gave many examples but you only need to know one: the BBC broadcast fake footage of Trump created by splicing together different parts of a speech he gave. The parts were separated by more than 50 minutes and they hid the splice by cutting to the crowd. This manipulation of the public only came to light because an internal whistleblower tried to report what happened, then discovered the BBC institutionally supported this kind of video manipulation so blowing the whistle internally was useless. He reported it to the Telegraph instead.
In other words:
• The BBC broadcasts fake news clips.
• It does so deliberately, with the full approval of its board.
• They refused to apologize or clean house.
• They probably do it a lot and get away with it.
That's it. That's the only thing you need to know about the BBC's political bias.
And it's not just them. Channel 4 News broadcast an entirely fake video of Farage during the last election. It framed him by using an actor who was collaborating with an undercover film crew (and the actor was acting at the time). This was proven beyond all doubt and C4 refused to do anything about it. Once again, institutional fraud in service of election manipulation.
There's no real gap between using actors or mid-sentence splices and using AI, special effects or other standard Hollywood tactics. So the idea that British TV news is biased in favour of the right is farcical on its face. Let us know when they're regularly faking videos of Starmer! I grew up in Britain and the state of Britain's institutions is just shameful. It's tin pot third world stuff. British people need to understand that their state owned TV channels are completely unreliable sources to learn about the world from.
I literally cited the BBC Question Time editing out audience laughter at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fumbling responses, and the incredible partisanship to protect him from Andrew Neill while then setting up the most controversial UK political interview of the 21st Century with Marr
I have to also laugh at Channel 4 (decidedly not the BBC in the first instance) putting some small thumb on the scales of justice re: Nigel Farage and the Reform party generally - the biggest political and institutional frauds outside of the Reese-Moggs clan.
My favourite prominent example: footage originally taken from GB News was used by a local Reform Party to falsely claim a rival MP was abusive to Nigel Farage in Parliament
The problem isn’t the balance, it’s the police state. I don’t want an authoritarian Left government any more than I want an authoritarian Right or Center government.
The problem is most Brits, at least on HN, seem to deny what is happening and/or support it. People being arrested for holding up blank signs at Charles' coronation was ridiculous and nothing like it has happened in the US, but anytime that's brought up they pivot to mass shootings in the US or some other whataboutism.
I was curious about the "blank sign" story because it's slightly different from what I remembered reading. As far as I can tell, this is the incident you're referring to:
On 12 September, Charles addressed parliament as king for the first time. The Metropolitan police called in reinforcements in case of protests. Powlesland, who works nearby, walked from Parliament Square to Downing Street and back with his blank piece of paper. “Then a guy from Norfolk police came up and spoke to me, and that was the video that went viral.” Powlesland recorded the encounter on his phone. “He asked for my details, I asked why and he said, ‘I want to check you’re OK on the Police National Computer.’ I said, ‘I’ve not done anything wrong, so I’m not giving you them.’ I wanted to test it without getting arrested. So I asked, ‘If I wrote “Not my king” on the paper, would I get arrested?’ and he said, ‘Probably, because it would be a breach of the Public Order Act; it would be offensive.’” Was he right? Powlesland laughs. “No! Just having something someone else finds offensive is not a criminal offence because then pretty much anything could be.”
I'm glad that was only a single instance, I had misremebered it as being multiple. I think the bigger isser then is people arrested for holding up signs saying "not my king" or similar, of which there were at least 64[0].
I am convinced that a good bit of this is paid astroturfing and another segment is people who work in government or government contracting. Brits generally seem more open to government intrusion, it’s true, but in my experience they don’t go out of their way to defend things like this. It’s more of a passive acceptance.
I think tribalism is the simpler explanation. One of the worst offenders I saw was a guy on here who wrote one of the new generation shells written in go...went out of his way to say the US had the same behavior as the UK, arresting people holding a blank sign, except his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police. An entirely unrelated issue. The point was though he was flailing due to feeling defensive, and unable to take a step back and analyze the criticisms objectively. This is super common behavior in pretty much all countries, and I think it's a huge problem.
True, now that you mention it I’ve seen the same sort of thing from people who are definitely not bots. Although, you can’t discount the possibility that they do some government or law enforcement work as a consultant. The full throated defense of police state tactics is unreal. (For what it’s worth, there are plenty of Americans who show up in Palantir/Flock threads doing the same thing, and I have the same suspicions there.)
For a current example look at the other guy replying to my comments, earnestly trying to equate 'free speech zones' in the US which have not been a thing in years, maybe more than a decade, with people in the UK being arrested for holding up blank signs.
I can't imagine it's paid work because what would be the point? It's not like he is influencing anyone's opinions.
OK. SO, one city decided to do that, around a convention where there was very likely reasonable security concerns. Not sure I agree with it, but it's hardly a national issue. Look at all the no kings and anti-ice protests nation wide not confined in any way as evidence.
Fair enough. People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy' or 'not my king', and the person holding up a blank sign was intimidated by police. Slightly better, I guess.
And look at you - making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used) and your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong" but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
By the way, here's another example of the use free speech zones and the arrests of people for having their say -
"Since state officials created a “free speech zone,” local police continue to make arrests that have “no apparent purpose other than just intimidating people away from that line, and sending a message that they’re going to be controlling the area with force,” said civil rights attorney Joe DiCola."
Suppression of protest is unfortunately a popular thing for governments in a lot of places right now. It's as bad (if not worse) in Australia, where I live, especially in New South Wales where they seem determined to find a pretext to ban any and all marches.
And to make it absolutely clear - I do not support any of it nor am I defending the actions of the UK authorities. Also not a monarchist, that family of parasites needs to be stripped of all powers, lands and assets stolen from the British and other peoples, and I was disgusted by what the British authorities did to suppress dissent leading up to the coronation of King big-ears.
> making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used)
My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been. Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
> your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
At least 64 people were for simply holding up signs saying "not my king". The guy holding up blank paper was intimidated by the cops, which sure, is better than being arrested, but not great.
> It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong"
What's sad is you're being the very example of someone being overly defensive about the UK's decline instead of just agreeing these are real issues. This isn't a competition, I think the US is going in a horrible direction as well, andnot once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse' - that's a strawman birthed from your defensiveness.
> but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
I do think you are being tribal and unreasonable, yes.
> But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
Unfortunately, but it's honestly only a minority of people who act like that. Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
> My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been.
I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
> Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there?
People were arrested for protesting at an event, the coronation. This is the same sort of thing free speech zones have been used to suppress in the US. Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr, but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
> not once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse'
Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
> being overly defensive about the UK
> Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
> But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
Do you have no reading comprehension at all? I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful. The King can go #### himself.
OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
> I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
It doesn't really matter though, the point was it hasn't been a national issue in over a decade, and that remains the case.
> Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there?
The point was people were being arrested in the UK simply for holding up signs. You tried to equate free speech zones with that, but as I said it's an entirely unrelated matter, a desperate whataboutism sprung from defensiveness.
> Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr,
So, over a decade ago like I said.
> but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
There are giant protests all over the country. Free speech zones don't make the news because they are not an issue. No one is being impeded.
> Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
Not at all, you inferred it. I've been consistently clear that I think the UK is going down a bad path but in a very different way from the US, I never said worse.
> I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful.
Honestly, only once that I'm aware of, and I had to drag it out of you. All your posts are pushing back, which gives the impression you want to defend the problems being mentioned.
> OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
I shan't expect a reply then. Cheers. Hopefully we can have a more productive discussion on a different topic in the future.
I was talking about protestors being arrested for holding up signs, he said the same thing happened in the US but his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police in the US, which while very bad is an entirely different issue.
Because it is massively exaggerated by those with an agenda to distract from the US.
But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff as I have been for a couple of decades now is always incredible. Take the beam from your own eyes. And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
> Because it is massively exaggerated by those with an agenda to distract from the US.
I don't think there has to be any negative motive. I'm not from the US or the UK but have lived in both countries, so feel I can be somewhat objective. What's going on in both countries is disturbing to me, but they have differences with what they are doing.
> But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
That hasn't been a thing for a long time. There have been nationwide protests the last few days not restricted to any kind of 'free speech zone'.
Consider what you are trying to defend: holding up a blank sign. Are you really OK with that? You really think that is reasonable?
> The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff
Pointing out a legitimate concern is not catastrophising anything.
> And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
It’s still the law, was expanded under Obama and is used widely. It is used to control dissent at events where protest would be unsightly, much as the UK incident you brought up.
> Arresting people for holding up a blank sign is very different and much worse.
On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
It’s exactly the same use of police in concealment of dissent by the state.
> Do you agree it was a problem
Of course, it’s fucking awful. It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
This is my very point - the UK is used as some sort of out-there example of Orwellian repression, but the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
It’s in this thread. We have your assertions above, and below we have someone decrying how unimaginable it would have been for a government to attempt to wholesale spy on people’s communications two decades ago, seemingly completely unaware of the activities of the NSA in AT&T and other companies’ data infrastructure in the US, revealed in 2006.
> On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
You are not being genuine here IMO, and this seems to be a case of the very tribalism I spoke of. The two are not remotely the same. One is restricting a protest to a zone. The other is punishing people for what they are saying, even when what they are saying is a blank piece of cardboard.
> It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
> ...
> the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
Can you cite an example of people in the US being arrested for holding up a blank piece of cardboard?
As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested. A number of the arrests of anti-monarchy protestors were subsequently ruled unlawful (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyenzdz66wo).
All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
By being sloppy with the facts you're only reinforcing Nursie's point that much of the discussion around these issues on HN is based on exaggeration and poorly sourced claims. That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
> As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested.
I was under the impression it was not a single incident, but that's great that it wasn't.
The bigger problem, though, was people being arrested for holding up "not my king" or similar signs. According to one site[0], there were 64 arrests that day. I don't think it matters that no charges were filed or whatever, what matters is they were taken at the time for expressing an opinion.
> All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
That's also good to know. I should have been clearer, but I meant within the context of my experience online. I also don't know that they are truly in denial, it just seems they are overly defensive about it and want to point out the US is worse in various ways.
> That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
I'm misinterpreting anything, and certainly not in this discussion. In past discussions, closer to the coronation, there were Brits being very active in downplaying the arrests, that to me would seem to be denying there was an issue. If it was widely reported in British media as a bad thing, it would seem these particular people being in denial were outliers.
Ok, but please just do a quick search and check your facts before kicking off a long discussion thread on a false basis. I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts, not any great love we have for police crackdowns on peaceful protests.
> Ok, but please just do a quick search and check your facts before kicking off a long discussion thread on a false basis.
My facts here would have been previous HN discussions that would have been very hard to find.
> I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts
No, that isn't the case, and you're not in a position to promise that; it's an assumption you're making, and I would ask you to question your motivation for doing so.
In the previous posts I was using as an example discussion the coronation, people were downplaying protestors being arrested for holding up signs. Nothing was being exaggerated, all the facts were accurate as they had just happened - sources were abundant.
I believe US conservatives have done this since 1980s. I'm not sure it was deliberate at first: there's feedback. Loudly invoking "liberal bias" in 1975 most certainly got the press to reevaluate and attempt to mitigate any bias they might have shown. That was a reward for conservatives, which probably motivated more accusations of liberal bias, another round of press accomodations. It reinforced itself.
Indeed – it's why the BBC platform people like Nigel Lawson when ever they have someone to talk about the impact of climate change or the Tufton St mafia
One thing that is often missed in this narrative is that the UK has a voting system which was explicitly designed to counteract this issue reaching definitive results with the minimum amount of consensus.
I agree with you but I think this idea of being "fair" is something that is said but no-one actually believes in. Most recent government is one of the most extreme examples of this: do things that annoys everyone, say you are just being "fair" because everyone is annoyed...it doesn't make sense.
To say this another way, there is genuinely an easier option: stop doing things that people do not want.
The obvious implication is that "balance" between freedom and surveillance just moves things away from freedom.
Of course, on the note of being attacked from "both" sides, there are often more than two sides to a story. Also, not every side has to be, or maybe even should be, considered with equal weight.
Yeah, a lot of this is just .. well, I hesitate to use the over used phrase "deep state", but a lot of it is the work of people in the security institutions who "advise" the government, rather than the changing cast of the thin democratic bit on the front. There's long been authoritarianism in response to the fear of terrorism, from the IRA onwards. Then there's things like the "spycops" scandal, which make you wonder whether certain protest groups are deliberately engaging in really unpopular stunts in order to facilitate a crackdown.
The British public are in an odd place on this. There's a lot of "folk libertarianism", but that mostly consists of not having ID cards, while at the same time supporting all sorts of crackdowns on protest as soon as it's mildly inconvenient.
And then there's immigration. As in the US, it's a magic bullet for discourse that allows any amount of authoritarianism (or headshots to soccer moms) as long as you promise it will be used against immigrants.
Hannah Arendt convincingly made the case that any government power used against immigrants will eventually be turned against citizens. History keeps proving her right.
It's a problem with pretty much anyone. Things are bad from a fundamental structural failings for decades, elect new person, don't see immediate turn-around, they're massively unpopular.
The only way out of this is if you successfully blame $marginalised_group for the peoples problems. Or spend decades undoing the damage, but nobody ever gets decades in power.
Most don't want any of the options presented to them. Almost all the parties don't really serve the electorate, so a large number of people are abstaining.
I appreciate this in an anecdotal but I've spoken to quite a few people I know in my family, that saw it as their civil duty to vote and they told all told me some variation of "there is nobody worth voting for", "I don't think it matters who I vote for".
There are good options I think for most people. I did not like labors party policy, so I voted for the Lib Dems in a large labour area, did it achieve anything for them? No, did I do my civil duty?
I am sure many green voters felt the same way for many years and now they stand a decent chance of getting many seats!
Your best option in your area was a protest vote, but you still believe there are good options. To me that sounds like cognitive dissonance.
I don't vote. There are many reasons I don't vote. However the biggest reason I don't vote is that the whole premise or at least how it is presented to you is false. The way it is presented to you both in school, media etc. is that you are supposed to read the manifesto, consider the candidates arguments and history etc. etc.
People don't do that, they vote for their team. People have their political teams, much like Premiership Football it often comes down to the "Reds vs the Blues" (literally Man U vs Man City).
That might be true, but the votes (not seats, first past the post, almost guarantees people aren't represented):
Labour: 9.7M
Conservatives 6.8M
Reform: 4.1M
Liberal Democrats 3.5M
The point clearly stands that had Reform not been a thing, 2024 would have been a conservative landslide.
What we got was a Labour landslide, what we should have got was some coalition.
As the sibling comment said. You are making the assumption that every Reform voter would have held their nose and voted Conservative instead. A lot more people would have stayed home I think. I don't think anyone thought the Conservatives could win and that includes the Conservatives themselves.
Yes, though I'd be careful about assuming that votes are Conservatives <-> Reform on a left-right median voter model. The other aspect that Reform has (and will have at least until it forms a government) is anti-system/populist credentials. Labour had a little of that last time (they are a deeply establishment party, especially under current leadership, but they were coming off a period as very public opposition to the government and the current state of things) but will have very little next time.
It's certainly not a given that all the 2024 Reform vote would have gone to the Conservatives: a good chunk of it would have likely been disgusted abstention, another chunk to other anti-system parties (mostly of the right fringe, I suspect, but not excluding the Greens despite wild ideological differences), and likely a further (if smaller) chunk to other parties which were simply not the Conservatives (including Labour and the Lib Dems).
Edit: the best analysis on this is likely to be in the latest volume of the long-standing The British General Election of XXXX series, which has just been published online[0]. I haven't had time to look at it yet, though.
Some of it is deliberately attempting to appeal to Reform voters, in ways which have infuriated Labour supporters while not winning any Reform support.
Which is even more bizarre given appointing someone as divisive and pig-ignorant as Priti Patel the Home Secretary would have the tabloids crucifying a Labour PM. Johnson and his after-dinner speeches about the Mayor from Jaws forgave a lot of blunders during C19.
Remember also that when Sunak stepped down, Priti was put forward for leader. If she had played off her Zionist aspirations just a few years later she'd be right in the current newscycle re proscribed organisations and 'domestic terrorism' charges in the UK, and possibly in the running for the big chair.
Yet these laws and general direction have been in place through half a dozen prime ministers, including ones initially very popular (Johnson especially, but Cameron wasn't particularly unpopular until the brexit mess)
Right. When I'm at a counter-protest facing the local† Nazis (who in this incarnation have decided to call themselves "patriots") among all the rhetoric accusing us of supporting terrorists (no matter where brown people may come from they're apparently "ISIS" or "Taliban" these days) or rapists or any number of weird conspiracies, one thing they often yell about is that Keir Starmer is (to quote them) "a Wanker" and I have observed to other protesters that uniquely this is probably a widely shared viewpoint. Yeah, he is, but, why you are you being so racist, why do you want to terrify my neighbours, what does that have to do with Keir?
† Local in the sense of being the ones who turn up, my guess is that a good number of them travel by car from quite some distance, personally I live five minutes walk away.
I don't agree. The British State has been going in this direction ever since Blair's government and probably before that. I don't remember Blair's government being that unpopular.
New labour really laid the groundwork for alot of the orwellian laws that are in place now. Its a shame nobody who has been elected since sought to roll them back...
There is simply no-incentive to. Generally there are many incentives to increase the number of laws, as they can be seen as doing something about a some recent issue. Many of the recent online safety laws (even before OSA) are good examples of this.
Additionally Britain generally has a problem with politicians believing that the only solution to a problem is banning/regulating things, regardless what the root cause might be. Banning/regulating something requires new legal powers. So more laws.
This been true as far back as I can remember with them talking about banning the Lotus Carlton back in the early 90s because one vehicle the infamous 40RR was used in a spate of ram raids which embarrassed the police. I remember this on the news when I was about 9-10 years old.
> Additionally Britain generally has a problem with politicians believing that the only solution to a problem is banning/regulating things, regardless what the root cause might be. Banning/regulating something requires new legal powers. So more laws.
I mean it's true and it does work for the most part. The bans on knives, drain cleaner etc have reduced the number of these kinds of crimes especially in London. It's hard to argue against something when a lot of this kind of policymaking is effective
They were/are nice cars. I did dream of buying a Lotus Carlton, but unless a few million falls into my lap it will remain a dream :D
> I mean it's true and it does work for the most part. The bans on knives, drain cleaner etc have reduced the number of these kinds of crimes especially in London. It's hard to argue against something when a lot of this kind of policymaking is effective
> The increase in knife crime witnessed in London has occurred alongside a general increase in overall crime throughout England and Wales. In 2022/23, there were approximately 6.74 million crime offences across England and Wales, compared with just over four million ten years earlier. During a similar time period, the number of knife homicides also increased, and reached 282 in 2017/18, compared with 186 in 2014/15. Due to strict gun laws in the United Kingdom, firearms are rarely used to commit homicides, with knives or other sharp instruments being used in over 46 percent of homicides in 2023/24.
This works both ways though, ie there’s no point opposing the laws on the grounds that they might be abused in future because the future sovereign parliament could just pass the same abusable laws.
By this logic, governments shouldn't legislate anything or have any kind of policy. Child benefit? Scrap it in case King Herod takes over and has an ready made hit list.
I wouldn't like to see all the legal infrastructure they're putting in under a Reform UK government - I'd imagine they'll use it for far more nefarious means.
That being said - the blame lies squarely with Labour here. I have a gut feel a lot of it has to do with donors to the Tony Blair Institute.
Well World Economic Forum (WEF) lists Tony Blair and his institute as one of the top Agenda contributors [1].
It's not even funny that you can trace almost any person responsible for the deterioration of human rights in Western society to one of the WEF alumni or associates.
These supernatural institutions and interest groups should be made illegal if we want to continue as a civilization.
Man, its like everyone is blind to the current state of things.
Here is the truth:
* Everyone with above sentiment always votes for anyone libertarian, which is necessarily conservative, and all conservatives are pretty much liars.
* These same conservatives that champion against government overreach, for law and order, and for personal freedoms do the exact opposite once they get into office. Nor do they give a shit about the law.
So yea, the whole libertarian ideology is pretty much dead. Its pretty obvious that the best course of action is to sacrifice personal freedoms and elect a government that can keep a tight rein over the populace and keep things like Nazi ideology from spreading.
Totalitarianism has the same end state whether it comes from the left or the right. It always results in suppression of the truth, broken feedback loops that lead to poor decisions by government, economic failure, and finally either bloody repression, war, or revolution.
It’s possible to move through this to a place of stability. After all, China only had to kill 15-55 million people in the Great Leap Forward and a couple thousand more in 1989. Today they are fairly stable and prosperous, even with tight controls on information. Perhaps the UK will have a similar path!
Both extreme leftism and extreme rightism are composed of the same people - more focused on ideology rather than truth, and authoritarian control rather than voice of reason.
In the middle, there is an acceptable range of compromise. Social media is the new town square. People shouldn't be able to post stuff on there without recourse for lying and spreading misinformation, just like they shouldn't be able to do this in public. History shows that this leads to bad outcomes. Also, history also shows that we can't just have personal freedoms unrestricted.
And just because that "freedom" is being taken away, doesn't mean that the leftists are in charge.
Historically, at least in the US, people are indeed explicitly allowed to lie or spread misinformation in the town square. This is specifically allowed by the first amendment and backed by court cases. Your mention of the “town square” here is interesting, as Marsh v. Alabama and Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins both center around this idea. In both cases the Supreme Court ruled that unrestricted free speech was allowed in the town square, whether it was a company town or a shopping mall, so long as the location was effectively serving as a surrogate town square.
Now of course this is about the UK. But to my knowledge and based on research there are no laws or cases about lying in public. As long as you aren’t committing perjury or slander, or urging violence, or inciting a panic, this isn’t illegal.
It's not only happening in the UK. It's happening across the entire western world except for America. Australia, Canada and European countries have also been implementing retroactive speech laws, mass debanking, imprisonment for political speech and so on. The UK gets a lot of attention because it's historically been a fairly free country, and because it's English speaking.
Even in the U.S. there is constant pressure on the First Amendment. It's just that the 1A has been quite resilient because the courts have helped it, but that can stop at any time.
I don’t think you understand how different the UK is
Police killings are extraordinarily rare here so hearing about any is eyebrow raising. Even more so the latest example of an ICE agent killing someone simply for pissing them off
Over here, the police have fatally shot a grand total of 88 people in England and Wales since 1990. So yeah, police shootings are pretty big news, and while they are sometimes justified, people certainly would get outraged by anything resembling the recent ICE shootings.
The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
(to the extent that armed revolution worked in the UK, the IRA were helped only slightly by US-backed supplies of Armalite rifles, and much more by a large supply of Libyan high explosives. Guns are a much less effective political weapon than the car or truck or hotel bomb)
Guns only help somewhat nebulously against tyranny. You need societal consensus to get to society using guns against the government, and there is no such consensus regarding ICE, which is why you're not going to see guns used against ICE. Many many people who hate ICE are armed to the teeth, and they are not using those guns because they know that currently that would lose them thee battle and the war.
But in general the better armed states in the U.S. had less restrictive covid rules. So perhaps there is a link between how armed the population is and how well it resists restrictions it doesn't like.
>The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
I don't see ICE prowling "the cops don't come serve a warrant here with anything less than a SWAT team" parts of New Orleans or St. Louis.
Stop thinking about this based on indoctrinated emotion and politics. Think about it in terms of an all out war and "how do I force my enemy to expend resources not toward his goals".
Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an AGTM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. Making any potential target substantially more prickly to a potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone that records things the government does not like or a media platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the masses.
The idea that any cranky old man or mentally on the edge person might just snap and put a bullet in your favorite bespoke enforcer (i.e. not a cop but someone who hands out state backed fines all the same) puts a huge damper on your ability to deploy those people for example. The risk that your informants might get clapped increases the cost of your informants for like results, etc, etc. And when you game it out to it's ends what it comes down to is that the population doing the subjugating might simply not be rich enough or motivated enough to have or be willing to allocate the resources needed to do the job.
This is a large part of why drugs won the war on drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a couple cops it would've gone on way longer.
>(to the extent that armed revolution worked in the UK, the IRA were helped only slightly by US-backed supplies of Armalite rifles, and much more by a large supply of Libyan high explosives. Guns are a much less effective political weapon than the car or truck or hotel bomb)
The semtex wouldn't have gotten anywhere useful if the Brits could just walk into wherever all willy nilly chasing down every lead in search of it. Bringing enough credible threat of violence to force their enemy to actually behave like a proper occupying force burning money and political credibility as a result limited the Brit's ability engage (at the right price) in the kind of police action they needed to catch the bombs.
If they could've just sent pairs of cops after every lead in an "oi you got a license for that meme" manner they'd have dredged up all the semtex and none of it would've made it to London.
> maybe if she'd had a gun she wouldn't have been shot
And how do you imagine that, exactly? You think that cop was fine shooting her for driving away in panic, but would patiently wait for her to grab a gun? And what would you like a person in her situation to do with the gun? Shoot him? The fact is, pulling a weapon in front of a US cop is begging to be killed on the spot. A common point of advice is that if you're stopped in the US by police, you should never look like you're reaching for anything, because the worst-case penalty for that is death. It instantly escalates the situation to life-or-death for a group of people that is largely already itching to pull the trigger.
If he didn't have a gun, maybe he would be driven over by the car. Possibly a few more people too. In Europe, where guns are less prevalent, cars are the favorite weapon used by terrorists.
Luckily, he had a gun, so he was able to save himself and who knows how many more people by shooting an attacker.
Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons. Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime, it would just make it harder for victims to defend themselves.
Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population, which is not that common in comparable countries. If that population were to be removed from the statistics, the murder rate in the USA would drop significantly.
> According to the FBI 2019 Uniform Crime Report, African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1%, and "Other" 3% in cases where the race was known. Including homicide offenders where the race was unknown, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, "Other" 2.1%, and "Unknown" 29.3%[48]
> Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons
Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
> Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime
Of course it would - see the reduction in gun violence in countries where this has been implemented.
> Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population
Oh. You're one of those.
It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
> Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
Since you bring up Europe, I can give you a counterexample of Switzerland, which is armed to the teeth and still has a significantly lower homicide rate than the USA. The same applies to Canada. Even some countries with prevalent illegal guns are not even close to the USA. Heck, there's a war in Ukraine, guns are everywhere, and still, there's a very low homicide rate.
> Oh. You're one of those.
One of which? Say it or shut up. Or are you one of these? ;)
> It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
I'm not even an American. But given the above counterexamples, it's clear that the availability of legal guns is not the only, and probably not the biggest deciding factor for high homicide rates.
Want to understand the cause? Open a Wikipedia page, look at the stats, and identify the fact that most of the homicides in the USA can be tracked down to some specific population. That's not racist, since facts can't be racist. You won't reduce the homicide rate by ignoring the facts.
> Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
Can you explain that logic? First, if you look at the stats again, most of the Black Americans are killed by the members of their race, probably due to higher exposure to threats.
So yes, Black Americans need legal guns to protect themselves even more than White Americans, since they are more endangered.
Yes, for the US with their unique historical and cultural differences, but it doesn't make it an international metric.
Everyone in the US agrees with the inequalities and segregation and find it acceptable that an individual has to become a predator to survive because they don't find it acceptable to help each other on a governmental scale.
Some countries have worse inequalities than the US but they don't think they need guns to have freedom in their daily lives.
As Mao said, political power grows from the barrel of the gun. In the past decade freedom of speech and internet freedom has being dramatically curtailed in pretty much every western country where the citizen are unarmed.
> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest.
Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how they do prosecute noncrime crimes such as 'hate speech').
Here, for comparison, is a paragraph from an essay by Konstantin Kisin:
> A month earlier, I was walking through a posh part of London when I saw a young man in a balaclava snatch a bag from a tourist. When I told people about what I saw at various meetings, most people were surprised that I was surprised. Phone thefts, muggings and all kinds of petty crime are now considered normal and routine.
Anecdote is not data. It is both true that the police absolutely suck at handling petty crime, and the Met have a fairly terrible reputation; and that more serious violent crime is much, much less of a problem in London than it used to be (and less than US cities, of course).
This is a situation where the data may not be capturing the reality, though.
An increasingly common tactic for decreasing crime statistics is to reduce reporting of crimes. The more difficult you make it to report a crime, the better the crime numbers look.
In one city I’m familiar with, it became so well known that reporting small crimes was a futile endeavor that people just gave up. It was common knowledge that you don’t bother calling the police unless it was a major crime. Not surprisingly, the crime statistics started to look better.
That’s why we have the national crime survey, performed by the ONS.
Correlating it with police stats and murder stats suggests that reporting and recording is actually going up as a proportion of crime. Petty crime like shoplifting has gone up, but relatively speaking most people would probably take that over stabbing and murder even if ideally we’d have neither.
There’s this weird trend that’s taken over social media trying to portray London as a lawless hell hole but few people who actually live here are experiencing it that way, and the stats back that up. It’s largely people outside London that are claiming the crime is bad here.
No, but it serves as a sense check on the other data. If the official stats were bogus and crime were spiraling out of control in London, it would be somewhat surprising to see homicides going down. The fact that one of the most objectively measurable crimes is going down lends some additional credibility to the statistics indicating that this trend is also being seen across other crime categories.
So far, I have never seen any article or even comment online explain explicitly why this is the case.
Almost everyone can see quite visibly that crime is not decreasing but then you have people with a clear political and financial motive saying: the stats, you are just a loon or (even worse) someone who might not be from London.
If you read the best source on this, hospital admissions, you will see that ~95% of the drop in "violent crime" is due to decreases in alcohol consumption. That is it. Ex this impact and in relative terms, violent crime in cities has been increasing significantly. And violent crime is supposed to be the rare subset of crime when, obviously, other categories of crime are generally increasing.
Btw, the group that publishes this data is also (strangely) unwilling to make this known and, afaik, do not include this information in press releases.
The other factor is that the composition of London's population has naturally changed over the last ten years. As London has continued to dominate economically, the poor have been emptied out from certain areas contributing greatly to a reduction in crime stats (and, unfortunately, an increase elsewhere in the country). For example, Camden has seen a huge reduction in violent crime, is this a surprise? If you look at areas that have stayed the same, crime has got worse (again, in relative terms/ex the above factors, crime in the UK is falling in many areas and rising in others).
I will say this another way: data is not collected fairly or accurately. There are massive political and financial incentives against accurate data. In London, this has always been the case because it is not possible to win elections in some areas in London with high crime if you admit that crime is high in those areas...you have to blame society. Twenty years ago, you had the same thing: city has never been safer, politicians doing so well, Met doing so well...once you have seen this a few times, you should start to wonder whether it is true...particularly as the current line is that crime was rampant twenty years ago...when it obviously wasn't. Anecdotes will always tend to represent the reality better than data which is produced for political purposes (and I think people know this, the stats exist in part so that people can hop online and say that everyone is doing a great job, you see the same thing online with central government...it is very weird).
I don’t understand why ONS should be expected to do anything but gather numbers. If good policing is the cause or reduction in alcohol consumption is the cause who cares?
Also, on looking for incentives the very obvious incentive to try discredit these orgs is so that politicians outside London can blame crime on immigration in the city that has the most immigrants.
This is straight out of the playbook of groups who want to manipulate public opinion so that they can get away with something that is not in the interests of the electorate.
Look at the US where these capabilities have been under siege since the start of this presidency, for example NASA’s climate data and the EPA’s air quality health impact measurement. Or more directly relevant: “immigrants are eating dogs and cats” and it doesn’t matter that the people who track crime professionally say “no they aren’t”.
It isn't the ONS. I believe it is a research unit of a university who collects this data, and they produce press releases on this dataset.
The reason why the difference is important is because it implies extremely different strategies to fixing it...obviously.
"politicians outside London"...ah, ofc, the Londoner conspiracy theory. It is wrong to blame immigrants for crime but correct to blame people outside London? The reason why people think there is a link between crime and immigration is because there is a link between crime and immigration. I am not sure what else can be said. You are implying that public opinion should be manipulated to hide this fact (even though this is already something the government does) whilst complaining about other people manipulating public opinion. Classic.
Just to clarify: you're saying the alcohol vs crime stats are from a research unit of a university? If so:
- I admit that I don't know much about ONS but its name suggests that they are not about research/speculation/anecdata into how we got where we are or how to fix it, they are just there to collect data
- I would count the reduction in alcohol consumption as an extremely positive step for fixing problems; societal problems like crime need holistic solutions. What the correct solution is seems orthogonal to my point which is that stats orgs work hard to produce rigorous data and it is dangerous to undermine them in favour of groups (bloggers?) who have no such standards applied to their work
> It is wrong to blame immigrants for crime but correct to blame people outside London
I'm not sure what point you're making, I'm not blaming crime on people outside London. I imagine that the small amount of crime in London is committed by people in and around London. I expect the tiny minority of immigrants to be responsible for a tiny minority of those crimes.
> there is a link between crime and immigration
I'd be interested to read stats from a reputable source that applies the sort of rigour that the non-political civil servants who typically gather stats.
> You are implying that public opinion should be manipulated to hide this fact
I am stating that the fact of low crime rates in London should not be undermined in favour of conspiracy theories that are used to demonise the civil service.
Even if there is a link between crime and immigration the low rate makes it far less of a problem than the other societal problems we face, like the quick political points scored by demonising and hollowing out the civil service.
> even though this is already something the government does
This government already bows to this immigration nonsense. They are not a good example in your case.
A record 80,000 phones were stolen in the city last year [inferred to be 2024], according to the police, giving London an undesirable reputation as a European capital for the crime.
Overall crime in London has fallen in recent years, but phone theft is disproportionately high, representing about 70 percent of thefts last year. And it has risen sharply: The 80,000 phone thefts last year were a stark increase from the 64,000 in 2023, the police told a parliamentary committee in June.
That is partly because this crime is both “very lucrative” and “lower risk” than car theft or drug dealing, Cmdr. Andrew Featherstone, the police officer leading the effort to tackle phone theft, told a news conference. Thieves can make up to £300 (about $400) per device — more than triple the national minimum wage for a day’s work.
And they know they are unlikely to be caught. Police data shows about 106,000 phones were reported stolen in London from March 2024 to February 2025. Only 495 people were charged or were given a police caution, meaning they admitted to an offense.
There was a phone theft wave that peaked in 2024. It’s still happening, but it’s significantly less of a problem now - some stats say 30% down from the peak by mid 2025. I had my phone stolen in 2024, I know others who did, but I haven’t heard of anyone having theirs stolen recently and people aren’t really worrying about it any more.
Turns out it wasn’t just random street crime. It was being run by organised crime networks, and it went down significantly after they managed to disrupt a few major rings.
These waves do happen from time to time when criminal networks discover a new tactic, before the police figure out an effective method to deal with it. It was youth stabbings a few years ago and acid attacks before that, both are much reduced now.
Those criminals will move onto something else now, undoubtedly. Perhaps shoplifting, which it’s now reported is being also increasingly run by gangs. Point is, you can’t necessarily look at an individual type of crime as an indicator of criminality as a whole, could just be exploiting an opportunity.
Something that does upset me is that only the monetary value of a phone is ultimately considered in sentencing but these days a phone is a lot more, it is a lifeline to the rest of the world often having your ability to pay and travel built in. A theft of a phone can make a bad day very long and very difficult.
Sure; but the article's premise is that street crime is falling (and as a result, the police, which, presumably, has more free time on their hands, can focus on other things). Assuming petty crime is street crime, and seeing that you agree that the police suck at it, is the article's premise correct?
Yes, it’s correct. Violent crime in London and the UK more generally has been on a long term downward trend. This is not incompatible with there being spikes in some specific categories of crime. But it’s consistent with the trends for homicide, for which the statistics are pretty hard to dispute, and where London has fewer per capita than Berlin, Brussels and Paris (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/london-homic...).
You’re posting an article by someone with eccentric views on a lot of topics and an anti-multiculturalist agenda to advance. (For example, they believe that Rishi Sunak is not English.)
Stats can almost always be disputed unfortunately.
One reason homicides are down is because hospitals have got better at keeping stabbing victims alive. Stripped of context it looks like a win. Put in context the question becomes, why are there so many stabbing victims? Gang crime, etc.
Also, hospitals have got better at treating knife injuries in lots of places, not just London. This would not explain why London has a low homicide rate per capita compared to lots of other cities.
Similar story in Canada. Violent crime and serious crime is on a clear downward trend. Yet in most majour cities you a less safe, and the public transit system is more dangerous than ever.
Not sure about the UK, at least in Canada it's poverty/people being broke. More homeless people and the general harassment they inflict on people in their surrounding area, more petty crime that the police don't bother investigating so people don't bother reporting it. More theft from grocery stores, more petty scams for <$1000 &c.
From the link - This is possibly due to better reporting practices by the police as well as an increasing willingness of victims to come forward, including historic victims of sexual violence.
Not definitive, but certainly a possible explanation.
You know how the NHS reduced waiting lists a few years back? If you had waiting lists of say 100 for a surgery, they basically said - the list is maximum 15 people, after that it's whoever books first who gets the surgery. So basically you had to be lucky and be the number 15 on the list once a spot was open.
But! Magically NHS waiting lists got shorter! The government could say this on Question Time on the BBC, woohoo!
I imagine this is the kind of thing that's happening now with petty crime reports.
Claims about certain categories of crime rising or falling in England are usually based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is not based on police reports, but on surveying a random sample of people to see if they have been self-reported victims of various kinds of crime.
The people who gathered stats professionally are correct.
I’m twitchy about this because I’m hearing from relatives in far more dangerous countries and cities about how London is under siege from immigrant criminals and sharia law is being imposed in the streets. Their news bubble is full of current articles that use as “evidence” pictures of riots from a decade ago where the violence was not committed by immigrants.
This would be laughable if not for how completely these folks have swallowed this nonsense.
It’s at best unscrupulous journalists desperate for eyeballs but given how pervasive this is it feels naive to assume anything but a paid, coordinated campaign.
“Are you ok in the UK?” Yes, I’m right here in London. London is fine.
One of the really boring things about crime stats is that if you insist that "Nobody will do anything" and so you don't bother to report crimes, the crime stats go down -- because you didn't report a crime.
It suits a certain kind of person to have this obvious statistical fact portrayed as some sort of failing of existing institutions. Because it's just how statistics work it won't magically change if you're dumb enough to put them in charge but they can certainly tell gullible people like you that they've fixed it.
Reporting crimes is one of those tedious things citizens have to do to get a nice society to live in, like patiently queueing for things, or putting trash in the bin. You could choose not to do it, but don't blame anybody else if no-one does it and now your society sucks.
While this sounds true, it's also true that police often will try to bully you into abandoning a crime report or treat you with contempt of they don't consider the crime "worthwhle". So not only do you not get a resolution, as expected, but you get to waste your time and be treated poorly. All that to increment a couter that might in aggregate reach a number that might get noticed by someone that might result in a policy that might 5 years later start to address the problem but may also just be used to crack down on everyone's rights as part of a right wing fear campaign? It's nowhere near as clear cut as waiting in line or picking up litter.
So, fun fact, I actually reported a crime last week.
A few days later I got a "Caller ID blocked" call and was like "Scammers?" but I'm the kind of person who at least answers the call to say "Fuck off" if they're scammers and it wasn't a scam it was some nice lady whose job is to sift this endless pile of crime reports.
She didn't treat me with contempt, though of course she's not going to magically make the crime not have happened, or - given I wasn't sure who did it - even commit to having somebody actually do anything about it. But hey, that's statistics for you.
I disagree that somehow picking up litter is different. You're not going to magically make there not be any litter are you? No. But nevertheless in aggregate it has an effect.
I guess it depends on what you mean by English.
England is a country, but you can't have an English passport, you can only get a UK passport.
so, English is a kinda-sorta a non-nationality, but it is very much an ethnic group.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Rishi Sunak isn't a UK citizen, but he certainly isn't a member of the English ethnic group, or any of the Celtic ethnic groups that also make up the UK's native population.
If we go by the explanation from wikipedia [0], Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage would not be considered English, as their families are not part of the English or Celtic ethnic groups. Their ancestors are Turkish and German who came to the UK after 1850. Do you believe they are not English? I mean even the current King of the UK would not be considered English by your definition! He is descended from Greek, Danish and German people [1].
I agree, they are not ethnically English, they are British citizens and have all the rights that come with citizenship, the same as every other UK citizen including those that would call themselves English. You think there's some kind of gotcha there, but there isn't.
England hasn't had an English king since 1066, that's not controversial, and even then the inbreeding between the European royal houses was creating a pan-european elite that made world world 1 more of a really bad family argument than anything else.
What's really odd is that Rishi Sunak is extremely proud of his ethnicity and heritage, it's unfortunate that we've made it almost impossible for other people's to have that same pride.
The usual meaning of English. Say, roughly the criteria that would make someone eligible to play for the England football team. Skin color has nothing to do with it, and I can assure you that very few English people either know or care whether they have any ‘Celtic’ ancestry.
No-one questions the Englishness of white men born in England to two non-English parents. People raising the absurd non-issue of Rishi Sunak’s Englishness are just concealing their rather obvious prejudices with a lot of bafflegab about ‘English ethnicity’ (a concept which not even they can really take at all seriously, if they at least have some acquaintance with English history).
There are Ethnic groups in England that have been present for several thousand years. Some people clearly mean this and can't articulate it better.
Rushi Sunak ancestry is obviously Indian. I don't really care about his ethnicity (he another politician in a suit to me), but I can understand what people mean when they say he isn't English without automatically assuming they are Racist.
Sports teams aren't a particularly good criteria, I could be Scottish or Welsh and play for England, it's one of those idiocracies of living in a country that pretends to be 4.
Denying the existence of an ethic group is extremely racist, and is often considered a precursor to other much more serious issues.
If you have any acquaintance with English history you would be well aware that there are native ethnic groups that have been in the UK since approximately the end of the younger dryas around 11,000 years ago.
The last major migration was the anglo-saxons around 1500 years ago.
These groups still exist and the majority of the UK population can still trace their origin back to one of these groups.
>If you have any acquaintance with English history you would be well aware that there are native ethnic groups that have been in the UK since approximately the end of the younger dryas around 11,000 years ago.
And you'd be aware that nothing even vaguely corresponding to 'England' existed 11,000 years ago. If you are willing to lump the descendants of Romans, Normans, Jutes, Durotriges, Iceni, Vikings, etc. together into one group and call them all 'English' just because they happened to live in the territory of what is now England, then you've already conceded the point that the identity is national, not ethnic.
But hey, over in the other thread you are denying that Boris Johnson is English, so it's clear that you have a rather eccentric concept of the category.
It's interesting that other native groups, all of which have intermixed with others over thousands of years don't have to defend their right to their ethnic identity.
The English ethnic group is defined by a shared genetics and culture, the English enthic group isn't just political it is biological and can be identified via DNA.
I wouldn't consider my definition eccentric, it's based on the UN defintion: Ethnic group or ethnicity refers to a group of people whose members claim a common heritage or common ancestry and usually speak a common language and may have some common cultural practices.
The other thread argued that Boris Johnson is ethnically Turkic (I have no idea if that is true) on the assumption it is true, Boris Johnson may meet the requirement of a common language, but does not meet the requirement of a shared ancestry to be ethnically English.
Many of the groups that you mentioned existed in the UK over 1000 years ago, and shared in the same invasions, same issues, and developed a shared culture due to that shared history and closeness of relations, and of course as evidenced by DNA analysis interbreeding.
So yeah I would say that in the space of a millennium multiple groups can become one group.
Fine, but also how to explain the crazy claims flying around the internet that London is a warzone and a no-go area? I live here and... seriously, nothing has changed. I feel perfectly safe and always have.
Yeah sure, there's some phone theft, it's not great. This phone theft wave is just a symptom of everyone carrying £500 devices around. Big cities have always had theft, pickpocket and snatching crimes. But it's nothing astonishingly new or different. I know one person who had their phone snatched, never seen it happen myself.
So how to explain this massive wave of social media posts making out that London's unsafe? There is definitely a narrative being pushed, whether by Russian bots or not, I cannot say.
Because everyone that experiences the crime stops tolerating it and leaves. This is why the area around the greenbelt so closely resembles the inner cities of 20 years before. This isn't some new phenomenon - Lee Kuan Yew famously described the newspaper purchasing arrangement at Piccadilly Circus in the 1950s, which was incomprehensible by the 1980s.
I'm old enough to remember when they had posters telling people not to wear iPod white earphones because that will get you mugged (and it would) - pure blaming the victim nonsense.
If London defenders were half as enthusiastic about cleaning up their city as they are about attacking anyone pointing out the all too obvious problems they genuinely would be in utopia.
I lived in South London a few decades ago, it was the exact same situation.
Lived in central London, close to 100% of the crime was happening from one area. Police refused to go into that area because of "community relations". No crime in areas that didn't abut this location but no desire to fix. Police pretend to police.
Moved to South London, crime more prevalent but, again, certain areas are worse. Police won't go to these areas, "community relations" even worse. Cash machine near housing estate treated like lootbox. Next election comes round, candidate spends most of their time canvassing on estate. Police only go onto the estate to attend events with "community" telling them they are bigots. Crime continues.
Everyone who works this out either leaves or, if they get enough money, move to safe areas of West London. Today's Londoners do not realise everyone has left, it is just a bunch of people who moved there in the last ten years telling everyone how brilliant it is and pretending they have lived there for years before being forced to leave too. Property prices suggest that actual long-term citizens are continuing to leave in large numbers.
> Everyone who works this out either leaves or, if they get enough money, move to safe areas of West London. Today's Londoners do not realise everyone has left, it is just a bunch of people who moved there in the last ten years telling everyone how brilliant it is and pretending they have lived there for years before being forced to leave too. Property prices suggest that actual long-term citizens are continuing to leave in large numbers.
Painfully accurate.
The fact even Lily Allen, of all people, made a music video about delusional Londoners telling themselves it's all fine, when it's not, speaks volumes, and they're still at it. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYT79tPvLg )
What are we supposed to do to “clean up our city”? I live in one of the worst areas, statistically, for crime and haven’t experienced anything beyond porch piracy and someone trying my car door.
My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. Obviously crime happens, but against other comparable large cities it’s only really Tokyo and a few cities in semi-authoritarian countries that seem that much safer to me. Big European cities are about the same and US cities are much worse.
Beyond reporting anything I see, which I do, I’m not sure what kind of cleaning up you expect me to do? Obviously it’s a factor in how I vote, but it’s not even a top 3 issue to be honest.
> My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about.
You understand this is the kind of thing those of us that lived there have heard a million times?
It's exactly what people say before the thing that happens that makes them leave.
> US cities are much worse.
This also is not the case, and it's amazing how propagandized the UK has to be to think it. If you lot were aware of the true standard of life in most of the US you'd riot.
Bad things can happen anywhere. A one-off incident wouldn’t make me leave.
I visit the US often and have been a victim of crime there more often than anywhere in Europe. That’s not to say I don’t love the US. San Diego is probably my favourite city in the world. But apart from one or two exceptions, large US cities suffer from far worse crime than anywhere in the UK. I got mugged at gunpoint by a crackhead in Philly. Quality of life can be fantastic of course. My aunt lives in a gated community in LA and drives to work so she never has to interact with the real world, so to speak, and her QoL is amazing. But large parts of the city are absolutely dystopian.
Try walking from Fashion District to Chinatown and tell me where you’d find something like that anywhere in London, let alone Z1. I don't even know if I've seen anything that bad in actual third world cities.
(ii) people who left London because they were victims of a crime.
I'm genuinely sorry that you were the victim of a crime, but people in group (ii) are obviously likely to have a negative perception of London regardless of how much or how little crime London actually has.
By way of analogy, consider that there are people who experienced a traumatic air accident and who have never flown again. I don't blame them. But their experiences don't countervail the statistics showing that flying is safe.
>> US cities are much worse.
> This also is not the case, and it's amazing how propagandized the UK has to be to think it. If you lot were aware of the true standard of life in most of the US you'd riot.
I've lived in London and DC, and DC (at the time at least, 2007-2011) was uncontroversially much more dangerous than London.
And of course it's only 6 months ago that the President of the USA declared a public safety emergency in DC ;) You're not wrong about the overall standard or living, but you are wrong about crime and safety.
In the UK what you are going to need to do going forward is essentially have an official and a non-official presence online. You are also going to need to use the cockroach strategy (at least tech wise), until this stuff gets unpopular enough amongst enough people that there is large push back that can't be ignored.
> The surveillance and predictive systems now being assembled are being designed not only for the current moment, but in preparation for what comes next. Whether in response to renewed austerity, military escalation, or widespread resistance, these tools are positioned to contain unrest before it surfaces. What’s emerging is a model of preemptive policing—structured around behaviour, association, and predicted risk. Individuals are reduced to data profiles, tracked not for what they’ve done but for their statistical proximity to disruption. Suppression is exercised in advance.
That is why they are so keen to backdoor any popular encrypted messaging platform. They can't monitor communications. Unfortunately most people seem to supportive of this. I was quite surprised when my Father (who is a layman) told me he supported this, this is a person that doesn't vote largely for the same reasons that I don't (I think all politicians are awful)..
Additionally. I was listening to someone that engaged at essentially Red Teaming for UK authorities (I forget who it was now). They stated that if you were a dissident, if you kept your activities offline and organise in person the authorities wouldn't be aware of this activity. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds plausible.
What’s unsettling here isn’t any single policy, but the convergence: predictive policing, protest restrictions, and administrative punishments all justified as “risk management.” Even if each tool seems narrow, together they normalize acting on suspicion rather than action, which quietly lowers the bar for dissent.
The UK faces real structural problems with the inflating cost of living regardless of government, roughly halfway attributable to failing the lower-level challenge of continuing to import adequate quantities of diesel at affordable prices and the rest mostly coming from an aging population. Spot diesel has come down from the price spike of covid to approximately 1.3x the 2019 price.
Almost all physical goods have diesel prices contribute to their sticker price in a significant way. The diesel exporting countries are all incrementally increasing their domestic consumption, leaving less for the world market year on year.
The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
Tens of millions of people, held hostage by a clique of crabs in a bucket.
I would say "so diesel uses should be encouraged to transition to electric where feasible", except the government has also dropped the ball on electricity prices and is now looking at increasing taxes on EVs.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
This is spot on, though. I joke that instead of state controlled media we have a media controlled state.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms
It doesn't know what it wants, nor how to prioritise between conflicts from vague pre (and post) election statements. It certainly doesn't want to make the hard compromises that are actually required.
That said...
I wouldn't want the job of trying to balance the books, fix the housing backlog, modernise our energy infrastructure, integrate social and medical care, address social cohesion, manage persistent inequality, improve our global competitiveness etc etc etc
Any one of those goals is probably accomplishable merely via delegation, assuming you can pick the right people (good luck!). To achieve all of them likely isn't. It may well be we cannot have all of them at once. Note that I just grabbed a subset of things that seem relevant, certainly not all of the things the government should care about.
I'm not saying nobody could run this country more effectively. I do strongly suspect the market for that kind of skillset is out of our current price range
In China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity"
I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
Almost all the wealth is in the South East of England. Outside of that the country is much poorer.
I drive from Manchester to Dorset once a month to visit my parents. There is a clear line where I notice all the street signs, the service stations, roads etc are better kept. Cars and houses are in better condition/news.
It is going to exist pretty much anywhere. Wealth is going to be concentrated in some areas and not others. So comparing the Median income of the entire country is not representative of the whole.
e.g. Jobs in London (even remote ones) will pay twice as much as jobs in the North West of England.
I do agree that boiling it down to a single comparison is always gonna be reductive, but the median is IMO still the best you can do here, because it ignores outliers completely (on both sides).
From what I can tell the prosperity gap is also large enough that small errors don't really matter; I already looked at urban china vs average UK (systematically favoring China) and the numbers are still not close (something like $30k vs >$40k even after PP adjustment).
> but the median is IMO still the best you can do here, because it ignores outliers completely (on both sides).
Using the Median as far as I am concerned is meaningless as the South/South-East skews everything. It is quite obvious as you drive across the country. You can see it with your own eyes.
I don't really care that much about the comparison with China.
Some brits, most brits are worse off than the average Chinese in all but paper money. Restriced to Han chinese regions; PPP is on par. Overall china has much better social services and growth. Of the two I know which country I'd want to be born into in 2026
The difference is that the purpose of government in China is to govern effectively. They dedicate resources to producing leaders who have proven they can govern at lower levels to some degree (you always find that the corruption in China comes from leaders who came up through SOEs or similar). In terms of civil service and province-level leadership, it is just incredibly effective.
In the UK, you have leaders who are incredibly unpopular, they have no real skills, and they spend most of their time pandering to very small groups of people for various reasons. There is no real incentive to do anything relevant to voters, in fact you have seen over the last five years that political engagement has dropped significantly in a way that has generally benefitted incumbents.
To say this another way: the point of the UK system is so that people who are manifestly unfit to govern end up governing, and a small rotating group of special interests are continually pandered to (there is complete blindness to this in the UK, people often assume this is wealthy people when wealthy people are largely ignored...a politics grad working in research for a think tank will have more power in actual government than someone who gives £10m to the governing party).
It is important to note that this is a deal struck for just some ethnic groups of the citizenry. It does not apply fairly across the board to all people under Chinese governments' control so it's not even as good as it sounds for the average Chinese citizen.
In the case of Black Mirror, it was a set of studies on the dangers of current and near technologies. That some of those fears are materialising not long after the episodes, is in my opinion more damning than Orwell's fears of the state which didn't really come to pass in the same way, even decades later.
I don't disagree that Nineteen Eighty-Four is essential reading however. ( I'd also add Brave New World to that list ).
Shocking. I enjoyed Black Mirror from the start but found it a bit on the nose. A Prime Minister fucking a pig? That's a bit much. And before you know it, certain rumours of David Cameron arise.
I think that one PM episode was the only one totally out of whack. The rest were quite on point. There are dozens of episodes deep in the realm of reality.
Not a word on Palantir. Is this because of the adept wording by the ministry of justice? I highly doubt they are developing this in a vacuum.
As re reminder, In the UK Palantir holds extensive contracts across defense (multi-billion MoD deals for AI-driven battlefield and intelligence systems) and healthcare (7y £330m+ NHS Data Platform). In France, its involvement is narrower but concentrated on *domestic* intelligence.
I'm aware this is a cultural difference, government betrayal and overreach are hotbutton and mainstay topics in the common culture of the UK and related states (e.g. the US).
It is nevertheless so weird to me that rather than trying to monitor and mitigate the abuses of legal instruments like the ones proposed, people are trying to prevent and abolish things wholesale.
Everything is depicted as a slippery slope to abuse or as an excuse for abuse, and perhaps because people actually believe in it, they do materialize as one too. Presents as a vicious cycle to me, and as if people were disallowing themselves from recovering of it.
I really have to wonder how much of it is the available options always being just two parties in these territories, and the electoral systems supporting that convergence. In such a scheme, I can indeed definitely imagine people being compelled to vote further and further from their own interests and values, and the slippery slope rhetoric being finding a manifestation.
The reason why this is the case in the UK is because we have two different parties and an election, and we have ended up with the same result.
The reason why people think it is a slippery slop is because it is. Government shouldn't have any of these powers. In the UK, it has been proven over many years that this power cannot be wielded effectively by people working for government or oversight provided by elected officials.
As an example, the OSA...no-one needs this. You may not be aware but there is a massive issue with parenting in the UK. Children are turning up to school at 4 years old unable to communicate with adults (with no learning difficulties) or use the toilet. There is a very strong belief amongst civil servants (not ministers, they are basically irrelevant) that the state must step in to perform parenting functions. Does this sound like a good idea? This is the justification in many of these areas, Ofcom use to be a small agency that regulated what commercials could run on TV, it is now grown into Newspeak regulator...this isn't over 20 years, this has happened within the last three years.
People are seemingly very unhappy with the status quo, but also even unhappier when the Government tries to legislate around real issues. For example, people in hacker news seem to bring up grooming rape gangs specifically when talking about "Diversity" in the UK as a cudgel when the UK tries to introduce safety laws.
Meanwhile some of the most prolific child abusers are being sent to jail (who happened to be young 20s and white) who were only enabled to abuse hundreds of young people over a matter of months due to online platforms.
The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
Do I want the laws? No. But other people have ruined it, and now we no longer live in a high trust society. I certainly want something that will try to lower the abuse women and children face from the Internet (and men).
I don't understand how comments like yours fundamentally misunderstand both complaints.
Regarding the Rape gangs. The complaint is "People migrated to the country and committed heinous crimes, the local authorities tried to cover it up". Therefore they want these people removed (in some cases they have not been deported) and be more picky about who is allowed to migrate. They also want the people involved in the cover up to face some sort of punishment.
They mention it because they believe it shows the establishments hypocrisy. I don't understand why you and others don't understand this.
> The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
The problem is that the "think of the children" arguments are a tried and tested way of deflecting criticism when it comes to any argument about protecting privacy.
People aren't complaining about genuine attempts to catch online predators.
They are complaining about the fact that they have to put to put in their ID to go to Pornhub to watch some chick in her early 20s diddle herself.
I don't really know why the government is doing it. It's not for grand headline reasons, as it's all pretty quiet, for this and for prior changes.
I also really don't think the UK is in the grips of some kind of authoritarian nightmare. If anything, my experience is that it's impossible to convince the police to do anything. These days, surveillance state or not, when your car or phone get stolen, the police write you a crime number to take to the insurers and consider their job done. Even if it's all done for nefarious reasons, this would be an easy sidekick to running a surveillance state that earns the state some cash, and every autocrat likes money. The UK democracy is flawed in many ways, but I really don't think a spy state is currently the problem.
In my view a corrupt government tends to also be less effective at basic governance while looking out more for the government. Hence police don't pursue thieves but will arrest people for twitter/x posts.
Add in things like suspending the right to jury trial for some crimes because "its taking too long" shows how ineptitude in governance can overlap with government overreach.
It's been a while since I watched it, but doesn't it falsely imprison people because they disregarded some of the data that went contrary to other data?
There are 3 Precogs in the film, but in reality the female one is the most powerful and the twins seem to only function as amplifiers. It's revealed that there is sometimes/often a disagreement between their visions and that they do a 2/3 selection or something like that and discard the disagreeing vision (the 'minority report'). I believe this is what happened to the main character when he is framed, the stronger female's dissenting vision is ignored in favor of the two amplifiers. In the film it is ambiguous if he even commits the murder at all, the guy he kills was paid to die and more or less forces him to kill him in the struggle.
There's also the echos of visions that occur which is how the villain manages to get away with a murder, he uses his inside knowledge to copy cat another murder method which allows him to have it written off as an echo.
The wilder question in the movie is how the precogs are randomly created mutations in response to the mother taking a weird street drug during pregnancy. They'd have to dose pregnant women and hope they gave birth to more mutants if they ever want to replace the set they have, and I believe they're planning to roll it out nationwide. But given how crappy the precogs' lives seem to be maybe that is just a cost they consider worth paying.
I mean technically a lot of countries already have laws against conspiracy to murder, without doing the actual murder bit. And we are broadly ok with this because it makes a lot of sense.
I feel like "conspiracy to murder" means "we found a plan of you murdering someone and a baseball bat in your car" rather than "The algorithm has decided you are evil"
It isn't precrime or "dissent management" that is the problem, but the engineering of behavior and thought in society where such concepts are acceptable to people.
I don't think we can discuss it in detail here, but with this , chat control, and all sorts of other controversial laws, you'll notice the people of the country actually support that stuff. There is an interesting conversation there about democracy, and the priority of the working class people. Naturally, a person living paycheck-to-paycheck and fighting for healthcare and keeping their job (or getting one) does not care about this stuff. So who does? Not the ruling class. A lot of people (including on HN) who think this stuff is important (rightfully) are not poor people, perhaps middle-class?
Is democracy itself something that can survive, if it is left entirely up to popular vote? Power has gravity, it always wants more. Ideally, there would be institutions that are democratically established and managed that would be trusted to safeguard the people's interests. In the US, there are executive department agencies for example like the FCC, FTC, FDA and more, but they are subject to those in power who are elected by the people.
My "food for thought" here is that similar to supreme courts, there needs to be a regulatory and oversight branch of the government, whose chiefs are apolitical (like actually, not like the US supreme court), well compensated, long-tenured (but not lifetime, more like 20 years), and appointed by confirmation of all other branches of government.
We need to address the problem of power, influence to wield power and incentives for those entrusted with power to act in good faith, but also with good competence. The last part is important, because I have no doubt, a lot of the politicians that come up with this Orwellian nonsense have good intentions, the outcome they seek are noble, just not the means. they just happen to be incompetent when it comes to the subject matter.
This doesn't work. The current POTUS is clearly trying to politicize the chair of the federal reserve who is independent and for his sociopathic fanbase it is working a treat, they do not even understand that Powell is not the sole decision maker of the interest rates
He is able to do that and a whole lot more because the regulators, attorney general, ombudsmans,etc.. report to him. it's a vulnerability in the structure of the US government he's exploiting. Even if he leaves peacefully, and a decent administration comes along, it will only be temporary, he's shown others what can be abused. What maddens me is not him, someone like that has been inevitable. It isn't even his opposition's lack of competence. No one talked about this stuff, constitutional amendments, curbing the executive power, passing laws to clarify limits of powers,etc.. even in the previous admin. No one is talking about now, and they won't even after this one leaves. They don't care, nobody does. They're all just sitting in the house and complaining about the arsonist burning it down.
Even as he's dismantling nato or trying to invade greenland, do you think it's difficult to get a handful of republicans to support a bipartisan law to forbid that? They're just spectators, the lawmakers. The judges are scared sh*#!less, and powerless. Everyone is hoping that problem goes away, or at best they only care about the latest and immediate issue.
Precrime in Minority report results in "Would-be killers are placed in an electrically induced coma and held in a panopticon-like prison facility." Obviously dystopian.
What they are doing in the UK is more chatting to people involved in gangs and the like to talk them out of screwing up their lives. Kind of common sense.
There was quite an interesting interview with Sadiq Khan about it yesterday https://youtu.be/SOhIxmYiZRg?t=202 (starting at the crime bit).
The MAGA types love to go on about Khan, who is a lefty Pakistani origin muslim, as being the downfall of London but the reality is kind of different. (typed in central London).
A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
Notably, stories on HN about the very severe repression on civil liberties in the US (get shot in the face for protesting about ICE...) get flagged for closure, but putting the boot into the UK for much more wishy-washy issues like this seem to be fair game.
I'm not saying there aren't genuine issues with civil liberties (for example, things like the Online Safety Act are ridiculous) but they are magnified out of all proportion by the US media / social media disinformation megaphone.
This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
> A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
> This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
British Anarchism isn't the American Right?
Concern for free speech traditionally cuts across the left-right divide, as it should. Sadly, there's been a greater erosion of it on the left than the right in recent years, despite the absolute centrality of free speech rights to key progressive causes: abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights, etc. At the same time that the left got softer on free speech, the right had a series of 'are we being shadow-banned?' scandals, which increased the importance of free speech to the right.
Twenty years ago the position was roughly reversed with the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act, 'free speech zones', etc. Arguably, that same reversal might be happening now with Gaza, ICE etc.
In my ideal world, we all love free speech, but in the real world, it seems to zig zag across the spectrum to the people not currently in power. I suppose an understandable reflection of its value in standing up to power.
100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
It feels pretty awful to have such a one-sided bias in the media of the UK getting clowned on for civil liberties, I have noticed so much more astroturfing on reddit about these issues with made-up ragebait lies.
There are absolutely issues with the police focusing more on "crime online" such as people posting or saying offensive things, I do think that saying something outright offensive to the benefit of nobody is a net bad for society but instead of punishing say British people for "wrong think" I think the police force should be really investigating where this kind of stuff comes from, Foreign influence bot farms ect and enact legal removal of protection to ensure that people when they say such online in a public manner are actually people
Yup… there's a very strong right wing streak in parts of the HN audience
Those with opposing views also tend to find themselves rate limited - dropped two comments on this story and now being told I'm posting too fast (even after going away for 60 mins)
This is a thousand times as concerning in the context of London than in the context of Baltimore. It addresses a concern that doesn't exist for the UK public, in a way that appears intended to oppress from the start, against a backdrop of arresting thousands of pensioners for disagreeing about a genocide.
The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group.
A group that broke a police officers back with sledge hammers, committed multiple acts of vandalism against our military, and have tons of links to Hamas
They can oppose Israel action in Palestine, they just can’t support terrorists
De facto, arresting 80 year old women for holding signs is always going to look authoritarian. They're not exactly the type to strap on a vest but we have to pretend we dont know what a terrorist looks like.
Then why did you say 80-year old women were "the type to sledgehammer police officers though apparently" and then immediate shift the goalposts? Further, the statement "The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group" is patently false; the UK government has not limited its arrests for social media posts to those expressing support for Hamas. You are not engaging in good faith discussion.
"The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group."
Why are you claiming that members of Palestine Action are the only people being arrested in the UK for speech? That is not true. Low-effort, bad-faith trolling contributes nothing to the discussion.
This is a jury trial in progress, there are rules against prejudicing such. Genuinely interested readers can read a trial report here: https://realmedia.press/the-filton-trial-4/
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West.
Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
> As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
I am a Brit and I object to a lot of the expansion of powers that have happened in Britain during successive governments since the "War on Terror" started which was pretty might right after 9/11. I would like to see much of this legislation repealed. However that is unlikely to happen.
> The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist
Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
As for sensationalist, possibly. But they seem to highlight genuine concerns that have been raised by other organisations.
> The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
All you are doing in this speil is repeating talking points found on the news sites. I find this sort of stuff tiresome to read. I don't care about what happens in the US generally. It is literally on the other side of an ocean. I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
> Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
> I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
> I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
Yet you were engaging in your own brand of it by repeating US news output, which quite honestly is always sensationalist.
Look I didn't like seeing that footage where the woman got shot.But it isn't relevant to what happening in the UK.
> 'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
I understand this. I've read Anarchist literature. I only care whether the analysis has any benefit. Not who produces it.
> You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that you're a Brit and that your method of drawing superficial conclusions about the other participants is sound. Perhaps we are both bots here.
Instead of attacking the other participants for not being as enlightened as you may be and the source of the information, a more appreciated approach would've been to address the substance of the article.
For example, what are some "intelligence agencies and police networks in the West" that are routinely performing those kind of programmes, and why should we conclude that all of them are doing that? Are those programmes identical to the UK's "homicide prediction project", as it was originally called? Are there better legal frameworks for such programmes in other countries (say, a Constitution), or at least more democratic oversight than in the UK? Perhaps some sources that document such a conclusion would help.
You speak of lack of perspective from the commenters here, but haven't yet provided an informed one either.
> The UK is far more free than the US
Trump and his oligarchs aside, why do you believe that the UK is "far more free" than the US? And how exactly do you define that freedom? I'm no big fan of the US in general (mainly due to their neoliberal and religious culture), but to deny that they've enjoyed a variety of freedoms would be provably wrong. Different organisations measure these differently and the UK is generally not "far more free" in that sense, only marginally so - again, it depends on the frameworks employed. [0] [1]
If the definition of freedom includes democratic accountability + equal political power + civil liberties in practice: neither country is doing that great; the UK's unelected Lords/sovereignty/executive dominance and First Past the Post voting system are undeniable flaws - many if not most European countries don't have that. It's also entirely true that US has deeper structural distortions (malapportionment + Electoral College + gerrymandering + life-tenured apex judiciary).
Overall, the UK tends to score higher on broad civil-liberty/democracy assessments, but not by as far as you seem to imply. And judging by the recent developments, one wouldn't be entirely wrong to conclude that these freedoms are actively being eroded (which is what the article says). Let's not forget the deep drive of successive governments to privatise key public services which objectively gave the UK an advantage in terms of freedoms compared to US - for example universal healthcare, which works as a social safety net and effectively offering higher practical freedom of life choices for most citizens.
> levels of inequality
The UK has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. [2]
"OECD figures suggest that the UK has among the highest levels of income inequality in the European Union (as measured by the Gini coefficient), although income inequality is slightly lower than in the United States." [3]
"The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries." [4]
"The key findings are that the UK has high levels of income inequality compared with similar developed economies, with a (pre-pandemic) Gini coefficient that is the second highest in the G7 (after the US), and is more unequal than all the countries in the EU other than Lithuania and Latvia." [5]
Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.
Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.
Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:
By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.
I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).
Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.
You make some good points. And thanks for taking the time to provide some sources and more nuance. I believe that overall we agree on the main points.
Re: the source (your suspicion is warranted but only marginally) - I've read numerous articles on freedomnews.org.uk over the years that were well-written, well-argued, and supported by research, at least as much as it can be expected from a magazine. It's not a scientific journal, they don't don't have a strict set of editorial guidelines (the current one is rather informal albeit still informed and focused [0]), and the article was published under the Comment section as an opinion piece.
That said, the publication has some serious history behind it; it started in 1886 by volunteers [1][2], it's arguably the longest running left periodical in Britain [9], and it's run as a cooperative / controlled by its volunteers - no small feat. It's the oldest anarchist press in the UK (and the English speaking world) and still runs the largest anarchist bookshop (one of the few in the world). [3] During the WW2 the paper played a role in disseminating the real but dismissed opposition against the war which led to a major free-speech prosecution case [10][11]. Because of its longevity it has inevitably documented a good chunk of Britain's late history, albeit from a perspective that was deeply hated by the government, the monarchy, and the industrialists [12]. (I personally see this as a positive rather than a reason to mistrust it.) Their bookshop was destroyed in an air raid in 1941 along with (critically) the remaining back-catalogue of early Freedom Press pamphlets that had been preserved up to that point [2]; it has also survived a bombing by a British neo-fascist group in 1993 and an arson attack in 2013 [13][14]. They are an institution.
Although not exactly a standard-defining magazine - they couldn't be anyway considering the philosophy they sport, they're entirely transparent about the radical perspective they bring to the table, and they're an independent media organisation funded by readers. We have to consider that fact that the majority of mainstream media players claim impartiality but they often instruct their journalists not to cross various (journalistic and non-journalistic) lines, censor critical voices, or are simply not transparent about the fact that, as businesses, they can't afford to be completely impartial if that upsets their clients (advertisers) or their owners. Another view point is at the very least welcome, even if it's not along the same lines.
I'm not looking to convince you that you should read it but I believe that you may change your opinion of it as an entirely untrusted source once I lay out a few more things.
Societies change through all kinds of contributions and actions, most of which remain unseen or unknown. A good number of famous thinkers have contributed to the magazine during its long life, many of which that we quote today as clear-minded, coherent social critics or analysts. Whether we like them or not is less relevant, what matters is that they were influent and their actions and writings have directly influenced or contributed to the social reality of today. To put it differently, FN is one of those semi-obscure magazines that has influenced the influencers.
* Peter Kropotkin (he founded Freedom News) - later influenced Aldous Huxley, Murray Bookchin, Kirkpatrick Sale, Henry Mintzberg [4][8], Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin [5]. The idea of mutualism comes from him and it's one of the most important correctives to the "all competition" misunderstanding. [6][7]
* William Morris, Michael Tippett, T. S. Eliot, Benjamin Britten [1][2]
* George Bernard Shaw, Max Nettlau [8]
* Herbert Read, Alex Comfort, Colin Ward [9]
* Emma Goldman, George Orwell, Ethel Mannin [14]
A good number of specialists, thinkers, professors, and writers still contribute to the magazine: Dr Chrys Papaioannou, Antti Rautiainen, Carlos Taibo, Owen Clayton, Spencer Beswick, John P. Clark etc.
I wonder how many people are actually from the UK on these threads. There is always comments about "diversity" and "grooming rape gangs" and how everything labour do is bad, or about how the UK is an oppressive regime or somehow fundamentally anti-freedom. This always reads like fear mongering / Russian psy-ops propaganda to me.
I have many bones to pick with the UK government but a large number of people sprinting to these talking points at every chance they get is highly suspicious to me.
I'm also surprised by the tone of this thread. HN discussions usually involve more nuanced debate, but many comments here are hitting very specific talking point. Comparisons to China, sarcastic references to 'diversity,' grooming gangs, that I more commonly see in certain Reddit communities rather than in typical HN discussions about tech policy or civil liberties.
There are legitimate concerns about UK surveillance, protest policing, and speech regulations worth discussing. But when the same cluster of talking points appears with this particular framing, it makes me wonder about the makeup of who's participating in this thread versus other HN discussions.
"We detected that you are about to commit a crime. Here is provisional 2-years sentence shall you decide to go ahead with the plans. It includes free single room, 3 meals a day, gym, library, daily walks and company of people like yourself. You will also receive counselling and you could take up a free course to advance your skills in desired field and post-release support for a year."
I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc.
Up until this point it was mostly that they would gladly fuck the other countries up but treated their own people way better than the other camp. But this difference is disappearing.
Of course there is always North Korea and other totally fucked up regimes they could use to compare and look white and fluffy
While you have a point, you are looking at this the wrong way.
20 years ago if you had told someone you needed to get a face scan or upload your ID to view certain websites or that you might get your messages and emails scanned in case you send something that the government deems suspicious to someone else, people would have laughed at you.
Yet as we are seeing currently this is what is happening slowly but surely.
Yes, the UK government is not gunning down protesters in the street but can you say with certainty that the screws are not being tightened and that the so called western values of freedom of speech are not being eroded systematically year after year under the pretense of safety?
It seems to me that every western government is looking at what China and Russia are doing and instead of staying true to their values, they are actually trying to figure out how to roll out the same exact measures in the west.
Will we see Gulags in the west make a comeback? Most likely not but in terms of freedom of speech and online privacy rights, we are seeing clearly a rollback and if we do nothing to stop it, we will end up like China with governments looking at everything we say and write on our phone and computer and that is unacceptable especially when these measures are cowardly disguised as 'safety" measures.
> 20 years ago if you had told someone … you might get your messages and emails scanned in case you send something that the government deems suspicious to someone else, people would have laughed at you.
20 years ago we already knew the US government was watching everything.
>"You’re incredibly naive if you think they’re the same as us"
And you are "incredibly" inattentive (considering the best case). I did not say they're "the same as us", I said they're heading there. Depending on what particular country we are talking about mileage can vary.
Two prominent Boeing whistleblowers, John Barnett (died March 2024) and Joshua Dean (died April 2024), have died in recent times, raising significant concerns about retaliation and safety at the aerospace giant; Barnett died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after battling Boeing in a retaliation lawsuit, while Dean died from a sudden infection after raising quality concerns, with his family suspecting foul play despite official rulings. Barnett's death was ruled a suicide, though his family's wrongful death suit claims Boeing's harassment caused his distress, while Dean's death followed rapid illness, with his family also alleging misconduct by his employer, Spirit Aerosystems, and Boeing.
As far as it is known, Kelly walked a mile (1.6 km) from his house to Harrowdown Hill. It appears he ingested up to 29 tablets of co-proxamol, an analgesic drug; he also cut his left wrist with a pruning knife he had owned since his youth, severing his ulnar artery. Forensic analysis established that neither the knife nor the blister packs showed Kelly's fingerprints on their surfaces [0].
and a letter to the editor:
As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide.
Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood.
The ambulance team reported that the quantity of blood at the scene was minimal and surprisingly small. It is extremely difficult to lose significant amounts of blood at a pressure below 50-60 systolic in a subject who is compensating by vasoconstricting. To have died from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood - it is unlikely that he would have lost more than a pint.
Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Although levels of Co-Proxamol in the blood were higher than therapeutic levels, Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
We dispute that Dr Kelly could have died from haemorrhage or from Co-Proxamol ingestion or from both. The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, has spoken recently of resuming the inquest into his death. If it re-opens, as in our opinion it should, a clear need exists to scrutinise more closely Dr Hunt's conclusions as to the cause of death.
David Halpin - Specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery
C Stephen Frost - Specialist in diagnostic radiology Searle Sennett [1]
Between arresting grannies for saying they support Palestinian Action and using armed officers to apprehend comedy writers I doubt they'll have the time.
Social movements don’t just happen from grassroots these days. They’re seeded by foreign states. A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting. If you don’t provide an id you get a limited number of views.
And I don’t see anything wrong with a preventative system in principle, we should be able to join up social services information with policing, because we have had cases where a mass murderer has been known to multiple services.
Edit: probably not ids but a token that verifies my nationality would be enough.
> A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting
It’s strange times when even the comments on posts about government overreach are calling for more government overreach and limitations on speech and privacy.
Do you really want to have to verify your ID to post anything online, including HN?
And I am willing to bet that on top of the chilling effect on regular people, it will only act as an inconvenience for the bad actors as they will find ways to circumvent it. Controlling the online discourse is far too valuable, they are not going to just shrug and give up because the government puts up a barrier.
This is how you govern from a position of unpopularity.
The government knows they’re on the wrong side of many issues, to the point they know they can’t win an open debate.
So media control, regulation by enforcement, and institutional control becomes the focus of effort.
There seems to be a prevalent notion within UK establishment circles, "we are being attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works. You see used for example to defend the supposed impartiality of the BBC.
The BBC has never been impartial to internal concerns - domestic politics in particular. Leveson Inquiry recommendations not being implemented is the tip of the iceberg in relation to the extent of client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-sc...
The thing is, the BBC is incredibly partial, depending on which area of the BBC we're talking about.
BBC News on the web vs BBC News the programme, vs BBC worldwide (which is a seperate org inside the BBC), then there's regional BBC and the prime time talk shows (the hard hitting Andrew Neil and co).
So, when someone says "the BBC is biased against the left" or "the BBC is biased agains the right"; ironically they can both be right, and it's not an indicator of impartiality. It depends on which section of the BBC we're talking about.
And you're totally blind to the bits of the BBC you agree with; you will think those bits are the impartial ones.
The BBC is institutionally biased in two major ways:
* Pro the royal family since it is chartered by them.
* Against Scottish independence since it would lose 10% of its funding.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the national media service being 'pro the nation' (counting the UK as the nation for arguments sake).
That said however they can't make things up, or overtly bury critical stories...but putting a softer slant on them wouldn't be unreasonable.
It is a loyal state broadcaster. If it had been up to the BBC, then the Prince Andrew story would have been buried. They tried to bury it several times but the Americans don't take orders from Buckingham Palace.
Their coverage of the Scottish independence referendum was laughably biased and often clueless.
They do seem to have an odd attitude towards Nigel Farage (UKIP & Reform) though, and kept putting him on Questiontime and the radio. It seems unclear why they would promote him so much given much of their other content.
I used the BBC just an example. Starmer seems to have the same attitude. If both Farage and Corbyn, and Polanski and whoever is leading the Conservatives and LibDems are attacking me, then I must be super in the middle i.e. I must be so doing it all super right!
I don't think Starmer really knows what he is doing one way or another. The Island of Strangers speech out flaked Farage to the right.
Dominic Cummings had a bunch of interview appearances online. His experience in office when he was working with Johnson (and many Ministers in general) is that they don't actually understand what they can and can't do in the job. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar situation is present under Starmer.
I think we can fairly easily dismiss Cummings' views on anything. He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit, and that the the best team to carry out that out was to be headed by Boris Johnson.
He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
> He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit, and that the the best team to carry out that out was to be headed by Boris Johnson.
Not exactly. I think you need to listen to the interviews.
Dominic Cummins has solid rationale for why he believes what he believes. I would need to listen to them again to remember what he said, but what you are describing was too simplistic.
Also his opinions on Brexit have nothing to do with some of the things he said about how COVID was handled.
> He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
I don't remember him saying that exactly.
> That has never been his opinion. There are many interviews with him on YouTube and I suggest you listen to them.
I've viewed and read an interminable number of interviews with Cummings.
He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out), b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected, and c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.
> I've viewed and read an interminable number of interviews with Cummings.
The statements you have made don't really line up with the interviews I've listened to.
The context around the events and what his involvement was and was not, is important.
You are leaving out key information that he mentioned in many interview appearances.
> He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out)
Without re-litigating everything. It may have been different if the politicians and those that worked for them hadn't frustrated the process. I was genuinely disgusted by the attitudes that many of the politicians had after the Leave won. That was my interpretation of what happened. Your obviously differs.
It also says nothing about the validity of his other statements, which is what I was referring to.
> b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected
Yes, but the way you are talking about it is omitting events both before and after the 2019 General Election.
Theresa May had been ousted by the Conservative Leadership. Earlier she ran an awful election campaign, squandered a huge lead in the polls and had to form a coalition Government with the DUP to maintain a majority.
Cummins said he was contacted by Johnson because Johnson had a minority government and couldn't call a re-election. His first job was to get Johnson out of that Quagmire, then prepare for re-election. He decided to help Johnson under certain guarantees / conditions. Which tells me that he didn't actually trust Johnson.
He claims to have been gradually forced out by Carrie Johnson and his team shortly after the election.
If you are being hampered by the Prime Minster's wife on the agenda that you are supposed to implement. It is likely to fail.
I've actually experienced something similar in my career where I was being blocked (for political reasons) by another team. It makes getting anything done impossible.
So there is no reason to believe he is lying, back tracking or retconning events.
This is because his statements about Carrie Johnson's involvement line up with other accounts from other people that I've heard during the time period shortly after his departure.
> c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.
It not about it being an approval or disapproval of his government. Often you must work with people that you would rather not to, to achieve things.
His feelings about the Johnson government doesn't change his the validity of his statements about how Whitehall operate while he was present.
His comments about ossified organisations lines up with my past experience of working in both ossified Public and Private orgs.
His account of the events around COVID match up with the timeline of events, and I re-watched old interviews of him and he hasn't backtracked at all or changed his story around what happened. He has mentioned things he couldn't mention at the time e.g. his residence was broken into and he was advised not to mention this at the time.
I have no reason to not believe him, since his statements match up with both what I have experienced and a known timeline of events.
I think your dislike of Cummins and his involvement with Vote Leave. As a result is clouding your judgement on the validity of his statements about how Boris Johnson behaved and how Whitehall operates.
Generally there is a lot of stuff in his interviews that I've seen that quite honestly changed my opinion of him (which was somewhat negative). I believe he is telling the truth.
> It may have been different if…
Genuinely, how? Give me the best case scenario.
Any answer I give would be found unsatisfactory so there is little point in bothering.
I've already stated my impression of what happened in Parliament leading during that time period, it was obvious that people were being obstructionist and that alone doomed any hope of a positive outcome.
That’s not true, I’m genuinely interested in hearing the argument. I don’t understand how it could have caused any improvement.
> I don’t understand how it could have caused any improvement
Which is exactly why any answer I give you would be unsatisfactory.
OK dude. You’re bothering to respond so you could just properly respond. It’s entirely possible that I have gaps in my knowledge and can hear a new argument and find it reasonable, since I’ve spent almost no time debating Brexit. Obviously I’m now just going to assume you don’t have a decent argument, which you will point at and say “see!”. It’s an easy cop out for you. What’s the point in expressing opinions if you’re going to refuse to put any weight behind them whatsoever?
> What’s the point in expressing opinions if you’re going to refuse to put any weight behind them whatsoever?
I did a long detailed response in this thread where I spent a lot of time detailing why I believed somebody's assessment of about about Dominic Cummings was incorrect (I actually listened to what he had to say). So I've already have put weight behind my opinions.
Your reply on this topic is essentially leading to a re-litigation of Brexit which happened a decade ago now, which isn't anything to do with Dominic Cumming's observations on how Whitehall worked while he was present during COVID.
Brexit isn't something I wanted to get into, but both you and the other person I was replying to seemed to be focused on Brexit when it isn't the topic of discussion. I made that abundantly clear in my long reply to them.
TBH. You can do a web search or ask an AI the various exit strategies that were present at the time. Many scenarios were proposed before and after the vote. This was discussed to death at the time. Loads has been written about it. Why do I have to summarise something that is easily found via a search engine for you?
You don’t have to, but it would have taken less effort than your responses so far. If you’re not interested in someone’s question then you should probably just ignore it rather than write paragraphs about why you’re not interested in it, but you do you!
> You don’t have to, but it would have taken less effort than your responses so far.
Actually it wouldn't. There are many arguments from fringe figures to more mainstream with various rationales. Much has been written about it.
> If you’re not interested in someone’s question then you should probably just ignore it rather than write paragraphs about why you’re not interested in it, but you do you!
I answered your question. The way I answered while a bit sardonic is supposed to make you think a bit. Obviously you don't appreciate it, but it isn't in bad faith.
Not everything has to be some sort of logical back and forth debate to get the point across.
> He was of the opinion that the best thing for the UK economy was Brexit
I don't want to start another Brexit debate or even take position on it. However I'd like to point out that the key with Brexit is the plan on what to do afterwards and that is what has been completely lacking.
Whatever one's opinion of Cummings, he did put forward a plan and that plan was never attempted (probably too bold, shall we say, for politicians to touch it). I am not commenting on whether that would have worked or not, but at least he put forward a plan and strategy. On the other hand, Bojo's "plan" for Brexit seemed to have been limited to becoming PM...
I would say “could not possibly be implemented” rather than “bold”.
Anyone can propose a brave or bold course of action. It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.
> It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.
Regarding Cummins, Why exactly? Dominic Cummins is articulate, seems to be quite intelligent and seems to be very fact/data orientated. I've also heard him describe how he would action particular policy.
Therefore I find it hard to believe he had didn't have any idea on how to execute his plans.
You are Dominic Cummins and I claim my 5 pounds :)
It seems when some people don't have an answer they prefer to deflect with a joke.
I think one issue we are having is that more and more things are said to be impossible to implement to the point that nothing happens... There is a lack of ambition, boldness, and leadership.
I don’t know.
Increasingly I see people offering simplistic solutions that don’t even pass basic smell tests.
And then when you point out the obvious flaws the response is that you just have to be brave or take a risk.
But I do agree - we seem to be in a world full of intractable problems and doing something may be better than nothing.
Yes there are simplistic solutions but, on the other hand, more often that not I think that claiming that issues are extremely complex is a way of avoiding doing anything for whatever reasons. So, it depends.
I think that the UK won't solve its issues until it gets a PM with a bold plan and great leadership, whatever side they may come from.
I mean where is Sir Humphrey Appleby when you need him!
Johnson's incredibly colourful reaction to Starmers trade deal, in that he was 'acting like an orange-ball chewing manical gimp', speaks volumes about the discourse around Starmer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ld3qkz
Hislop is particularly scathing, albeit cynically pragmatic, since Starmers appointment - "“Keir Starmer is the man who likes to sit on the fence unless you don’t like fences and then maybe he can find a hedge, or if you don’t like hedges he’ll find a wall."
“People have suggested Keir Starmer is very boring, but I think that’s partly his superpower, in that being interesting in the way his predecessor was manages to lose you elections.
“You have to be careful when you dismiss people as boring. Everyone thought John Major was boring, but then you had him for two elections.”
> client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
BBC Caught Altering Budget Article to Be More Favourable to Labour - https://order-order.com/2024/11/01/bbc-caught-altering-budge...
When Ivor Caplin, the former Labour MP that, among other things, attacked Musk for talking about Pakistani rape gangs, was arrested for pedophilia [1], this is the article they published - no photo, no name, no party affiliation, and no followup article - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg45y4r0yngo
BBC omits identity of Nigerian murderer from article about how he killed his wife [2,3], making it entirely about "gendered violence" instead. Readers can't make the incorrect inference if you simply withhold information from them.
BBC omits all criticism of Starmer from their reporting on his meeting with Trump [4].
The famous Trump capitol speech splicing: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-revea...
When Farage's private bank account was closed due to his politics, the BBC first simply took the bank's word that this was entirely due to financial considerations. When Farage obtained internal documents of that bank, explicitly saying he met financial criteria for an account, but it was closed despite this due to his politics, the BBC issued a correction article trying to imply his politics were merely "also" considered [5].
BBC uses all-white stock photos to warn about obnoxiously loud phone use on trains [6].
But makes sure to use a racially-diverse cast for the 1066 Battle of Hastings [7].
This is not the only such instance, nor a coincidence, by their own admission: Moffat even talks about the idea he mentions above — the excuse of “historical accuracy” that some people often give to justify an all-white cast — “[W]e’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’” [8,9]
"Piers Wenger said failing to update the classics with diverse characters would be a dereliction of duty" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/24/bbc-drama-boss-d...
They cropped a photo to remove a weapon from a protester: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/bbc-cropping-out-weapon-black-...
They instruct white parents to teach their children about white privilege, and to examine their biases if their toddler has only white friends: https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/articles/zrgcf82
They had and defended a no-whites-allowed internship (despite BAME-workers already being slightly over-represented at the BBC [10]): https://metro.co.uk/2018/01/19/bbc-criticised-for-banning-wh...
They censor their own shows to be more racially sensitive on re-broadcast - without mentioning it until pressed: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/the-bbc-quietly-censo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Caplin
[2] https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/benalmadena-torremolinos...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyw7g4zxwzo
[4] https://x.com/chrismid/status/1950163250852540547 (contains links to full Trump-Starmer meeting and the BBC articles, on the off chance you don't trust a random tweet)
[5] "On 4 July, the BBC reported Mr Farage no longer met the financial requirements for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. The former UKIP leader later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered." - https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66288464
[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce83p1ej8j7o
[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/07/racially-diverse...
[8] https://www.themarysue.com/steven-moffat-on-doctor-who-diver...
[9] https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/moffat-on-diversity-in-doctor-...
[10] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/670266/BBC-advert-white-pe...
I've no idea what Dr. Who, murder-reporting, period dramas or stock photography choices have to do with the Labour party, but I'll pretend you're arguing in good faith and address what I believe to be the point in your copypasta.
The most empirical and robust study regarding bias was performed by Cardiff University in 2013. Its major finding regarded the dominance of Conservative party political sources in BBC coverage; in coverage of immigration, the EU and religion, they accounted for 49.4% of all source appearances in 2007 and 54.8% in 2012.
The data also showed that the Conservative Party received significantly more airtime than the Labour Party. In 2012, Conservative leader and then Prime Minister David Cameron outnumbered Labour leader Ed Miliband in appearances by a factor of nearly four to one (53 to 15), and governing Conservative cabinet members and ministers outnumbered their Labour counterparts by more than four to one (67 to 15).
In reporting of the EU the dominance was even more pronounced with party political sources accounting for 65% of source appearances in 2007 and 79.2% in 2012.
In strand two (reporting of all topics) Conservative politicians were featured more than 50% more often than Labour ones (24 vs 15) across the two time periods on the BBC News at Six
This is evident right up to the 2019 election - BBC Question Time editing out audience laughter at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fumbling responses, and soft-shoeing his ascendancy by excusing him from the tender mercies of Andrew Neil - unlike his opposition.
https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-...
Wait a news channel gave more air time to the current prime minister and his cabinet, the guy and team with the power, than someone else. Consider me shocked!
Have you considered that by choosing different time periods you get different results.
Maybe the BBC bends the knee to whoever is calling the shots, that's what it looks like to me.
Cardiff University is extremely unlikely to be neutral, and a study done more than a decade ago tells us little about the state of the BBC today.
The OP gave many examples but you only need to know one: the BBC broadcast fake footage of Trump created by splicing together different parts of a speech he gave. The parts were separated by more than 50 minutes and they hid the splice by cutting to the crowd. This manipulation of the public only came to light because an internal whistleblower tried to report what happened, then discovered the BBC institutionally supported this kind of video manipulation so blowing the whistle internally was useless. He reported it to the Telegraph instead.
In other words:
• The BBC broadcasts fake news clips.
• It does so deliberately, with the full approval of its board.
• They refused to apologize or clean house.
• They probably do it a lot and get away with it.
That's it. That's the only thing you need to know about the BBC's political bias.
And it's not just them. Channel 4 News broadcast an entirely fake video of Farage during the last election. It framed him by using an actor who was collaborating with an undercover film crew (and the actor was acting at the time). This was proven beyond all doubt and C4 refused to do anything about it. Once again, institutional fraud in service of election manipulation.
There's no real gap between using actors or mid-sentence splices and using AI, special effects or other standard Hollywood tactics. So the idea that British TV news is biased in favour of the right is farcical on its face. Let us know when they're regularly faking videos of Starmer! I grew up in Britain and the state of Britain's institutions is just shameful. It's tin pot third world stuff. British people need to understand that their state owned TV channels are completely unreliable sources to learn about the world from.
I literally cited the BBC Question Time editing out audience laughter at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fumbling responses, and the incredible partisanship to protect him from Andrew Neill while then setting up the most controversial UK political interview of the 21st Century with Marr
https://www.theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2019/dec/03/chun...
I have to also laugh at Channel 4 (decidedly not the BBC in the first instance) putting some small thumb on the scales of justice re: Nigel Farage and the Reform party generally - the biggest political and institutional frauds outside of the Reese-Moggs clan.
My favourite prominent example: footage originally taken from GB News was used by a local Reform Party to falsely claim a rival MP was abusive to Nigel Farage in Parliament
https://inews.co.uk/news/mp-falsely-accused-calling-farage-a...
> I've no idea what Dr. Who, murder-reporting, period dramas or stock photography choices have to do with the Labour party
If you believe the most relevant political division in the UK is Labour vs Tory, then it does all seem a bit random.
Your bias is showing…
This is the same BBC that's put Nigel Farage on Question Time more than any other politician
Or frequently gives a platform to the various think tanks of the Tufton St mafia
The problem isn’t the balance, it’s the police state. I don’t want an authoritarian Left government any more than I want an authoritarian Right or Center government.
The problem is most Brits, at least on HN, seem to deny what is happening and/or support it. People being arrested for holding up blank signs at Charles' coronation was ridiculous and nothing like it has happened in the US, but anytime that's brought up they pivot to mass shootings in the US or some other whataboutism.
I was curious about the "blank sign" story because it's slightly different from what I remembered reading. As far as I can tell, this is the incident you're referring to:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/29/the-crowd-we...I'm glad that was only a single instance, I had misremebered it as being multiple. I think the bigger isser then is people arrested for holding up signs saying "not my king" or similar, of which there were at least 64[0].
[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...
I am convinced that a good bit of this is paid astroturfing and another segment is people who work in government or government contracting. Brits generally seem more open to government intrusion, it’s true, but in my experience they don’t go out of their way to defend things like this. It’s more of a passive acceptance.
I think tribalism is the simpler explanation. One of the worst offenders I saw was a guy on here who wrote one of the new generation shells written in go...went out of his way to say the US had the same behavior as the UK, arresting people holding a blank sign, except his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police. An entirely unrelated issue. The point was though he was flailing due to feeling defensive, and unable to take a step back and analyze the criticisms objectively. This is super common behavior in pretty much all countries, and I think it's a huge problem.
True, now that you mention it I’ve seen the same sort of thing from people who are definitely not bots. Although, you can’t discount the possibility that they do some government or law enforcement work as a consultant. The full throated defense of police state tactics is unreal. (For what it’s worth, there are plenty of Americans who show up in Palantir/Flock threads doing the same thing, and I have the same suspicions there.)
For a current example look at the other guy replying to my comments, earnestly trying to equate 'free speech zones' in the US which have not been a thing in years, maybe more than a decade, with people in the UK being arrested for holding up blank signs.
I can't imagine it's paid work because what would be the point? It's not like he is influencing anyone's opinions.
> free speech zones' in the US which have not been a thing in years, maybe more than a decade
This is from 2024
https://www.thefire.org/news/how-milwaukee-and-chicago-circu...
OK. SO, one city decided to do that, around a convention where there was very likely reasonable security concerns. Not sure I agree with it, but it's hardly a national issue. Look at all the no kings and anti-ice protests nation wide not confined in any way as evidence.
Nobody has been arrested in the UK for holding a blank sign. Please stop saying it.
Fair enough. People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy' or 'not my king', and the person holding up a blank sign was intimidated by police. Slightly better, I guess.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abolish-the-mona...
> Police Scotland said the 22-year-old woman arrested outside St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Sunday had been arrested for “breach of the peace”.
> The woman was holding a sign reading “f** imperialism, abolish monarchy”, but the sign is not understood to be the reason for her arrest
Not sure what your point is here.
Edit: I agree with you about many of these posts, and it’s quite frustrating. Perhaps I should go for a walk.
> look at the other guy replying to my comments,
And look at you - making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used) and your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong" but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
By the way, here's another example of the use free speech zones and the arrests of people for having their say -
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/12/protesters-keep-gett...
"Since state officials created a “free speech zone,” local police continue to make arrests that have “no apparent purpose other than just intimidating people away from that line, and sending a message that they’re going to be controlling the area with force,” said civil rights attorney Joe DiCola."
Suppression of protest is unfortunately a popular thing for governments in a lot of places right now. It's as bad (if not worse) in Australia, where I live, especially in New South Wales where they seem determined to find a pretext to ban any and all marches.
And to make it absolutely clear - I do not support any of it nor am I defending the actions of the UK authorities. Also not a monarchist, that family of parasites needs to be stripped of all powers, lands and assets stolen from the British and other peoples, and I was disgusted by what the British authorities did to suppress dissent leading up to the coronation of King big-ears.
> making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used)
My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been. Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
> your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
At least 64 people were for simply holding up signs saying "not my king". The guy holding up blank paper was intimidated by the cops, which sure, is better than being arrested, but not great.
> It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong"
What's sad is you're being the very example of someone being overly defensive about the UK's decline instead of just agreeing these are real issues. This isn't a competition, I think the US is going in a horrible direction as well, andnot once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse' - that's a strawman birthed from your defensiveness.
> but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
I do think you are being tribal and unreasonable, yes.
> But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
Unfortunately, but it's honestly only a minority of people who act like that. Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
> My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been.
I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
> Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there? People were arrested for protesting at an event, the coronation. This is the same sort of thing free speech zones have been used to suppress in the US. Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr, but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
> not once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse'
Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
> being overly defensive about the UK
> Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
> But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
Do you have no reading comprehension at all? I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful. The King can go #### himself.
OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
> I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
It doesn't really matter though, the point was it hasn't been a national issue in over a decade, and that remains the case.
> Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there?
The point was people were being arrested in the UK simply for holding up signs. You tried to equate free speech zones with that, but as I said it's an entirely unrelated matter, a desperate whataboutism sprung from defensiveness.
> Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr,
So, over a decade ago like I said.
> but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
There are giant protests all over the country. Free speech zones don't make the news because they are not an issue. No one is being impeded.
> Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
Not at all, you inferred it. I've been consistently clear that I think the UK is going down a bad path but in a very different way from the US, I never said worse.
> I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful.
Honestly, only once that I'm aware of, and I had to drag it out of you. All your posts are pushing back, which gives the impression you want to defend the problems being mentioned.
> OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
I shan't expect a reply then. Cheers. Hopefully we can have a more productive discussion on a different topic in the future.
> his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police
In the UK? The police shoot very few people of any colour! Two in 2025: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_police_in_...
Is there even a bit enough sample to draw such conclusions (let alone that correlation does not imply causation)
No, in the US. That's why it was silly.
I was talking about protestors being arrested for holding up signs, he said the same thing happened in the US but his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police in the US, which while very bad is an entirely different issue.
Because it is massively exaggerated by those with an agenda to distract from the US.
But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff as I have been for a couple of decades now is always incredible. Take the beam from your own eyes. And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
> Because it is massively exaggerated by those with an agenda to distract from the US.
I don't think there has to be any negative motive. I'm not from the US or the UK but have lived in both countries, so feel I can be somewhat objective. What's going on in both countries is disturbing to me, but they have differences with what they are doing.
> But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
That hasn't been a thing for a long time. There have been nationwide protests the last few days not restricted to any kind of 'free speech zone'.
Consider what you are trying to defend: holding up a blank sign. Are you really OK with that? You really think that is reasonable?
> The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff
Pointing out a legitimate concern is not catastrophising anything.
> And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
I never mentioned anything like that.
> That hasn't been a thing for a long time
It’s still the law, was expanded under Obama and is used widely. It is used to control dissent at events where protest would be unsightly, much as the UK incident you brought up.
> Consider what you are trying to defend:
Consider that I didn’t defend it.
> It is used to control dissent at events where protest would be unsightly, much as the UK incident you brought up.
Arresting people for holding up a blank sign is very different and much worse.
> Consider that I didn’t defend it.
Do you agree it was a problem?
> Arresting people for holding up a blank sign is very different and much worse.
On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
It’s exactly the same use of police in concealment of dissent by the state.
> Do you agree it was a problem
Of course, it’s fucking awful. It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
This is my very point - the UK is used as some sort of out-there example of Orwellian repression, but the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
It’s in this thread. We have your assertions above, and below we have someone decrying how unimaginable it would have been for a government to attempt to wholesale spy on people’s communications two decades ago, seemingly completely unaware of the activities of the NSA in AT&T and other companies’ data infrastructure in the US, revealed in 2006.
It’s a weird mix of jingoism and ignorance.
> On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
You are not being genuine here IMO, and this seems to be a case of the very tribalism I spoke of. The two are not remotely the same. One is restricting a protest to a zone. The other is punishing people for what they are saying, even when what they are saying is a blank piece of cardboard.
> It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
> ...
> the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
Can you cite an example of people in the US being arrested for holding up a blank piece of cardboard?
> It’s a weird mix of jingoism and ignorance.
This only describes your behavior.
As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested. A number of the arrests of anti-monarchy protestors were subsequently ruled unlawful (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyenzdz66wo).
All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
By being sloppy with the facts you're only reinforcing Nursie's point that much of the discussion around these issues on HN is based on exaggeration and poorly sourced claims. That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
> As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested.
I was under the impression it was not a single incident, but that's great that it wasn't.
The bigger problem, though, was people being arrested for holding up "not my king" or similar signs. According to one site[0], there were 64 arrests that day. I don't think it matters that no charges were filed or whatever, what matters is they were taken at the time for expressing an opinion.
> All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
That's also good to know. I should have been clearer, but I meant within the context of my experience online. I also don't know that they are truly in denial, it just seems they are overly defensive about it and want to point out the US is worse in various ways.
> That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
I'm misinterpreting anything, and certainly not in this discussion. In past discussions, closer to the coronation, there were Brits being very active in downplaying the arrests, that to me would seem to be denying there was an issue. If it was widely reported in British media as a bad thing, it would seem these particular people being in denial were outliers.
[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...
Ok, but please just do a quick search and check your facts before kicking off a long discussion thread on a false basis. I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts, not any great love we have for police crackdowns on peaceful protests.
> Ok, but please just do a quick search and check your facts before kicking off a long discussion thread on a false basis.
My facts here would have been previous HN discussions that would have been very hard to find.
> I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts
No, that isn't the case, and you're not in a position to promise that; it's an assumption you're making, and I would ask you to question your motivation for doing so.
In the previous posts I was using as an example discussion the coronation, people were downplaying protestors being arrested for holding up signs. Nothing was being exaggerated, all the facts were accurate as they had just happened - sources were abundant.
> attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works
Exactly. Also because this is easily gamed by attacking the media that is already biased in your favour to get an even more favourable treatment.
I believe US conservatives have done this since 1980s. I'm not sure it was deliberate at first: there's feedback. Loudly invoking "liberal bias" in 1975 most certainly got the press to reevaluate and attempt to mitigate any bias they might have shown. That was a reward for conservatives, which probably motivated more accusations of liberal bias, another round of press accomodations. It reinforced itself.
Indeed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990786
Indeed – it's why the BBC platform people like Nigel Lawson when ever they have someone to talk about the impact of climate change or the Tufton St mafia
One thing that is often missed in this narrative is that the UK has a voting system which was explicitly designed to counteract this issue reaching definitive results with the minimum amount of consensus.
I agree with you but I think this idea of being "fair" is something that is said but no-one actually believes in. Most recent government is one of the most extreme examples of this: do things that annoys everyone, say you are just being "fair" because everyone is annoyed...it doesn't make sense.
To say this another way, there is genuinely an easier option: stop doing things that people do not want.
The obvious implication is that "balance" between freedom and surveillance just moves things away from freedom.
Of course, on the note of being attacked from "both" sides, there are often more than two sides to a story. Also, not every side has to be, or maybe even should be, considered with equal weight.
The "eating shit" fallacy as I like to call it.
Just because a fascist and a communist agree that eating shit is bad, doesn't mean that eating shit is a good idea.
This has been ongoing for a long time, its not at all specific to this government.
Yeah, a lot of this is just .. well, I hesitate to use the over used phrase "deep state", but a lot of it is the work of people in the security institutions who "advise" the government, rather than the changing cast of the thin democratic bit on the front. There's long been authoritarianism in response to the fear of terrorism, from the IRA onwards. Then there's things like the "spycops" scandal, which make you wonder whether certain protest groups are deliberately engaging in really unpopular stunts in order to facilitate a crackdown.
The British public are in an odd place on this. There's a lot of "folk libertarianism", but that mostly consists of not having ID cards, while at the same time supporting all sorts of crackdowns on protest as soon as it's mildly inconvenient.
And then there's immigration. As in the US, it's a magic bullet for discourse that allows any amount of authoritarianism (or headshots to soccer moms) as long as you promise it will be used against immigrants.
Hannah Arendt convincingly made the case that any government power used against immigrants will eventually be turned against citizens. History keeps proving her right.
Huh? Starmer is the least popular Prime Minister, I believe, ever.
He wins or draws on every measure of unpopularity, other than YouGov net satisfaction where Liz Truss still beats him.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/28/keir-s... https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/30/uk/keir-starmer-labour-pa...
I've come across various sources that lean center-left, note, CENTER-left, saying this. I think there might be something to it.
It's a problem with pretty much anyone. Things are bad from a fundamental structural failings for decades, elect new person, don't see immediate turn-around, they're massively unpopular.
The only way out of this is if you successfully blame $marginalised_group for the peoples problems. Or spend decades undoing the damage, but nobody ever gets decades in power.
It's because he was elected with a historically low % of the vote. Few wanted him at the election, few want him now.
Most don't want any of the options presented to them. Almost all the parties don't really serve the electorate, so a large number of people are abstaining.
I appreciate this in an anecdotal but I've spoken to quite a few people I know in my family, that saw it as their civil duty to vote and they told all told me some variation of "there is nobody worth voting for", "I don't think it matters who I vote for".
There are good options I think for most people. I did not like labors party policy, so I voted for the Lib Dems in a large labour area, did it achieve anything for them? No, did I do my civil duty?
I am sure many green voters felt the same way for many years and now they stand a decent chance of getting many seats!
Your best option in your area was a protest vote, but you still believe there are good options. To me that sounds like cognitive dissonance.
I don't vote. There are many reasons I don't vote. However the biggest reason I don't vote is that the whole premise or at least how it is presented to you is false. The way it is presented to you both in school, media etc. is that you are supposed to read the manifesto, consider the candidates arguments and history etc. etc.
People don't do that, they vote for their team. People have their political teams, much like Premiership Football it often comes down to the "Reds vs the Blues" (literally Man U vs Man City).
The UK is FPTP. Reform split the previously unified conservative vote so labour won with a historically low %.
Total Reform + Conservative vote was at historical lows as a percentage of the electorate.
That might be true, but the votes (not seats, first past the post, almost guarantees people aren't represented): Labour: 9.7M Conservatives 6.8M Reform: 4.1M Liberal Democrats 3.5M
The point clearly stands that had Reform not been a thing, 2024 would have been a conservative landslide.
What we got was a Labour landslide, what we should have got was some coalition.
As the sibling comment said. You are making the assumption that every Reform voter would have held their nose and voted Conservative instead. A lot more people would have stayed home I think. I don't think anyone thought the Conservatives could win and that includes the Conservatives themselves.
Yes, though I'd be careful about assuming that votes are Conservatives <-> Reform on a left-right median voter model. The other aspect that Reform has (and will have at least until it forms a government) is anti-system/populist credentials. Labour had a little of that last time (they are a deeply establishment party, especially under current leadership, but they were coming off a period as very public opposition to the government and the current state of things) but will have very little next time.
It's certainly not a given that all the 2024 Reform vote would have gone to the Conservatives: a good chunk of it would have likely been disgusted abstention, another chunk to other anti-system parties (mostly of the right fringe, I suspect, but not excluding the Greens despite wild ideological differences), and likely a further (if smaller) chunk to other parties which were simply not the Conservatives (including Labour and the Lib Dems).
Edit: the best analysis on this is likely to be in the latest volume of the long-standing The British General Election of XXXX series, which has just been published online[0]. I haven't had time to look at it yet, though.
[0]: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-95952-3
Turnout was historically low. Labour didn't really "win", the Conservatives lost. A lot of Conservatives voters didn't really recognise the party.
Also not every Reform voter would vote Conservative if Reform didn't exist.
Some of it is deliberately attempting to appeal to Reform voters, in ways which have infuriated Labour supporters while not winning any Reform support.
Which is even more bizarre given appointing someone as divisive and pig-ignorant as Priti Patel the Home Secretary would have the tabloids crucifying a Labour PM. Johnson and his after-dinner speeches about the Mayor from Jaws forgave a lot of blunders during C19.
https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2021/0526/12239...
Remember also that when Sunak stepped down, Priti was put forward for leader. If she had played off her Zionist aspirations just a few years later she'd be right in the current newscycle re proscribed organisations and 'domestic terrorism' charges in the UK, and possibly in the running for the big chair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priti_Patel#Meetings_with_Isra...
Yet these laws and general direction have been in place through half a dozen prime ministers, including ones initially very popular (Johnson especially, but Cameron wasn't particularly unpopular until the brexit mess)
Right. When I'm at a counter-protest facing the local† Nazis (who in this incarnation have decided to call themselves "patriots") among all the rhetoric accusing us of supporting terrorists (no matter where brown people may come from they're apparently "ISIS" or "Taliban" these days) or rapists or any number of weird conspiracies, one thing they often yell about is that Keir Starmer is (to quote them) "a Wanker" and I have observed to other protesters that uniquely this is probably a widely shared viewpoint. Yeah, he is, but, why you are you being so racist, why do you want to terrify my neighbours, what does that have to do with Keir?
† Local in the sense of being the ones who turn up, my guess is that a good number of them travel by car from quite some distance, personally I live five minutes walk away.
Grooming gangs are not a conspiracy.
I don't agree. The British State has been going in this direction ever since Blair's government and probably before that. I don't remember Blair's government being that unpopular.
New labour really laid the groundwork for alot of the orwellian laws that are in place now. Its a shame nobody who has been elected since sought to roll them back...
There is simply no-incentive to. Generally there are many incentives to increase the number of laws, as they can be seen as doing something about a some recent issue. Many of the recent online safety laws (even before OSA) are good examples of this.
Additionally Britain generally has a problem with politicians believing that the only solution to a problem is banning/regulating things, regardless what the root cause might be. Banning/regulating something requires new legal powers. So more laws.
This been true as far back as I can remember with them talking about banning the Lotus Carlton back in the early 90s because one vehicle the infamous 40RR was used in a spate of ram raids which embarrassed the police. I remember this on the news when I was about 9-10 years old.
40 RA, my mum used to drive a Vauxhall Carlton
> Additionally Britain generally has a problem with politicians believing that the only solution to a problem is banning/regulating things, regardless what the root cause might be. Banning/regulating something requires new legal powers. So more laws.
I mean it's true and it does work for the most part. The bans on knives, drain cleaner etc have reduced the number of these kinds of crimes especially in London. It's hard to argue against something when a lot of this kind of policymaking is effective
> 40 RA, my mum used to drive a Vauxhall Carlton
They were/are nice cars. I did dream of buying a Lotus Carlton, but unless a few million falls into my lap it will remain a dream :D
> I mean it's true and it does work for the most part. The bans on knives, drain cleaner etc have reduced the number of these kinds of crimes especially in London. It's hard to argue against something when a lot of this kind of policymaking is effective
Does it? The stats seem to suggest the opposite.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-lo...
> The increase in knife crime witnessed in London has occurred alongside a general increase in overall crime throughout England and Wales. In 2022/23, there were approximately 6.74 million crime offences across England and Wales, compared with just over four million ten years earlier. During a similar time period, the number of knife homicides also increased, and reached 282 in 2017/18, compared with 186 in 2014/15. Due to strict gun laws in the United Kingdom, firearms are rarely used to commit homicides, with knives or other sharp instruments being used in over 46 percent of homicides in 2023/24.
Also never look at what current government is going to do with the framework, but what future much worse government could use it for.
They’re also strengthening the criminal consequences for future governments that misuse their position: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/4019
Which can be undone by another single act of your “sovereign” Parliament. Acts like this must be understood in that context.
This works both ways though, ie there’s no point opposing the laws on the grounds that they might be abused in future because the future sovereign parliament could just pass the same abusable laws.
It's not always easy. If they don't have large majority, some with a bit of conscience might go against the party.
By this logic, governments shouldn't legislate anything or have any kind of policy. Child benefit? Scrap it in case King Herod takes over and has an ready made hit list.
Does it get worse? They are making a benchmark that is hard to beat.
I wouldn't like to see all the legal infrastructure they're putting in under a Reform UK government - I'd imagine they'll use it for far more nefarious means.
That being said - the blame lies squarely with Labour here. I have a gut feel a lot of it has to do with donors to the Tony Blair Institute.
Well World Economic Forum (WEF) lists Tony Blair and his institute as one of the top Agenda contributors [1].
It's not even funny that you can trace almost any person responsible for the deterioration of human rights in Western society to one of the WEF alumni or associates.
These supernatural institutions and interest groups should be made illegal if we want to continue as a civilization.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/tony-blair-2/
They need to, at the very least, obey the prevailing laws of physics.
Man, its like everyone is blind to the current state of things.
Here is the truth:
* Everyone with above sentiment always votes for anyone libertarian, which is necessarily conservative, and all conservatives are pretty much liars.
* These same conservatives that champion against government overreach, for law and order, and for personal freedoms do the exact opposite once they get into office. Nor do they give a shit about the law.
So yea, the whole libertarian ideology is pretty much dead. Its pretty obvious that the best course of action is to sacrifice personal freedoms and elect a government that can keep a tight rein over the populace and keep things like Nazi ideology from spreading.
Totalitarianism has the same end state whether it comes from the left or the right. It always results in suppression of the truth, broken feedback loops that lead to poor decisions by government, economic failure, and finally either bloody repression, war, or revolution.
It’s possible to move through this to a place of stability. After all, China only had to kill 15-55 million people in the Great Leap Forward and a couple thousand more in 1989. Today they are fairly stable and prosperous, even with tight controls on information. Perhaps the UK will have a similar path!
Both extreme leftism and extreme rightism are composed of the same people - more focused on ideology rather than truth, and authoritarian control rather than voice of reason.
In the middle, there is an acceptable range of compromise. Social media is the new town square. People shouldn't be able to post stuff on there without recourse for lying and spreading misinformation, just like they shouldn't be able to do this in public. History shows that this leads to bad outcomes. Also, history also shows that we can't just have personal freedoms unrestricted.
And just because that "freedom" is being taken away, doesn't mean that the leftists are in charge.
Historically, at least in the US, people are indeed explicitly allowed to lie or spread misinformation in the town square. This is specifically allowed by the first amendment and backed by court cases. Your mention of the “town square” here is interesting, as Marsh v. Alabama and Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins both center around this idea. In both cases the Supreme Court ruled that unrestricted free speech was allowed in the town square, whether it was a company town or a shopping mall, so long as the location was effectively serving as a surrogate town square.
Now of course this is about the UK. But to my knowledge and based on research there are no laws or cases about lying in public. As long as you aren’t committing perjury or slander, or urging violence, or inciting a panic, this isn’t illegal.
Why is it happening in the UK though? Why does their government think that they need this?
It's not only happening in the UK. It's happening across the entire western world except for America. Australia, Canada and European countries have also been implementing retroactive speech laws, mass debanking, imprisonment for political speech and so on. The UK gets a lot of attention because it's historically been a fairly free country, and because it's English speaking.
Even in the U.S. there is constant pressure on the First Amendment. It's just that the 1A has been quite resilient because the courts have helped it, but that can stop at any time.
[flagged]
> It’s very sad to see what’s happening over there
looks out window.
i don’t see a ministry of truth or posters of Big Brother. i think we’re still a ways away from 1984.
What’s going on over here?
You have ICE thugs executing citizens and being defended by the government while doing so
[flagged]
Interesting how you think being shot by authorities is less bad than being talked to for shitposting on X
[flagged]
> Are you outraged by all police shootings?
Only the unjustified ones, which is quite a lot of them in the US. They should automatically result in at least a public inquiry.
> On average three people are killed by LE per day.
In the US. This is a stupidly high number.
On average three people per year are killed by police in England&Wales. https://www.inquest.org.uk/fatal-police-shootings
Justine Damond. Got swept under the rug.
I don’t think you understand how different the UK is
Police killings are extraordinarily rare here so hearing about any is eyebrow raising. Even more so the latest example of an ICE agent killing someone simply for pissing them off
Over here, the police have fatally shot a grand total of 88 people in England and Wales since 1990. So yeah, police shootings are pretty big news, and while they are sometimes justified, people certainly would get outraged by anything resembling the recent ICE shootings.
> So media control, regulation by enforcement, and institutional control becomes the focus of effort.
You forgot gun control. That's the first thing they took away. Thereafter, freedom after freedom has been made optional by the government [1].
When government becomes overreaching, and you don't have the means to protect yourself and your rights, that's where it goes.
[1] I said "government", but probably "regime" would be a more suitable term here.
The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
(to the extent that armed revolution worked in the UK, the IRA were helped only slightly by US-backed supplies of Armalite rifles, and much more by a large supply of Libyan high explosives. Guns are a much less effective political weapon than the car or truck or hotel bomb)
Guns only help somewhat nebulously against tyranny. You need societal consensus to get to society using guns against the government, and there is no such consensus regarding ICE, which is why you're not going to see guns used against ICE. Many many people who hate ICE are armed to the teeth, and they are not using those guns because they know that currently that would lose them thee battle and the war.
But in general the better armed states in the U.S. had less restrictive covid rules. So perhaps there is a link between how armed the population is and how well it resists restrictions it doesn't like.
>The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
I don't see ICE prowling "the cops don't come serve a warrant here with anything less than a SWAT team" parts of New Orleans or St. Louis.
Stop thinking about this based on indoctrinated emotion and politics. Think about it in terms of an all out war and "how do I force my enemy to expend resources not toward his goals".
Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an AGTM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. Making any potential target substantially more prickly to a potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone that records things the government does not like or a media platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the masses.
The idea that any cranky old man or mentally on the edge person might just snap and put a bullet in your favorite bespoke enforcer (i.e. not a cop but someone who hands out state backed fines all the same) puts a huge damper on your ability to deploy those people for example. The risk that your informants might get clapped increases the cost of your informants for like results, etc, etc. And when you game it out to it's ends what it comes down to is that the population doing the subjugating might simply not be rich enough or motivated enough to have or be willing to allocate the resources needed to do the job.
This is a large part of why drugs won the war on drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a couple cops it would've gone on way longer.
>(to the extent that armed revolution worked in the UK, the IRA were helped only slightly by US-backed supplies of Armalite rifles, and much more by a large supply of Libyan high explosives. Guns are a much less effective political weapon than the car or truck or hotel bomb)
The semtex wouldn't have gotten anywhere useful if the Brits could just walk into wherever all willy nilly chasing down every lead in search of it. Bringing enough credible threat of violence to force their enemy to actually behave like a proper occupying force burning money and political credibility as a result limited the Brit's ability engage (at the right price) in the kind of police action they needed to catch the bombs.
If they could've just sent pairs of cops after every lead in an "oi you got a license for that meme" manner they'd have dredged up all the semtex and none of it would've made it to London.
>The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
The woman who was shot was a democrat without any guns, maybe if she'd had a gun she wouldn't have been shot.
> maybe if she'd had a gun she wouldn't have been shot
And how do you imagine that, exactly? You think that cop was fine shooting her for driving away in panic, but would patiently wait for her to grab a gun? And what would you like a person in her situation to do with the gun? Shoot him? The fact is, pulling a weapon in front of a US cop is begging to be killed on the spot. A common point of advice is that if you're stopped in the US by police, you should never look like you're reaching for anything, because the worst-case penalty for that is death. It instantly escalates the situation to life-or-death for a group of people that is largely already itching to pull the trigger.
Maybe if he didn't have a gun she wouldn't have been shot.
You just gave one more argument for having guns.
If he didn't have a gun, maybe he would be driven over by the car. Possibly a few more people too. In Europe, where guns are less prevalent, cars are the favorite weapon used by terrorists.
Luckily, he had a gun, so he was able to save himself and who knows how many more people by shooting an attacker.
No gun control measure proposes to disarm the police.
I still don't know what's so important about guns and how it's a metric for freedom.
Predators are less likely to attack someone who can defend themselves, it's quite simple.
The empirical evidence from the US does not bear that out. Compare murder rates between the US and any peer country with more gun control.
Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons. Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime, it would just make it harder for victims to defend themselves.
Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population, which is not that common in comparable countries. If that population were to be removed from the statistics, the murder rate in the USA would drop significantly.
> According to the FBI 2019 Uniform Crime Report, African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1%, and "Other" 3% in cases where the race was known. Including homicide offenders where the race was unknown, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, "Other" 2.1%, and "Unknown" 29.3%[48]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
> Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons
Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
> Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime
Of course it would - see the reduction in gun violence in countries where this has been implemented.
> Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population
Oh. You're one of those.
It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
> Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
Since you bring up Europe, I can give you a counterexample of Switzerland, which is armed to the teeth and still has a significantly lower homicide rate than the USA. The same applies to Canada. Even some countries with prevalent illegal guns are not even close to the USA. Heck, there's a war in Ukraine, guns are everywhere, and still, there's a very low homicide rate.
> Oh. You're one of those.
One of which? Say it or shut up. Or are you one of these? ;)
> It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
I'm not even an American. But given the above counterexamples, it's clear that the availability of legal guns is not the only, and probably not the biggest deciding factor for high homicide rates.
Want to understand the cause? Open a Wikipedia page, look at the stats, and identify the fact that most of the homicides in the USA can be tracked down to some specific population. That's not racist, since facts can't be racist. You won't reduce the homicide rate by ignoring the facts.
> Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
Can you explain that logic? First, if you look at the stats again, most of the Black Americans are killed by the members of their race, probably due to higher exposure to threats.
So yes, Black Americans need legal guns to protect themselves even more than White Americans, since they are more endangered.
Yes, for the US with their unique historical and cultural differences, but it doesn't make it an international metric.
Everyone in the US agrees with the inequalities and segregation and find it acceptable that an individual has to become a predator to survive because they don't find it acceptable to help each other on a governmental scale.
Some countries have worse inequalities than the US but they don't think they need guns to have freedom in their daily lives.
As Mao said, political power grows from the barrel of the gun. In the past decade freedom of speech and internet freedom has being dramatically curtailed in pretty much every western country where the citizen are unarmed.
These guns didn't stop the CLOUD act.
i’m absolutely, concretely and overwhelmingly fine with the concept of gun control here as a uk citizen.
i say this as someone who did target rifle shooting as a kid. so, i’ve been around weapons in a positive way.
the controls are a good thing.
> i’m absolutely, concretely and overwhelmingly fine with the concept of gun control here as a uk citizen.
That... speaks volumes of the citizens of the said country.
> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest.
Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how they do prosecute noncrime crimes such as 'hate speech').
Here, for comparison, is a paragraph from an essay by Konstantin Kisin:
> A month earlier, I was walking through a posh part of London when I saw a young man in a balaclava snatch a bag from a tourist. When I told people about what I saw at various meetings, most people were surprised that I was surprised. Phone thefts, muggings and all kinds of petty crime are now considered normal and routine.
Which story is correct?
[0] -https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/theres-good-news-for-brita...
Anecdote is not data. It is both true that the police absolutely suck at handling petty crime, and the Met have a fairly terrible reputation; and that more serious violent crime is much, much less of a problem in London than it used to be (and less than US cities, of course).
> Anecdote is not data.
This is a situation where the data may not be capturing the reality, though.
An increasingly common tactic for decreasing crime statistics is to reduce reporting of crimes. The more difficult you make it to report a crime, the better the crime numbers look.
In one city I’m familiar with, it became so well known that reporting small crimes was a futile endeavor that people just gave up. It was common knowledge that you don’t bother calling the police unless it was a major crime. Not surprisingly, the crime statistics started to look better.
That’s why we have the national crime survey, performed by the ONS.
Correlating it with police stats and murder stats suggests that reporting and recording is actually going up as a proportion of crime. Petty crime like shoplifting has gone up, but relatively speaking most people would probably take that over stabbing and murder even if ideally we’d have neither.
There’s this weird trend that’s taken over social media trying to portray London as a lawless hell hole but few people who actually live here are experiencing it that way, and the stats back that up. It’s largely people outside London that are claiming the crime is bad here.
pretty hard to underreport homicide
Not sure homicide fits into “small crime” category.
No, but it serves as a sense check on the other data. If the official stats were bogus and crime were spiraling out of control in London, it would be somewhat surprising to see homicides going down. The fact that one of the most objectively measurable crimes is going down lends some additional credibility to the statistics indicating that this trend is also being seen across other crime categories.
So far, I have never seen any article or even comment online explain explicitly why this is the case.
Almost everyone can see quite visibly that crime is not decreasing but then you have people with a clear political and financial motive saying: the stats, you are just a loon or (even worse) someone who might not be from London.
If you read the best source on this, hospital admissions, you will see that ~95% of the drop in "violent crime" is due to decreases in alcohol consumption. That is it. Ex this impact and in relative terms, violent crime in cities has been increasing significantly. And violent crime is supposed to be the rare subset of crime when, obviously, other categories of crime are generally increasing.
Btw, the group that publishes this data is also (strangely) unwilling to make this known and, afaik, do not include this information in press releases.
The other factor is that the composition of London's population has naturally changed over the last ten years. As London has continued to dominate economically, the poor have been emptied out from certain areas contributing greatly to a reduction in crime stats (and, unfortunately, an increase elsewhere in the country). For example, Camden has seen a huge reduction in violent crime, is this a surprise? If you look at areas that have stayed the same, crime has got worse (again, in relative terms/ex the above factors, crime in the UK is falling in many areas and rising in others).
I will say this another way: data is not collected fairly or accurately. There are massive political and financial incentives against accurate data. In London, this has always been the case because it is not possible to win elections in some areas in London with high crime if you admit that crime is high in those areas...you have to blame society. Twenty years ago, you had the same thing: city has never been safer, politicians doing so well, Met doing so well...once you have seen this a few times, you should start to wonder whether it is true...particularly as the current line is that crime was rampant twenty years ago...when it obviously wasn't. Anecdotes will always tend to represent the reality better than data which is produced for political purposes (and I think people know this, the stats exist in part so that people can hop online and say that everyone is doing a great job, you see the same thing online with central government...it is very weird).
I don’t understand why ONS should be expected to do anything but gather numbers. If good policing is the cause or reduction in alcohol consumption is the cause who cares?
Also, on looking for incentives the very obvious incentive to try discredit these orgs is so that politicians outside London can blame crime on immigration in the city that has the most immigrants.
This is straight out of the playbook of groups who want to manipulate public opinion so that they can get away with something that is not in the interests of the electorate.
Look at the US where these capabilities have been under siege since the start of this presidency, for example NASA’s climate data and the EPA’s air quality health impact measurement. Or more directly relevant: “immigrants are eating dogs and cats” and it doesn’t matter that the people who track crime professionally say “no they aren’t”.
It isn't the ONS. I believe it is a research unit of a university who collects this data, and they produce press releases on this dataset.
The reason why the difference is important is because it implies extremely different strategies to fixing it...obviously.
"politicians outside London"...ah, ofc, the Londoner conspiracy theory. It is wrong to blame immigrants for crime but correct to blame people outside London? The reason why people think there is a link between crime and immigration is because there is a link between crime and immigration. I am not sure what else can be said. You are implying that public opinion should be manipulated to hide this fact (even though this is already something the government does) whilst complaining about other people manipulating public opinion. Classic.
Just to clarify: you're saying the alcohol vs crime stats are from a research unit of a university? If so:
- I admit that I don't know much about ONS but its name suggests that they are not about research/speculation/anecdata into how we got where we are or how to fix it, they are just there to collect data - I would count the reduction in alcohol consumption as an extremely positive step for fixing problems; societal problems like crime need holistic solutions. What the correct solution is seems orthogonal to my point which is that stats orgs work hard to produce rigorous data and it is dangerous to undermine them in favour of groups (bloggers?) who have no such standards applied to their work
> It is wrong to blame immigrants for crime but correct to blame people outside London
I'm not sure what point you're making, I'm not blaming crime on people outside London. I imagine that the small amount of crime in London is committed by people in and around London. I expect the tiny minority of immigrants to be responsible for a tiny minority of those crimes.
> there is a link between crime and immigration
I'd be interested to read stats from a reputable source that applies the sort of rigour that the non-political civil servants who typically gather stats.
> You are implying that public opinion should be manipulated to hide this fact
I am stating that the fact of low crime rates in London should not be undermined in favour of conspiracy theories that are used to demonise the civil service.
Even if there is a link between crime and immigration the low rate makes it far less of a problem than the other societal problems we face, like the quick political points scored by demonising and hollowing out the civil service.
> even though this is already something the government does
This government already bows to this immigration nonsense. They are not a good example in your case.
from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/world/europe/london-polic...
There was a phone theft wave that peaked in 2024. It’s still happening, but it’s significantly less of a problem now - some stats say 30% down from the peak by mid 2025. I had my phone stolen in 2024, I know others who did, but I haven’t heard of anyone having theirs stolen recently and people aren’t really worrying about it any more.
Turns out it wasn’t just random street crime. It was being run by organised crime networks, and it went down significantly after they managed to disrupt a few major rings.
These waves do happen from time to time when criminal networks discover a new tactic, before the police figure out an effective method to deal with it. It was youth stabbings a few years ago and acid attacks before that, both are much reduced now.
Those criminals will move onto something else now, undoubtedly. Perhaps shoplifting, which it’s now reported is being also increasingly run by gangs. Point is, you can’t necessarily look at an individual type of crime as an indicator of criminality as a whole, could just be exploiting an opportunity.
Something that does upset me is that only the monetary value of a phone is ultimately considered in sentencing but these days a phone is a lot more, it is a lifeline to the rest of the world often having your ability to pay and travel built in. A theft of a phone can make a bad day very long and very difficult.
Sure; but the article's premise is that street crime is falling (and as a result, the police, which, presumably, has more free time on their hands, can focus on other things). Assuming petty crime is street crime, and seeing that you agree that the police suck at it, is the article's premise correct?
Yes, it’s correct. Violent crime in London and the UK more generally has been on a long term downward trend. This is not incompatible with there being spikes in some specific categories of crime. But it’s consistent with the trends for homicide, for which the statistics are pretty hard to dispute, and where London has fewer per capita than Berlin, Brussels and Paris (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/london-homic...).
You’re posting an article by someone with eccentric views on a lot of topics and an anti-multiculturalist agenda to advance. (For example, they believe that Rishi Sunak is not English.)
Stats can almost always be disputed unfortunately.
One reason homicides are down is because hospitals have got better at keeping stabbing victims alive. Stripped of context it looks like a win. Put in context the question becomes, why are there so many stabbing victims? Gang crime, etc.
Hospital admissions for knife injuries are also down, so it's not that (see e.g. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04...)
Also, hospitals have got better at treating knife injuries in lots of places, not just London. This would not explain why London has a low homicide rate per capita compared to lots of other cities.
Similar story in Canada. Violent crime and serious crime is on a clear downward trend. Yet in most majour cities you a less safe, and the public transit system is more dangerous than ever.
Not sure about the UK, at least in Canada it's poverty/people being broke. More homeless people and the general harassment they inflict on people in their surrounding area, more petty crime that the police don't bother investigating so people don't bother reporting it. More theft from grocery stores, more petty scams for <$1000 &c.
[flagged]
Rape rates in the UK have more than tripled over the past two decades, why doesn't that count as serious violent crime? https://www.statista.com/statistics/283100/recorded-rape-off...
From the link - This is possibly due to better reporting practices by the police as well as an increasing willingness of victims to come forward, including historic victims of sexual violence.
Not definitive, but certainly a possible explanation.
You know how the NHS reduced waiting lists a few years back? If you had waiting lists of say 100 for a surgery, they basically said - the list is maximum 15 people, after that it's whoever books first who gets the surgery. So basically you had to be lucky and be the number 15 on the list once a spot was open.
But! Magically NHS waiting lists got shorter! The government could say this on Question Time on the BBC, woohoo!
I imagine this is the kind of thing that's happening now with petty crime reports.
Claims about certain categories of crime rising or falling in England are usually based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is not based on police reports, but on surveying a random sample of people to see if they have been self-reported victims of various kinds of crime.
The people who gathered stats professionally are correct.
I’m twitchy about this because I’m hearing from relatives in far more dangerous countries and cities about how London is under siege from immigrant criminals and sharia law is being imposed in the streets. Their news bubble is full of current articles that use as “evidence” pictures of riots from a decade ago where the violence was not committed by immigrants.
This would be laughable if not for how completely these folks have swallowed this nonsense.
It’s at best unscrupulous journalists desperate for eyeballs but given how pervasive this is it feels naive to assume anything but a paid, coordinated campaign.
“Are you ok in the UK?” Yes, I’m right here in London. London is fine.
One of the really boring things about crime stats is that if you insist that "Nobody will do anything" and so you don't bother to report crimes, the crime stats go down -- because you didn't report a crime.
It suits a certain kind of person to have this obvious statistical fact portrayed as some sort of failing of existing institutions. Because it's just how statistics work it won't magically change if you're dumb enough to put them in charge but they can certainly tell gullible people like you that they've fixed it.
Reporting crimes is one of those tedious things citizens have to do to get a nice society to live in, like patiently queueing for things, or putting trash in the bin. You could choose not to do it, but don't blame anybody else if no-one does it and now your society sucks.
While this sounds true, it's also true that police often will try to bully you into abandoning a crime report or treat you with contempt of they don't consider the crime "worthwhle". So not only do you not get a resolution, as expected, but you get to waste your time and be treated poorly. All that to increment a couter that might in aggregate reach a number that might get noticed by someone that might result in a policy that might 5 years later start to address the problem but may also just be used to crack down on everyone's rights as part of a right wing fear campaign? It's nowhere near as clear cut as waiting in line or picking up litter.
So, fun fact, I actually reported a crime last week.
A few days later I got a "Caller ID blocked" call and was like "Scammers?" but I'm the kind of person who at least answers the call to say "Fuck off" if they're scammers and it wasn't a scam it was some nice lady whose job is to sift this endless pile of crime reports.
She didn't treat me with contempt, though of course she's not going to magically make the crime not have happened, or - given I wasn't sure who did it - even commit to having somebody actually do anything about it. But hey, that's statistics for you.
I disagree that somehow picking up litter is different. You're not going to magically make there not be any litter are you? No. But nevertheless in aggregate it has an effect.
A single data point does not show a trend
The man who says Rishi Sunak is not English [0] might be lying? Thats crazy.
[0] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/of-cou...
I guess it depends on what you mean by English. England is a country, but you can't have an English passport, you can only get a UK passport. so, English is a kinda-sorta a non-nationality, but it is very much an ethnic group.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Rishi Sunak isn't a UK citizen, but he certainly isn't a member of the English ethnic group, or any of the Celtic ethnic groups that also make up the UK's native population.
If we go by the explanation from wikipedia [0], Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage would not be considered English, as their families are not part of the English or Celtic ethnic groups. Their ancestors are Turkish and German who came to the UK after 1850. Do you believe they are not English? I mean even the current King of the UK would not be considered English by your definition! He is descended from Greek, Danish and German people [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_monarchy_of_the...
I agree, they are not ethnically English, they are British citizens and have all the rights that come with citizenship, the same as every other UK citizen including those that would call themselves English. You think there's some kind of gotcha there, but there isn't.
England hasn't had an English king since 1066, that's not controversial, and even then the inbreeding between the European royal houses was creating a pan-european elite that made world world 1 more of a really bad family argument than anything else.
What's really odd is that Rishi Sunak is extremely proud of his ethnicity and heritage, it's unfortunate that we've made it almost impossible for other people's to have that same pride.
The usual meaning of English. Say, roughly the criteria that would make someone eligible to play for the England football team. Skin color has nothing to do with it, and I can assure you that very few English people either know or care whether they have any ‘Celtic’ ancestry.
No-one questions the Englishness of white men born in England to two non-English parents. People raising the absurd non-issue of Rishi Sunak’s Englishness are just concealing their rather obvious prejudices with a lot of bafflegab about ‘English ethnicity’ (a concept which not even they can really take at all seriously, if they at least have some acquaintance with English history).
There are Ethnic groups in England that have been present for several thousand years. Some people clearly mean this and can't articulate it better.
Rushi Sunak ancestry is obviously Indian. I don't really care about his ethnicity (he another politician in a suit to me), but I can understand what people mean when they say he isn't English without automatically assuming they are Racist.
Sports teams aren't a particularly good criteria, I could be Scottish or Welsh and play for England, it's one of those idiocracies of living in a country that pretends to be 4.
Denying the existence of an ethic group is extremely racist, and is often considered a precursor to other much more serious issues.
If you have any acquaintance with English history you would be well aware that there are native ethnic groups that have been in the UK since approximately the end of the younger dryas around 11,000 years ago.
The last major migration was the anglo-saxons around 1500 years ago.
These groups still exist and the majority of the UK population can still trace their origin back to one of these groups.
>If you have any acquaintance with English history you would be well aware that there are native ethnic groups that have been in the UK since approximately the end of the younger dryas around 11,000 years ago.
And you'd be aware that nothing even vaguely corresponding to 'England' existed 11,000 years ago. If you are willing to lump the descendants of Romans, Normans, Jutes, Durotriges, Iceni, Vikings, etc. together into one group and call them all 'English' just because they happened to live in the territory of what is now England, then you've already conceded the point that the identity is national, not ethnic.
But hey, over in the other thread you are denying that Boris Johnson is English, so it's clear that you have a rather eccentric concept of the category.
It's interesting that other native groups, all of which have intermixed with others over thousands of years don't have to defend their right to their ethnic identity.
The English ethnic group is defined by a shared genetics and culture, the English enthic group isn't just political it is biological and can be identified via DNA.
I wouldn't consider my definition eccentric, it's based on the UN defintion: Ethnic group or ethnicity refers to a group of people whose members claim a common heritage or common ancestry and usually speak a common language and may have some common cultural practices.
The other thread argued that Boris Johnson is ethnically Turkic (I have no idea if that is true) on the assumption it is true, Boris Johnson may meet the requirement of a common language, but does not meet the requirement of a shared ancestry to be ethnically English.
Many of the groups that you mentioned existed in the UK over 1000 years ago, and shared in the same invasions, same issues, and developed a shared culture due to that shared history and closeness of relations, and of course as evidenced by DNA analysis interbreeding.
So yeah I would say that in the space of a millennium multiple groups can become one group.
I also
Everyone in London knows what happens if you try to report "minor" street crime.
Obviously everyone saying the UK isn't a utopia is a Russian bot, and we should be censoring them.
Fine, but also how to explain the crazy claims flying around the internet that London is a warzone and a no-go area? I live here and... seriously, nothing has changed. I feel perfectly safe and always have.
Yeah sure, there's some phone theft, it's not great. This phone theft wave is just a symptom of everyone carrying £500 devices around. Big cities have always had theft, pickpocket and snatching crimes. But it's nothing astonishingly new or different. I know one person who had their phone snatched, never seen it happen myself.
So how to explain this massive wave of social media posts making out that London's unsafe? There is definitely a narrative being pushed, whether by Russian bots or not, I cannot say.
Because everyone that experiences the crime stops tolerating it and leaves. This is why the area around the greenbelt so closely resembles the inner cities of 20 years before. This isn't some new phenomenon - Lee Kuan Yew famously described the newspaper purchasing arrangement at Piccadilly Circus in the 1950s, which was incomprehensible by the 1980s.
I'm old enough to remember when they had posters telling people not to wear iPod white earphones because that will get you mugged (and it would) - pure blaming the victim nonsense.
If London defenders were half as enthusiastic about cleaning up their city as they are about attacking anyone pointing out the all too obvious problems they genuinely would be in utopia.
I lived in South London a few decades ago, it was the exact same situation.
Lived in central London, close to 100% of the crime was happening from one area. Police refused to go into that area because of "community relations". No crime in areas that didn't abut this location but no desire to fix. Police pretend to police.
Moved to South London, crime more prevalent but, again, certain areas are worse. Police won't go to these areas, "community relations" even worse. Cash machine near housing estate treated like lootbox. Next election comes round, candidate spends most of their time canvassing on estate. Police only go onto the estate to attend events with "community" telling them they are bigots. Crime continues.
Everyone who works this out either leaves or, if they get enough money, move to safe areas of West London. Today's Londoners do not realise everyone has left, it is just a bunch of people who moved there in the last ten years telling everyone how brilliant it is and pretending they have lived there for years before being forced to leave too. Property prices suggest that actual long-term citizens are continuing to leave in large numbers.
> Everyone who works this out either leaves or, if they get enough money, move to safe areas of West London. Today's Londoners do not realise everyone has left, it is just a bunch of people who moved there in the last ten years telling everyone how brilliant it is and pretending they have lived there for years before being forced to leave too. Property prices suggest that actual long-term citizens are continuing to leave in large numbers.
Painfully accurate.
The fact even Lily Allen, of all people, made a music video about delusional Londoners telling themselves it's all fine, when it's not, speaks volumes, and they're still at it. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYT79tPvLg )
What are we supposed to do to “clean up our city”? I live in one of the worst areas, statistically, for crime and haven’t experienced anything beyond porch piracy and someone trying my car door.
My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. Obviously crime happens, but against other comparable large cities it’s only really Tokyo and a few cities in semi-authoritarian countries that seem that much safer to me. Big European cities are about the same and US cities are much worse.
Beyond reporting anything I see, which I do, I’m not sure what kind of cleaning up you expect me to do? Obviously it’s a factor in how I vote, but it’s not even a top 3 issue to be honest.
> My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about.
You understand this is the kind of thing those of us that lived there have heard a million times?
It's exactly what people say before the thing that happens that makes them leave.
> US cities are much worse.
This also is not the case, and it's amazing how propagandized the UK has to be to think it. If you lot were aware of the true standard of life in most of the US you'd riot.
Bad things can happen anywhere. A one-off incident wouldn’t make me leave.
I visit the US often and have been a victim of crime there more often than anywhere in Europe. That’s not to say I don’t love the US. San Diego is probably my favourite city in the world. But apart from one or two exceptions, large US cities suffer from far worse crime than anywhere in the UK. I got mugged at gunpoint by a crackhead in Philly. Quality of life can be fantastic of course. My aunt lives in a gated community in LA and drives to work so she never has to interact with the real world, so to speak, and her QoL is amazing. But large parts of the city are absolutely dystopian.
Try walking from Fashion District to Chinatown and tell me where you’d find something like that anywhere in London, let alone Z1. I don't even know if I've seen anything that bad in actual third world cities.
Ok, so we can either listen to
(i) people who live in London, or
(ii) people who left London because they were victims of a crime.
I'm genuinely sorry that you were the victim of a crime, but people in group (ii) are obviously likely to have a negative perception of London regardless of how much or how little crime London actually has.
By way of analogy, consider that there are people who experienced a traumatic air accident and who have never flown again. I don't blame them. But their experiences don't countervail the statistics showing that flying is safe.
>> US cities are much worse.
> This also is not the case, and it's amazing how propagandized the UK has to be to think it. If you lot were aware of the true standard of life in most of the US you'd riot.
I've lived in London and DC, and DC (at the time at least, 2007-2011) was uncontroversially much more dangerous than London. And of course it's only 6 months ago that the President of the USA declared a public safety emergency in DC ;) You're not wrong about the overall standard or living, but you are wrong about crime and safety.
"Everyone knows" says someone who now lives in Montreal!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46602802
I do appreciate your efforts at digging.
Do you even go here?
> Do you even go here?
Is that authentic vernacular?
In the UK what you are going to need to do going forward is essentially have an official and a non-official presence online. You are also going to need to use the cockroach strategy (at least tech wise), until this stuff gets unpopular enough amongst enough people that there is large push back that can't be ignored.
> The surveillance and predictive systems now being assembled are being designed not only for the current moment, but in preparation for what comes next. Whether in response to renewed austerity, military escalation, or widespread resistance, these tools are positioned to contain unrest before it surfaces. What’s emerging is a model of preemptive policing—structured around behaviour, association, and predicted risk. Individuals are reduced to data profiles, tracked not for what they’ve done but for their statistical proximity to disruption. Suppression is exercised in advance.
That is why they are so keen to backdoor any popular encrypted messaging platform. They can't monitor communications. Unfortunately most people seem to supportive of this. I was quite surprised when my Father (who is a layman) told me he supported this, this is a person that doesn't vote largely for the same reasons that I don't (I think all politicians are awful)..
Additionally. I was listening to someone that engaged at essentially Red Teaming for UK authorities (I forget who it was now). They stated that if you were a dissident, if you kept your activities offline and organise in person the authorities wouldn't be aware of this activity. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds plausible.
What’s unsettling here isn’t any single policy, but the convergence: predictive policing, protest restrictions, and administrative punishments all justified as “risk management.” Even if each tool seems narrow, together they normalize acting on suspicion rather than action, which quietly lowers the bar for dissent.
The UK faces real structural problems with the inflating cost of living regardless of government, roughly halfway attributable to failing the lower-level challenge of continuing to import adequate quantities of diesel at affordable prices and the rest mostly coming from an aging population. Spot diesel has come down from the price spike of covid to approximately 1.3x the 2019 price.
Almost all physical goods have diesel prices contribute to their sticker price in a significant way. The diesel exporting countries are all incrementally increasing their domestic consumption, leaving less for the world market year on year.
The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
Tens of millions of people, held hostage by a clique of crabs in a bucket.
I would say "so diesel uses should be encouraged to transition to electric where feasible", except the government has also dropped the ball on electricity prices and is now looking at increasing taxes on EVs.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
This is spot on, though. I joke that instead of state controlled media we have a media controlled state.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms
It doesn't know what it wants, nor how to prioritise between conflicts from vague pre (and post) election statements. It certainly doesn't want to make the hard compromises that are actually required.
That said...
I wouldn't want the job of trying to balance the books, fix the housing backlog, modernise our energy infrastructure, integrate social and medical care, address social cohesion, manage persistent inequality, improve our global competitiveness etc etc etc
I would, because despite having no idea how to accomplish any of that, I know how to delegate to people who do.
Any one of those goals is probably accomplishable merely via delegation, assuming you can pick the right people (good luck!). To achieve all of them likely isn't. It may well be we cannot have all of them at once. Note that I just grabbed a subset of things that seem relevant, certainly not all of the things the government should care about.
I'm not saying nobody could run this country more effectively. I do strongly suspect the market for that kind of skillset is out of our current price range
Costs are inflating because they have more money than things to invest in. Same thing happened to Spain after the new world was found and exploited.
All that gold and silver just went to paying off foreign debt and inflating local markets.
Same thing is happening because the UK only have the London Financial hub going for it.
In China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity"
I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
Brits already have more prosperity (=> median wages) even after adjusting for purchasing power.
Some stagnation is to be expected from high energy prices and trade disruption (brexit).
British surveillance state tolerance has always been pretty high for Europe, and is typically "sold" to the average citizen as anti-crime.
It depends where you are in the UK.
Almost all the wealth is in the South East of England. Outside of that the country is much poorer.
I drive from Manchester to Dorset once a month to visit my parents. There is a clear line where I notice all the street signs, the service stations, roads etc are better kept. Cars and houses are in better condition/news.
The same is true for China, though; all the wealth is at the urbanized coast, with a somewhat poor and underdeveloped hinterland.
It is going to exist pretty much anywhere. Wealth is going to be concentrated in some areas and not others. So comparing the Median income of the entire country is not representative of the whole.
e.g. Jobs in London (even remote ones) will pay twice as much as jobs in the North West of England.
I do agree that boiling it down to a single comparison is always gonna be reductive, but the median is IMO still the best you can do here, because it ignores outliers completely (on both sides).
From what I can tell the prosperity gap is also large enough that small errors don't really matter; I already looked at urban china vs average UK (systematically favoring China) and the numbers are still not close (something like $30k vs >$40k even after PP adjustment).
> but the median is IMO still the best you can do here, because it ignores outliers completely (on both sides).
Using the Median as far as I am concerned is meaningless as the South/South-East skews everything. It is quite obvious as you drive across the country. You can see it with your own eyes.
I don't really care that much about the comparison with China.
Some brits, most brits are worse off than the average Chinese in all but paper money. Restriced to Han chinese regions; PPP is on par. Overall china has much better social services and growth. Of the two I know which country I'd want to be born into in 2026
What numbers are you referring to? From what I found, median full-time salary in the UK is >40k USD/year, and in urban (!) China it's ~20k USD/y.
Purchasing power adjustment is ~1.5 (in favor of China, obviously), so this should not be close no matter how you slice it.
The difference is that the purpose of government in China is to govern effectively. They dedicate resources to producing leaders who have proven they can govern at lower levels to some degree (you always find that the corruption in China comes from leaders who came up through SOEs or similar). In terms of civil service and province-level leadership, it is just incredibly effective.
In the UK, you have leaders who are incredibly unpopular, they have no real skills, and they spend most of their time pandering to very small groups of people for various reasons. There is no real incentive to do anything relevant to voters, in fact you have seen over the last five years that political engagement has dropped significantly in a way that has generally benefitted incumbents.
To say this another way: the point of the UK system is so that people who are manifestly unfit to govern end up governing, and a small rotating group of special interests are continually pandered to (there is complete blindness to this in the UK, people often assume this is wealthy people when wealthy people are largely ignored...a politics grad working in research for a think tank will have more power in actual government than someone who gives £10m to the governing party).
It is important to note that this is a deal struck for just some ethnic groups of the citizenry. It does not apply fairly across the board to all people under Chinese governments' control so it's not even as good as it sounds for the average Chinese citizen.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Not allowed to be against cheap labour. It makes the capitalists angry.
And some very stupid people just think the opposite of left is Trump - no rational nuanced opinion allowed.
[flagged]
The people who talk pretty get to keep buying nice houses for their kids. It seems like a pretty good deal.
Black Mirror continues to be a 5-7yr leading indicator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror
Orwell predates Black Mirror by decades. 1984 should be a must read for everyone.
I'd argue that makes Black Mirror more prescient.
In the case of Black Mirror, it was a set of studies on the dangers of current and near technologies. That some of those fears are materialising not long after the episodes, is in my opinion more damning than Orwell's fears of the state which didn't really come to pass in the same way, even decades later.
I don't disagree that Nineteen Eighty-Four is essential reading however. ( I'd also add Brave New World to that list ).
We are one renaming cycle away from renaming Department of War to Department of Love.
'Years and years' disturbing as well.
Shocking. I enjoyed Black Mirror from the start but found it a bit on the nose. A Prime Minister fucking a pig? That's a bit much. And before you know it, certain rumours of David Cameron arise.
I think that one PM episode was the only one totally out of whack. The rest were quite on point. There are dozens of episodes deep in the realm of reality.
https://variety.com/lists/black-mirror-best-episodes/
Not a word on Palantir. Is this because of the adept wording by the ministry of justice? I highly doubt they are developing this in a vacuum.
As re reminder, In the UK Palantir holds extensive contracts across defense (multi-billion MoD deals for AI-driven battlefield and intelligence systems) and healthcare (7y £330m+ NHS Data Platform). In France, its involvement is narrower but concentrated on *domestic* intelligence.
I'm aware this is a cultural difference, government betrayal and overreach are hotbutton and mainstay topics in the common culture of the UK and related states (e.g. the US).
It is nevertheless so weird to me that rather than trying to monitor and mitigate the abuses of legal instruments like the ones proposed, people are trying to prevent and abolish things wholesale.
Everything is depicted as a slippery slope to abuse or as an excuse for abuse, and perhaps because people actually believe in it, they do materialize as one too. Presents as a vicious cycle to me, and as if people were disallowing themselves from recovering of it.
I really have to wonder how much of it is the available options always being just two parties in these territories, and the electoral systems supporting that convergence. In such a scheme, I can indeed definitely imagine people being compelled to vote further and further from their own interests and values, and the slippery slope rhetoric being finding a manifestation.
The reason why this is the case in the UK is because we have two different parties and an election, and we have ended up with the same result.
The reason why people think it is a slippery slop is because it is. Government shouldn't have any of these powers. In the UK, it has been proven over many years that this power cannot be wielded effectively by people working for government or oversight provided by elected officials.
As an example, the OSA...no-one needs this. You may not be aware but there is a massive issue with parenting in the UK. Children are turning up to school at 4 years old unable to communicate with adults (with no learning difficulties) or use the toilet. There is a very strong belief amongst civil servants (not ministers, they are basically irrelevant) that the state must step in to perform parenting functions. Does this sound like a good idea? This is the justification in many of these areas, Ofcom use to be a small agency that regulated what commercials could run on TV, it is now grown into Newspeak regulator...this isn't over 20 years, this has happened within the last three years.
People are seemingly very unhappy with the status quo, but also even unhappier when the Government tries to legislate around real issues. For example, people in hacker news seem to bring up grooming rape gangs specifically when talking about "Diversity" in the UK as a cudgel when the UK tries to introduce safety laws.
Meanwhile some of the most prolific child abusers are being sent to jail (who happened to be young 20s and white) who were only enabled to abuse hundreds of young people over a matter of months due to online platforms.
The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
Do I want the laws? No. But other people have ruined it, and now we no longer live in a high trust society. I certainly want something that will try to lower the abuse women and children face from the Internet (and men).
I don't understand how comments like yours fundamentally misunderstand both complaints.
Regarding the Rape gangs. The complaint is "People migrated to the country and committed heinous crimes, the local authorities tried to cover it up". Therefore they want these people removed (in some cases they have not been deported) and be more picky about who is allowed to migrate. They also want the people involved in the cover up to face some sort of punishment.
They mention it because they believe it shows the establishments hypocrisy. I don't understand why you and others don't understand this.
> The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
The problem is that the "think of the children" arguments are a tried and tested way of deflecting criticism when it comes to any argument about protecting privacy.
People aren't complaining about genuine attempts to catch online predators.
They are complaining about the fact that they have to put to put in their ID to go to Pornhub to watch some chick in her early 20s diddle herself.
Here is a good book on how pre-crime society is created, who is driving more "management" and who benefits
https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
God bless Managed Democracy.
I'm very confused by this, on many fronts.
I don't really know why the government is doing it. It's not for grand headline reasons, as it's all pretty quiet, for this and for prior changes.
I also really don't think the UK is in the grips of some kind of authoritarian nightmare. If anything, my experience is that it's impossible to convince the police to do anything. These days, surveillance state or not, when your car or phone get stolen, the police write you a crime number to take to the insurers and consider their job done. Even if it's all done for nefarious reasons, this would be an easy sidekick to running a surveillance state that earns the state some cash, and every autocrat likes money. The UK democracy is flawed in many ways, but I really don't think a spy state is currently the problem.
So... Why?
In my view a corrupt government tends to also be less effective at basic governance while looking out more for the government. Hence police don't pursue thieves but will arrest people for twitter/x posts.
Add in things like suspending the right to jury trial for some crimes because "its taking too long" shows how ineptitude in governance can overlap with government overreach.
Day by day these things sound more like Sci-Fi series announcments.
[dead]
UK dystopia: accelerating (Precrime)
EU dystopia: accelerating (Chat Control)
US dystopia: probably accelerating?
What a time to be alive!
> US dystopia: probably accelerating?
Yeah, absolutely no indicators whatsoever we can go off of right now.
Isn't Minority Report a documentary about why this doesn't work?
What do you mean by "doesn't work"?
Doesn't work to prevent crime? Or doesn't work too suppress dissent?
It's been a while since I watched it, but doesn't it falsely imprison people because they disregarded some of the data that went contrary to other data?
There are 3 Precogs in the film, but in reality the female one is the most powerful and the twins seem to only function as amplifiers. It's revealed that there is sometimes/often a disagreement between their visions and that they do a 2/3 selection or something like that and discard the disagreeing vision (the 'minority report'). I believe this is what happened to the main character when he is framed, the stronger female's dissenting vision is ignored in favor of the two amplifiers. In the film it is ambiguous if he even commits the murder at all, the guy he kills was paid to die and more or less forces him to kill him in the struggle.
There's also the echos of visions that occur which is how the villain manages to get away with a murder, he uses his inside knowledge to copy cat another murder method which allows him to have it written off as an echo.
The wilder question in the movie is how the precogs are randomly created mutations in response to the mother taking a weird street drug during pregnancy. They'd have to dose pregnant women and hope they gave birth to more mutants if they ever want to replace the set they have, and I believe they're planning to roll it out nationwide. But given how crappy the precogs' lives seem to be maybe that is just a cost they consider worth paying.
I don't know if this is a joke, but Minority Report was a fictional movie.
I mean technically a lot of countries already have laws against conspiracy to murder, without doing the actual murder bit. And we are broadly ok with this because it makes a lot of sense.
That generally still takes the person taking some sort of action in furtherance of that plan, not just thinking it.
Yeah because prosecution requires evidence. Not because we don't agree with the principal.
I feel like "conspiracy to murder" means "we found a plan of you murdering someone and a baseball bat in your car" rather than "The algorithm has decided you are evil"
I think Orwell was prescient and attuned to this sort of thinking in England at his time. Perhaps, it never really went away? e.g.: "crimestop"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/725596-crimestop-means-the-...
It isn't precrime or "dissent management" that is the problem, but the engineering of behavior and thought in society where such concepts are acceptable to people.
I don't think we can discuss it in detail here, but with this , chat control, and all sorts of other controversial laws, you'll notice the people of the country actually support that stuff. There is an interesting conversation there about democracy, and the priority of the working class people. Naturally, a person living paycheck-to-paycheck and fighting for healthcare and keeping their job (or getting one) does not care about this stuff. So who does? Not the ruling class. A lot of people (including on HN) who think this stuff is important (rightfully) are not poor people, perhaps middle-class?
Is democracy itself something that can survive, if it is left entirely up to popular vote? Power has gravity, it always wants more. Ideally, there would be institutions that are democratically established and managed that would be trusted to safeguard the people's interests. In the US, there are executive department agencies for example like the FCC, FTC, FDA and more, but they are subject to those in power who are elected by the people.
My "food for thought" here is that similar to supreme courts, there needs to be a regulatory and oversight branch of the government, whose chiefs are apolitical (like actually, not like the US supreme court), well compensated, long-tenured (but not lifetime, more like 20 years), and appointed by confirmation of all other branches of government.
We need to address the problem of power, influence to wield power and incentives for those entrusted with power to act in good faith, but also with good competence. The last part is important, because I have no doubt, a lot of the politicians that come up with this Orwellian nonsense have good intentions, the outcome they seek are noble, just not the means. they just happen to be incompetent when it comes to the subject matter.
This doesn't work. The current POTUS is clearly trying to politicize the chair of the federal reserve who is independent and for his sociopathic fanbase it is working a treat, they do not even understand that Powell is not the sole decision maker of the interest rates
He is able to do that and a whole lot more because the regulators, attorney general, ombudsmans,etc.. report to him. it's a vulnerability in the structure of the US government he's exploiting. Even if he leaves peacefully, and a decent administration comes along, it will only be temporary, he's shown others what can be abused. What maddens me is not him, someone like that has been inevitable. It isn't even his opposition's lack of competence. No one talked about this stuff, constitutional amendments, curbing the executive power, passing laws to clarify limits of powers,etc.. even in the previous admin. No one is talking about now, and they won't even after this one leaves. They don't care, nobody does. They're all just sitting in the house and complaining about the arsonist burning it down.
Even as he's dismantling nato or trying to invade greenland, do you think it's difficult to get a handful of republicans to support a bipartisan law to forbid that? They're just spectators, the lawmakers. The judges are scared sh*#!less, and powerless. Everyone is hoping that problem goes away, or at best they only care about the latest and immediate issue.
Public money gets spent on the advice of AI systems and consultancies.
Costs overrun, benefits are unclear, and it quietly disappears.
Those responsible resurface later at consultancies, selling the same ideas elsewhere.
who chooses who chooses who watches the watchers ?
They all believe to be morally infallible. I don't think they would even be able to function as politicians without such cognitive dissonance.
Corporate. Google, Meta, TikTok. All governmental entities or tied to.
What's the harm if your data is "lost" along the way. /s
Orwell worked in Spain for about a year, 1936-37, his work on BBC during WWII was twice as long.
In my opinion, 1984 was shaped by his work in Britain.
And the brilliant MI6 / BBC propaganda made it as if 1984 were about the Soviet Union :)
As if it was not enough that the author himself put it in Britain.
If you want Soviet Style distopia, better read "We" from Zamyatin.
just think if the prior election went the other way in the US, this is where the us would be right now
Precrime in Minority report results in "Would-be killers are placed in an electrically induced coma and held in a panopticon-like prison facility." Obviously dystopian.
What they are doing in the UK is more chatting to people involved in gangs and the like to talk them out of screwing up their lives. Kind of common sense.
This has led to "London’s lowest murder rate in more than a decade" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/why-londons-...
There was quite an interesting interview with Sadiq Khan about it yesterday https://youtu.be/SOhIxmYiZRg?t=202 (starting at the crime bit).
The MAGA types love to go on about Khan, who is a lefty Pakistani origin muslim, as being the downfall of London but the reality is kind of different. (typed in central London).
I hope they name it Pickles
A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
Notably, stories on HN about the very severe repression on civil liberties in the US (get shot in the face for protesting about ICE...) get flagged for closure, but putting the boot into the UK for much more wishy-washy issues like this seem to be fair game.
I'm not saying there aren't genuine issues with civil liberties (for example, things like the Online Safety Act are ridiculous) but they are magnified out of all proportion by the US media / social media disinformation megaphone.
This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
> A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
> This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
British Anarchism isn't the American Right?
Concern for free speech traditionally cuts across the left-right divide, as it should. Sadly, there's been a greater erosion of it on the left than the right in recent years, despite the absolute centrality of free speech rights to key progressive causes: abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights, etc. At the same time that the left got softer on free speech, the right had a series of 'are we being shadow-banned?' scandals, which increased the importance of free speech to the right.
Twenty years ago the position was roughly reversed with the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act, 'free speech zones', etc. Arguably, that same reversal might be happening now with Gaza, ICE etc.
In my ideal world, we all love free speech, but in the real world, it seems to zig zag across the spectrum to the people not currently in power. I suppose an understandable reflection of its value in standing up to power.
100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
It feels pretty awful to have such a one-sided bias in the media of the UK getting clowned on for civil liberties, I have noticed so much more astroturfing on reddit about these issues with made-up ragebait lies.
There are absolutely issues with the police focusing more on "crime online" such as people posting or saying offensive things, I do think that saying something outright offensive to the benefit of nobody is a net bad for society but instead of punishing say British people for "wrong think" I think the police force should be really investigating where this kind of stuff comes from, Foreign influence bot farms ect and enact legal removal of protection to ensure that people when they say such online in a public manner are actually people
Yup… there's a very strong right wing streak in parts of the HN audience
Those with opposing views also tend to find themselves rate limited - dropped two comments on this story and now being told I'm posting too fast (even after going away for 60 mins)
This is a thousand times as concerning in the context of London than in the context of Baltimore. It addresses a concern that doesn't exist for the UK public, in a way that appears intended to oppress from the start, against a backdrop of arresting thousands of pensioners for disagreeing about a genocide.
The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group.
A group that broke a police officers back with sledge hammers, committed multiple acts of vandalism against our military, and have tons of links to Hamas
They can oppose Israel action in Palestine, they just can’t support terrorists
De facto, arresting 80 year old women for holding signs is always going to look authoritarian. They're not exactly the type to strap on a vest but we have to pretend we dont know what a terrorist looks like.
They are the type to sledgehammer police officers though apparently
I find that physically unlikely.
Well we know they support the people that do
Then why did you say 80-year old women were "the type to sledgehammer police officers though apparently" and then immediate shift the goalposts? Further, the statement "The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group" is patently false; the UK government has not limited its arrests for social media posts to those expressing support for Hamas. You are not engaging in good faith discussion.
You know Palestine Action are a proscribed group right?
"The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group."
Why are you claiming that members of Palestine Action are the only people being arrested in the UK for speech? That is not true. Low-effort, bad-faith trolling contributes nothing to the discussion.
https://archive.ph/20250906150110/https://www.telegraph.co.u...
This is a jury trial in progress, there are rules against prejudicing such. Genuinely interested readers can read a trial report here: https://realmedia.press/the-filton-trial-4/
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West.
Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
> As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
I am a Brit and I object to a lot of the expansion of powers that have happened in Britain during successive governments since the "War on Terror" started which was pretty might right after 9/11. I would like to see much of this legislation repealed. However that is unlikely to happen.
> The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist
Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
As for sensationalist, possibly. But they seem to highlight genuine concerns that have been raised by other organisations.
> The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
All you are doing in this speil is repeating talking points found on the news sites. I find this sort of stuff tiresome to read. I don't care about what happens in the US generally. It is literally on the other side of an ocean. I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
> Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
> I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
> I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
Yet you were engaging in your own brand of it by repeating US news output, which quite honestly is always sensationalist.
Look I didn't like seeing that footage where the woman got shot.But it isn't relevant to what happening in the UK.
> 'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
I understand this. I've read Anarchist literature. I only care whether the analysis has any benefit. Not who produces it.
> You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
Good. It needs to be totally abolished though.
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that you're a Brit and that your method of drawing superficial conclusions about the other participants is sound. Perhaps we are both bots here.
Instead of attacking the other participants for not being as enlightened as you may be and the source of the information, a more appreciated approach would've been to address the substance of the article.
For example, what are some "intelligence agencies and police networks in the West" that are routinely performing those kind of programmes, and why should we conclude that all of them are doing that? Are those programmes identical to the UK's "homicide prediction project", as it was originally called? Are there better legal frameworks for such programmes in other countries (say, a Constitution), or at least more democratic oversight than in the UK? Perhaps some sources that document such a conclusion would help.
You speak of lack of perspective from the commenters here, but haven't yet provided an informed one either.
> The UK is far more free than the US
Trump and his oligarchs aside, why do you believe that the UK is "far more free" than the US? And how exactly do you define that freedom? I'm no big fan of the US in general (mainly due to their neoliberal and religious culture), but to deny that they've enjoyed a variety of freedoms would be provably wrong. Different organisations measure these differently and the UK is generally not "far more free" in that sense, only marginally so - again, it depends on the frameworks employed. [0] [1]
If the definition of freedom includes democratic accountability + equal political power + civil liberties in practice: neither country is doing that great; the UK's unelected Lords/sovereignty/executive dominance and First Past the Post voting system are undeniable flaws - many if not most European countries don't have that. It's also entirely true that US has deeper structural distortions (malapportionment + Electoral College + gerrymandering + life-tenured apex judiciary).
Overall, the UK tends to score higher on broad civil-liberty/democracy assessments, but not by as far as you seem to imply. And judging by the recent developments, one wouldn't be entirely wrong to conclude that these freedoms are actively being eroded (which is what the article says). Let's not forget the deep drive of successive governments to privatise key public services which objectively gave the UK an advantage in terms of freedoms compared to US - for example universal healthcare, which works as a social safety net and effectively offering higher practical freedom of life choices for most citizens.
> levels of inequality
The UK has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. [2]
"OECD figures suggest that the UK has among the highest levels of income inequality in the European Union (as measured by the Gini coefficient), although income inequality is slightly lower than in the United States." [3] "The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries." [4]
"The key findings are that the UK has high levels of income inequality compared with similar developed economies, with a (pre-pandemic) Gini coefficient that is the second highest in the G7 (after the US), and is more unequal than all the countries in the EU other than Lithuania and Latvia." [5]
[0] https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=all&year=2025
[1] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/United-Kingdom/liberal_demo...
[2] https://www.understandingglasgow.com/glasgow-indicators/econ...
[3] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/27/uk-spends...
[5] https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Tre...
Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.
Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.
Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:
France: 31.8 Germany: 32.4 UK: 32.4 USA: 41.4
(https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI)
By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.
I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).
Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.
You make some good points. And thanks for taking the time to provide some sources and more nuance. I believe that overall we agree on the main points.
Re: the source (your suspicion is warranted but only marginally) - I've read numerous articles on freedomnews.org.uk over the years that were well-written, well-argued, and supported by research, at least as much as it can be expected from a magazine. It's not a scientific journal, they don't don't have a strict set of editorial guidelines (the current one is rather informal albeit still informed and focused [0]), and the article was published under the Comment section as an opinion piece.
That said, the publication has some serious history behind it; it started in 1886 by volunteers [1][2], it's arguably the longest running left periodical in Britain [9], and it's run as a cooperative / controlled by its volunteers - no small feat. It's the oldest anarchist press in the UK (and the English speaking world) and still runs the largest anarchist bookshop (one of the few in the world). [3] During the WW2 the paper played a role in disseminating the real but dismissed opposition against the war which led to a major free-speech prosecution case [10][11]. Because of its longevity it has inevitably documented a good chunk of Britain's late history, albeit from a perspective that was deeply hated by the government, the monarchy, and the industrialists [12]. (I personally see this as a positive rather than a reason to mistrust it.) Their bookshop was destroyed in an air raid in 1941 along with (critically) the remaining back-catalogue of early Freedom Press pamphlets that had been preserved up to that point [2]; it has also survived a bombing by a British neo-fascist group in 1993 and an arson attack in 2013 [13][14]. They are an institution.
Although not exactly a standard-defining magazine - they couldn't be anyway considering the philosophy they sport, they're entirely transparent about the radical perspective they bring to the table, and they're an independent media organisation funded by readers. We have to consider that fact that the majority of mainstream media players claim impartiality but they often instruct their journalists not to cross various (journalistic and non-journalistic) lines, censor critical voices, or are simply not transparent about the fact that, as businesses, they can't afford to be completely impartial if that upsets their clients (advertisers) or their owners. Another view point is at the very least welcome, even if it's not along the same lines.
I'm not looking to convince you that you should read it but I believe that you may change your opinion of it as an entirely untrusted source once I lay out a few more things.
Societies change through all kinds of contributions and actions, most of which remain unseen or unknown. A good number of famous thinkers have contributed to the magazine during its long life, many of which that we quote today as clear-minded, coherent social critics or analysts. Whether we like them or not is less relevant, what matters is that they were influent and their actions and writings have directly influenced or contributed to the social reality of today. To put it differently, FN is one of those semi-obscure magazines that has influenced the influencers.
* Peter Kropotkin (he founded Freedom News) - later influenced Aldous Huxley, Murray Bookchin, Kirkpatrick Sale, Henry Mintzberg [4][8], Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin [5]. The idea of mutualism comes from him and it's one of the most important correctives to the "all competition" misunderstanding. [6][7]
* William Morris, Michael Tippett, T. S. Eliot, Benjamin Britten [1][2]
* George Bernard Shaw, Max Nettlau [8]
* Herbert Read, Alex Comfort, Colin Ward [9]
* Emma Goldman, George Orwell, Ethel Mannin [14]
A good number of specialists, thinkers, professors, and writers still contribute to the magazine: Dr Chrys Papaioannou, Antti Rautiainen, Carlos Taibo, Owen Clayton, Spencer Beswick, John P. Clark etc.
[0] https://libcom.org/article/news-report-writing-guide
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
[2] https://freedomnews.org.uk/freedom-press-history/ & https://freedompress.org.uk/history/
[3] https://freedomnews.org.uk/about/
[4] https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/peter-kropotkin%25E...
[5] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joe-peabody-peter-kr...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(biology)
[7] https://daily.jstor.org/peter-kropotkin-the-prince-of-mutual...
[8] https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/freedom-press-arc...
[9] https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/activism-solidarity/freed...
[10] https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-court-england-april-19...
[11] https://freedomnews.org.uk/2021/04/17/freedom-press-and-the-...
[12] https://freedomnews.org.uk/2017/05/25/towards-a-timeline-of-...
[13] https://freedomnews.org.uk/2013/02/01/freedom-firebombed/
[14] https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/1229-london-anar...
Thanks too for the detailed reply. You've made a good case and persuaded me to take a closer look at their reporting in the future!
I wonder how many people are actually from the UK on these threads. There is always comments about "diversity" and "grooming rape gangs" and how everything labour do is bad, or about how the UK is an oppressive regime or somehow fundamentally anti-freedom. This always reads like fear mongering / Russian psy-ops propaganda to me.
I have many bones to pick with the UK government but a large number of people sprinting to these talking points at every chance they get is highly suspicious to me.
I'm also surprised by the tone of this thread. HN discussions usually involve more nuanced debate, but many comments here are hitting very specific talking point. Comparisons to China, sarcastic references to 'diversity,' grooming gangs, that I more commonly see in certain Reddit communities rather than in typical HN discussions about tech policy or civil liberties.
There are legitimate concerns about UK surveillance, protest policing, and speech regulations worth discussing. But when the same cluster of talking points appears with this particular framing, it makes me wonder about the makeup of who's participating in this thread versus other HN discussions.
[flagged]
"We detected that you are about to commit a crime. Here is provisional 2-years sentence shall you decide to go ahead with the plans. It includes free single room, 3 meals a day, gym, library, daily walks and company of people like yourself. You will also receive counselling and you could take up a free course to advance your skills in desired field and post-release support for a year."
This is the end result of Finland annexing the UK, lol
I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc.
Up until this point it was mostly that they would gladly fuck the other countries up but treated their own people way better than the other camp. But this difference is disappearing.
Of course there is always North Korea and other totally fucked up regimes they could use to compare and look white and fluffy
Iran used machine guns in protesters
China used tanks against students
Russia still has gulags for people who criticise the government
You’re incredibly naive if you think they’re the same as us
While you have a point, you are looking at this the wrong way.
20 years ago if you had told someone you needed to get a face scan or upload your ID to view certain websites or that you might get your messages and emails scanned in case you send something that the government deems suspicious to someone else, people would have laughed at you.
Yet as we are seeing currently this is what is happening slowly but surely.
Yes, the UK government is not gunning down protesters in the street but can you say with certainty that the screws are not being tightened and that the so called western values of freedom of speech are not being eroded systematically year after year under the pretense of safety?
It seems to me that every western government is looking at what China and Russia are doing and instead of staying true to their values, they are actually trying to figure out how to roll out the same exact measures in the west.
Will we see Gulags in the west make a comeback? Most likely not but in terms of freedom of speech and online privacy rights, we are seeing clearly a rollback and if we do nothing to stop it, we will end up like China with governments looking at everything we say and write on our phone and computer and that is unacceptable especially when these measures are cowardly disguised as 'safety" measures.
> 20 years ago if you had told someone … you might get your messages and emails scanned in case you send something that the government deems suspicious to someone else, people would have laughed at you.
20 years ago we already knew the US government was watching everything.
You haven’t been paying attention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
>"You’re incredibly naive if you think they’re the same as us"
And you are "incredibly" inattentive (considering the best case). I did not say they're "the same as us", I said they're heading there. Depending on what particular country we are talking about mileage can vary.
> I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc.
When arbitrary extrajudicial killings happen at some scale on a regular basis?
I heard Boeing whistleblowers died unexpectedly.
Two prominent Boeing whistleblowers, John Barnett (died March 2024) and Joshua Dean (died April 2024), have died in recent times, raising significant concerns about retaliation and safety at the aerospace giant; Barnett died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after battling Boeing in a retaliation lawsuit, while Dean died from a sudden infection after raising quality concerns, with his family suspecting foul play despite official rulings. Barnett's death was ruled a suicide, though his family's wrongful death suit claims Boeing's harassment caused his distress, while Dean's death followed rapid illness, with his family also alleging misconduct by his employer, Spirit Aerosystems, and Boeing.
Also Suchir Balaji. And if you’re willing to go back further, Michael Hastings and Gary Webb.
But that’s all the US. For the UK you need Gareth Williams, the GHCQ analyst who was found dead inside a padlocked duffel bag.
Another suspicious death was David Kelly, who was involved in weapons inspections in Iraq and disputed the casus belli for the Iraq war.
think its important to leave some context here:
As far as it is known, Kelly walked a mile (1.6 km) from his house to Harrowdown Hill. It appears he ingested up to 29 tablets of co-proxamol, an analgesic drug; he also cut his left wrist with a pruning knife he had owned since his youth, severing his ulnar artery. Forensic analysis established that neither the knife nor the blister packs showed Kelly's fingerprints on their surfaces [0].
and a letter to the editor:
As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide.
Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood.
The ambulance team reported that the quantity of blood at the scene was minimal and surprisingly small. It is extremely difficult to lose significant amounts of blood at a pressure below 50-60 systolic in a subject who is compensating by vasoconstricting. To have died from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood - it is unlikely that he would have lost more than a pint.
Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Although levels of Co-Proxamol in the blood were higher than therapeutic levels, Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
We dispute that Dr Kelly could have died from haemorrhage or from Co-Proxamol ingestion or from both. The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, has spoken recently of resuming the inquest into his death. If it re-opens, as in our opinion it should, a clear need exists to scrutinise more closely Dr Hunt's conclusions as to the cause of death.
David Halpin - Specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery C Stephen Frost - Specialist in diagnostic radiology Searle Sennett [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)#D... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2004/jan/27/guardian...
> For the UK you need Gareth Williams, the GHCQ analyst who was found dead inside a padlocked duffel bag.
And whose death was "probably an accident" according to the Met Police...
'Moral ground' was the product of a controlled media environment.
Dobleplusgood.
People don't like to admit it, but JD Vance was right about Europe. And the UK is up there with the worst of us. I am European.
where is my minority report?
[dead]
[flagged]
Between arresting grannies for saying they support Palestinian Action and using armed officers to apprehend comedy writers I doubt they'll have the time.
That’s just the way “freedom news” is framing it.
Social movements don’t just happen from grassroots these days. They’re seeded by foreign states. A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting. If you don’t provide an id you get a limited number of views.
And I don’t see anything wrong with a preventative system in principle, we should be able to join up social services information with policing, because we have had cases where a mass murderer has been known to multiple services.
Edit: probably not ids but a token that verifies my nationality would be enough.
> A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting
It’s strange times when even the comments on posts about government overreach are calling for more government overreach and limitations on speech and privacy.
Do you really want to have to verify your ID to post anything online, including HN?
And I am willing to bet that on top of the chilling effect on regular people, it will only act as an inconvenience for the bad actors as they will find ways to circumvent it. Controlling the online discourse is far too valuable, they are not going to just shrug and give up because the government puts up a barrier.
What chilling effect? Have you seen what people post on facebook under their own name.
Meet selection bias. Self-censorship is very common.
Yeah it might be just be a verified token to say I’m citizen of the country. Doesn’t have to be my actual id. The OSA is a crappy implementation.