In the name of keeping us safe they're making us powerless and helpless before the powerful
However the country had no formal free speech guarantee until the Human Rights Act 1998. The public and press retain an authoritarian streak; the Tory press are generally quite happy to support Internet censorship because it won't affect them and in fact affects their competition.
The UK has a lot of aspects which are "authoritarian on paper, liberal in practice, don't worry about the lack of formal guarantees, we don't do that here because we're British". Until we do do that here and nobody is held accountable.
> How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.
> I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to [the politicians asking for more power]. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
The situation is always more complex, but still, had "child abuse" to that list and it fits almost too perfectly.
At the end of the day, we demand solutions, and when the leadership says "for that I need more power" we're all too eager to give it to them. Because we don't really care, we're complacent, we just don't want to be interrupted in our relatively pleasant little lives so we agree to give them whatever they say they need to stop it. Of course, it doesn't actually stop the bad things from happening, but little by little it erodes our control and freedom, and we are not getting them back.
For context the government is also proposing:
- Voter ID for voter disenfranchisement (Elections Bill)
- To rig elections in favour of the Conservatives and stifle opposition (Elections Bill)
- All but banning protests (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill)
There is multi-pronged attack underway which is in no way hyperbole.
http://www.eoni.org.uk/Electoral-Identity-Card/Electoral-Ide...
And that this could potentially unfairly affect the results of elections, which is exactly the problem that voter ID is supposed to prevent
Isn't this a chicken and egg problem? Without voter ID we don't know whether fraud has taken place or not.
> there are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have the right to vote but cannot get ID
That is a wider problem that should be fixed. Agreed that in the current state it would cause friction for people to vote.
No, they keep a track of who has turned up to vote, if you are putting extra votes in or voting in someone else's name then either the number of votes and number of voters wont tally or you'll start seeing a significant number of people who have voted twice, once from the genuine voter and once the person who was fraudulently voting in someone else's name.
But I'm more inclined to suspect postal fraud. There was talk of students voting twice but whether that was a big thing is unknown. But clearly there has been some level of election fraud going on.
I was once encouraged by a canvasser to vote in my home town and where I was studying because 'they'll never know'.
The politics is odd; voters don't want mandatory ID cards, but they seem comfortable with legally requiring ID to rent or buy a house, have a job, have a bank account, and now voting.
I will not engage in a debate on voter id right now because of this (but thanks for attacking the weakest part of my post, using a throwaway :)