The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
freedomnews.org.uk
freedomnews.org.uk
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I've come across various sources that lean center-left, note, CENTER-left, saying this. I think there might be something to it.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Also not every Reform voter would vote Conservative if Reform didn't exist.
I am sure many green voters felt the same way for many years and now they stand a decent chance of getting many seats!
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).
† 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.
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...
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.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-sc...
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Genuinely, how? Give me the best case scenario.
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.
Which is exactly why any answer I give you would be unsatisfactory.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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-...
If you believe the most relevant political division in the UK is Labour vs Tory, then it does all seem a bit random.
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
* Pro the royal family since it is chartered by them.
* Against Scottish independence since it would lose 10% of its funding.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 can't imagine it's paid work because what would be the point? It's not like he is influencing anyone's opinions.
This is from 2024
https://www.thefire.org/news/how-milwaukee-and-chicago-circu...
> 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
If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
I wouldn't say backtracked. I acknowledged a correction. The pont still stands, people are being arrested and/or intimidated by police for expressing a non-hatespeech, non-violent opinion.
> I'm pointing out that your "People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy'" might be on similarly shaky ground.
I gave a source elsewhere in this thread.
> If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
It's not tripe, and if you want to attempt to go ahead and debunk it. I was wrong about the arrest for the blank sign as admitted, I'm not wrong about people being arrested for holding up signs expressing non-hatespeech, non-violent opinions, for which sources are abundant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.”
[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...
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.
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.
Just because a fascist and a communist agree that eating shit is bad, doesn't mean that eating shit is a good idea.
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.
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.
That... speaks volumes of the citizens of the said country.
(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 woman who was shot was a democrat without any guns, 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.
People in the US get killed at a higher rate than all European countries by vehicles.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
Obviously everyone saying the UK isn't a utopia is a Russian bot, and we should be censoring them.
Is that authentic vernacular?
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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.
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.
(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.
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.
I do appreciate your efforts at digging.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not definitive, but certainly a possible explanation.
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.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.
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).
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”.
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.
- 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.
[0] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/of-cou...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_monarchy_of_the...
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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'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
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.
I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
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.
Purchasing power adjustment is ~1.5 (in favor of China, obviously), so this should not be close no matter how you slice it.
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.
e.g. Jobs in London (even remote ones) will pay twice as much as jobs in the North West of England.
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).
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.
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).
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 ).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
God bless Managed Democracy.
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?
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.
EU dystopia: accelerating (Chat Control)
US dystopia: probably accelerating?
What a time to be alive!
Yeah, absolutely no indicators whatsoever we can go off of right now.
Doesn't work to prevent crime? Or doesn't work too suppress dissent?
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.
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.
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.
Costs overrun, benefits are unclear, and it quietly disappears.
Those responsible resurface later at consultancies, selling the same ideas elsewhere.
What's the harm if your data is "lost" along the way. /s
In my opinion, 1984 was shaped by his work in Britain.
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.
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).
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)
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
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 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.
Not a real one. A traitor. You will get what you deserve.
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
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...
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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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.
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
When arbitrary extrajudicial killings happen at some scale on a regular basis?
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.
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.
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...
And whose death was "probably an accident" according to the Met Police...
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
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 we already knew the US government was watching everything.
You haven’t been paying attention.
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.
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.
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?