There seems to be a prevalent notion within UK establishment circles, "we are being attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works. You see used for example to defend the supposed impartiality of the BBC.
The BBC has never been impartial to internal concerns - domestic politics in particular. Leveson Inquiry recommendations not being implemented is the tip of the iceberg in relation to the extent of client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
The problem isn’t the balance, it’s the police state. I don’t want an authoritarian Left government any more than I want an authoritarian Right or Center government.
One thing that is often missed in this narrative is that the UK has a voting system which was explicitly designed to counteract this issue reaching definitive results with the minimum amount of consensus.
I agree with you but I think this idea of being "fair" is something that is said but no-one actually believes in. Most recent government is one of the most extreme examples of this: do things that annoys everyone, say you are just being "fair" because everyone is annoyed...it doesn't make sense.
To say this another way, there is genuinely an easier option: stop doing things that people do not want.
The obvious implication is that "balance" between freedom and surveillance just moves things away from freedom.
Of course, on the note of being attacked from "both" sides, there are often more than two sides to a story. Also, not every side has to be, or maybe even should be, considered with equal weight.
Yeah, a lot of this is just .. well, I hesitate to use the over used phrase "deep state", but a lot of it is the work of people in the security institutions who "advise" the government, rather than the changing cast of the thin democratic bit on the front. There's long been authoritarianism in response to the fear of terrorism, from the IRA onwards. Then there's things like the "spycops" scandal, which make you wonder whether certain protest groups are deliberately engaging in really unpopular stunts in order to facilitate a crackdown.
The British public are in an odd place on this. There's a lot of "folk libertarianism", but that mostly consists of not having ID cards, while at the same time supporting all sorts of crackdowns on protest as soon as it's mildly inconvenient.
And then there's immigration. As in the US, it's a magic bullet for discourse that allows any amount of authoritarianism (or headshots to soccer moms) as long as you promise it will be used against immigrants.
I don't agree. The British State has been going in this direction ever since Blair's government and probably before that. I don't remember Blair's government being that unpopular.
New labour really laid the groundwork for alot of the orwellian laws that are in place now. Its a shame nobody who has been elected since sought to roll them back...
Man, its like everyone is blind to the current state of things.
Here is the truth:
* Everyone with above sentiment always votes for anyone libertarian, which is necessarily conservative, and all conservatives are pretty much liars.
* These same conservatives that champion against government overreach, for law and order, and for personal freedoms do the exact opposite once they get into office. Nor do they give a shit about the law.
So yea, the whole libertarian ideology is pretty much dead. Its pretty obvious that the best course of action is to sacrifice personal freedoms and elect a government that can keep a tight rein over the populace and keep things like Nazi ideology from spreading.
It's not only happening in the UK. It's happening across the entire western world except for America. Australia, Canada and European countries have also been implementing retroactive speech laws, mass debanking, imprisonment for political speech and so on. The UK gets a lot of attention because it's historically been a fairly free country, and because it's English speaking.
The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
(to the extent that armed revolution worked in the UK, the IRA were helped only slightly by US-backed supplies of Armalite rifles, and much more by a large supply of Libyan high explosives. Guns are a much less effective political weapon than the car or truck or hotel bomb)
> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest.
Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how they do prosecute noncrime crimes such as 'hate speech').
Here, for comparison, is a paragraph from an essay by Konstantin Kisin:
> A month earlier, I was walking through a posh part of London when I saw a young man in a balaclava snatch a bag from a tourist. When I told people about what I saw at various meetings, most people were surprised that I was surprised. Phone thefts, muggings and all kinds of petty crime are now considered normal and routine.
Anecdote is not data. It is both true that the police absolutely suck at handling petty crime, and the Met have a fairly terrible reputation; and that more serious violent crime is much, much less of a problem in London than it used to be (and less than US cities, of course).
This is a situation where the data may not be capturing the reality, though.
An increasingly common tactic for decreasing crime statistics is to reduce reporting of crimes. The more difficult you make it to report a crime, the better the crime numbers look.
In one city I’m familiar with, it became so well known that reporting small crimes was a futile endeavor that people just gave up. It was common knowledge that you don’t bother calling the police unless it was a major crime. Not surprisingly, the crime statistics started to look better.
So far, I have never seen any article or even comment online explain explicitly why this is the case.
Almost everyone can see quite visibly that crime is not decreasing but then you have people with a clear political and financial motive saying: the stats, you are just a loon or (even worse) someone who might not be from London.
If you read the best source on this, hospital admissions, you will see that ~95% of the drop in "violent crime" is due to decreases in alcohol consumption. That is it. Ex this impact and in relative terms, violent crime in cities has been increasing significantly. And violent crime is supposed to be the rare subset of crime when, obviously, other categories of crime are generally increasing.
Btw, the group that publishes this data is also (strangely) unwilling to make this known and, afaik, do not include this information in press releases.
The other factor is that the composition of London's population has naturally changed over the last ten years. As London has continued to dominate economically, the poor have been emptied out from certain areas contributing greatly to a reduction in crime stats (and, unfortunately, an increase elsewhere in the country). For example, Camden has seen a huge reduction in violent crime, is this a surprise? If you look at areas that have stayed the same, crime has got worse (again, in relative terms/ex the above factors, crime in the UK is falling in many areas and rising in others).
I will say this another way: data is not collected fairly or accurately. There are massive political and financial incentives against accurate data. In London, this has always been the case because it is not possible to win elections in some areas in London with high crime if you admit that crime is high in those areas...you have to blame society. Twenty years ago, you had the same thing: city has never been safer, politicians doing so well, Met doing so well...once you have seen this a few times, you should start to wonder whether it is true...particularly as the current line is that crime was rampant twenty years ago...when it obviously wasn't. Anecdotes will always tend to represent the reality better than data which is produced for political purposes (and I think people know this, the stats exist in part so that people can hop online and say that everyone is doing a great job, you see the same thing online with central government...it is very weird).
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.
Sure; but the article's premise is that street crime is falling (and as a result, the police, which, presumably, has more free time on their hands, can focus on other things). Assuming petty crime is street crime, and seeing that you agree that the police suck at it, is the article's premise correct?
You know how the NHS reduced waiting lists a few years back? If you had waiting lists of say 100 for a surgery, they basically said - the list is maximum 15 people, after that it's whoever books first who gets the surgery. So basically you had to be lucky and be the number 15 on the list once a spot was open.
But! Magically NHS waiting lists got shorter! The government could say this on Question Time on the BBC, woohoo!
I imagine this is the kind of thing that's happening now with petty crime reports.
Claims about certain categories of crime rising or falling in England are usually based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is not based on police reports, but on surveying a random sample of people to see if they have been self-reported victims of various kinds of crime.
The people who gathered stats professionally are correct.
I’m twitchy about this because I’m hearing from relatives in far more dangerous countries and cities about how London is under siege from immigrant criminals and sharia law is being imposed in the streets. Their news bubble is full of current articles that use as “evidence” pictures of riots from a decade ago where the violence was not committed by immigrants.
This would be laughable if not for how completely these folks have swallowed this nonsense.
It’s at best unscrupulous journalists desperate for eyeballs but given how pervasive this is it feels naive to assume anything but a paid, coordinated campaign.
“Are you ok in the UK?” Yes, I’m right here in London. London is fine.
One of the really boring things about crime stats is that if you insist that "Nobody will do anything" and so you don't bother to report crimes, the crime stats go down -- because you didn't report a crime.
It suits a certain kind of person to have this obvious statistical fact portrayed as some sort of failing of existing institutions. Because it's just how statistics work it won't magically change if you're dumb enough to put them in charge but they can certainly tell gullible people like you that they've fixed it.
Reporting crimes is one of those tedious things citizens have to do to get a nice society to live in, like patiently queueing for things, or putting trash in the bin. You could choose not to do it, but don't blame anybody else if no-one does it and now your society sucks.
While this sounds true, it's also true that police often will try to bully you into abandoning a crime report or treat you with contempt of they don't consider the crime "worthwhle". So not only do you not get a resolution, as expected, but you get to waste your time and be treated poorly. All that to increment a couter that might in aggregate reach a number that might get noticed by someone that might result in a policy that might 5 years later start to address the problem but may also just be used to crack down on everyone's rights as part of a right wing fear campaign? It's nowhere near as clear cut as waiting in line or picking up litter.
I guess it depends on what you mean by English.
England is a country, but you can't have an English passport, you can only get a UK passport.
so, English is a kinda-sorta a non-nationality, but it is very much an ethnic group.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Rishi Sunak isn't a UK citizen, but he certainly isn't a member of the English ethnic group, or any of the Celtic ethnic groups that also make up the UK's native population.
Fine, but also how to explain the crazy claims flying around the internet that London is a warzone and a no-go area? I live here and... seriously, nothing has changed. I feel perfectly safe and always have.
Yeah sure, there's some phone theft, it's not great. This phone theft wave is just a symptom of everyone carrying £500 devices around. Big cities have always had theft, pickpocket and snatching crimes. But it's nothing astonishingly new or different. I know one person who had their phone snatched, never seen it happen myself.
So how to explain this massive wave of social media posts making out that London's unsafe? There is definitely a narrative being pushed, whether by Russian bots or not, I cannot say.
In the UK what you are going to need to do going forward is essentially have an official and a non-official presence online. You are also going to need to use the cockroach strategy (at least tech wise), until this stuff gets unpopular enough amongst enough people that there is large push back that can't be ignored.
> The surveillance and predictive systems now being assembled are being designed not only for the current moment, but in preparation for what comes next. Whether in response to renewed austerity, military escalation, or widespread resistance, these tools are positioned to contain unrest before it surfaces. What’s emerging is a model of preemptive policing—structured around behaviour, association, and predicted risk. Individuals are reduced to data profiles, tracked not for what they’ve done but for their statistical proximity to disruption. Suppression is exercised in advance.
That is why they are so keen to backdoor any popular encrypted messaging platform. They can't monitor communications. Unfortunately most people seem to supportive of this. I was quite surprised when my Father (who is a layman) told me he supported this, this is a person that doesn't vote largely for the same reasons that I don't (I think all politicians are awful)..
Additionally. I was listening to someone that engaged at essentially Red Teaming for UK authorities (I forget who it was now). They stated that if you were a dissident, if you kept your activities offline and organise in person the authorities wouldn't be aware of this activity. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds plausible.
What’s unsettling here isn’t any single policy, but the convergence: predictive policing, protest restrictions, and administrative punishments all justified as “risk management.” Even if each tool seems narrow, together they normalize acting on suspicion rather than action, which quietly lowers the bar for dissent.
The UK faces real structural problems with the inflating cost of living regardless of government, roughly halfway attributable to failing the lower-level challenge of continuing to import adequate quantities of diesel at affordable prices and the rest mostly coming from an aging population. Spot diesel has come down from the price spike of covid to approximately 1.3x the 2019 price.
Almost all physical goods have diesel prices contribute to their sticker price in a significant way. The diesel exporting countries are all incrementally increasing their domestic consumption, leaving less for the world market year on year.
The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
Tens of millions of people, held hostage by a clique of crabs in a bucket.
I would say "so diesel uses should be encouraged to transition to electric where feasible", except the government has also dropped the ball on electricity prices and is now looking at increasing taxes on EVs.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
This is spot on, though. I joke that instead of state controlled media we have a media controlled state.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms
It doesn't know what it wants, nor how to prioritise between conflicts from vague pre (and post) election statements. It certainly doesn't want to make the hard compromises that are actually required.
That said...
I wouldn't want the job of trying to balance the books, fix the housing backlog, modernise our energy infrastructure, integrate social and medical care, address social cohesion, manage persistent inequality, improve our global competitiveness etc etc etc
In China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity"
I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
Almost all the wealth is in the South East of England. Outside of that the country is much poorer.
I drive from Manchester to Dorset once a month to visit my parents. There is a clear line where I notice all the street signs, the service stations, roads etc are better kept. Cars and houses are in better condition/news.
Some brits, most brits are worse off than the average Chinese in all but paper money. Restriced to Han chinese regions; PPP is on par. Overall china has much better social services and growth. Of the two I know which country I'd want to be born into in 2026
The difference is that the purpose of government in China is to govern effectively. They dedicate resources to producing leaders who have proven they can govern at lower levels to some degree (you always find that the corruption in China comes from leaders who came up through SOEs or similar). In terms of civil service and province-level leadership, it is just incredibly effective.
In the UK, you have leaders who are incredibly unpopular, they have no real skills, and they spend most of their time pandering to very small groups of people for various reasons. There is no real incentive to do anything relevant to voters, in fact you have seen over the last five years that political engagement has dropped significantly in a way that has generally benefitted incumbents.
To say this another way: the point of the UK system is so that people who are manifestly unfit to govern end up governing, and a small rotating group of special interests are continually pandered to (there is complete blindness to this in the UK, people often assume this is wealthy people when wealthy people are largely ignored...a politics grad working in research for a think tank will have more power in actual government than someone who gives £10m to the governing party).
It is important to note that this is a deal struck for just some ethnic groups of the citizenry. It does not apply fairly across the board to all people under Chinese governments' control so it's not even as good as it sounds for the average Chinese citizen.
In the case of Black Mirror, it was a set of studies on the dangers of current and near technologies. That some of those fears are materialising not long after the episodes, is in my opinion more damning than Orwell's fears of the state which didn't really come to pass in the same way, even decades later.
I don't disagree that Nineteen Eighty-Four is essential reading however. ( I'd also add Brave New World to that list ).
Shocking. I enjoyed Black Mirror from the start but found it a bit on the nose. A Prime Minister fucking a pig? That's a bit much. And before you know it, certain rumours of David Cameron arise.
I think that one PM episode was the only one totally out of whack. The rest were quite on point. There are dozens of episodes deep in the realm of reality.
Not a word on Palantir. Is this because of the adept wording by the ministry of justice? I highly doubt they are developing this in a vacuum.
As re reminder, In the UK Palantir holds extensive contracts across defense (multi-billion MoD deals for AI-driven battlefield and intelligence systems) and healthcare (7y £330m+ NHS Data Platform). In France, its involvement is narrower but concentrated on *domestic* intelligence.
I'm aware this is a cultural difference, government betrayal and overreach are hotbutton and mainstay topics in the common culture of the UK and related states (e.g. the US).
It is nevertheless so weird to me that rather than trying to monitor and mitigate the abuses of legal instruments like the ones proposed, people are trying to prevent and abolish things wholesale.
Everything is depicted as a slippery slope to abuse or as an excuse for abuse, and perhaps because people actually believe in it, they do materialize as one too. Presents as a vicious cycle to me, and as if people were disallowing themselves from recovering of it.
I really have to wonder how much of it is the available options always being just two parties in these territories, and the electoral systems supporting that convergence. In such a scheme, I can indeed definitely imagine people being compelled to vote further and further from their own interests and values, and the slippery slope rhetoric being finding a manifestation.
The reason why this is the case in the UK is because we have two different parties and an election, and we have ended up with the same result.
The reason why people think it is a slippery slop is because it is. Government shouldn't have any of these powers. In the UK, it has been proven over many years that this power cannot be wielded effectively by people working for government or oversight provided by elected officials.
As an example, the OSA...no-one needs this. You may not be aware but there is a massive issue with parenting in the UK. Children are turning up to school at 4 years old unable to communicate with adults (with no learning difficulties) or use the toilet. There is a very strong belief amongst civil servants (not ministers, they are basically irrelevant) that the state must step in to perform parenting functions. Does this sound like a good idea? This is the justification in many of these areas, Ofcom use to be a small agency that regulated what commercials could run on TV, it is now grown into Newspeak regulator...this isn't over 20 years, this has happened within the last three years.
People are seemingly very unhappy with the status quo, but also even unhappier when the Government tries to legislate around real issues. For example, people in hacker news seem to bring up grooming rape gangs specifically when talking about "Diversity" in the UK as a cudgel when the UK tries to introduce safety laws.
Meanwhile some of the most prolific child abusers are being sent to jail (who happened to be young 20s and white) who were only enabled to abuse hundreds of young people over a matter of months due to online platforms.
The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
Do I want the laws? No. But other people have ruined it, and now we no longer live in a high trust society. I certainly want something that will try to lower the abuse women and children face from the Internet (and men).
I don't understand how comments like yours fundamentally misunderstand both complaints.
Regarding the Rape gangs. The complaint is "People migrated to the country and committed heinous crimes, the local authorities tried to cover it up". Therefore they want these people removed (in some cases they have not been deported) and be more picky about who is allowed to migrate. They also want the people involved in the cover up to face some sort of punishment.
They mention it because they believe it shows the establishments hypocrisy. I don't understand why you and others don't understand this.
> The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
The problem is that the "think of the children" arguments are a tried and tested way of deflecting criticism when it comes to any argument about protecting privacy.
People aren't complaining about genuine attempts to catch online predators.
They are complaining about the fact that they have to put to put in their ID to go to Pornhub to watch some chick in her early 20s diddle herself.
I don't really know why the government is doing it. It's not for grand headline reasons, as it's all pretty quiet, for this and for prior changes.
I also really don't think the UK is in the grips of some kind of authoritarian nightmare. If anything, my experience is that it's impossible to convince the police to do anything. These days, surveillance state or not, when your car or phone get stolen, the police write you a crime number to take to the insurers and consider their job done. Even if it's all done for nefarious reasons, this would be an easy sidekick to running a surveillance state that earns the state some cash, and every autocrat likes money. The UK democracy is flawed in many ways, but I really don't think a spy state is currently the problem.
In my view a corrupt government tends to also be less effective at basic governance while looking out more for the government. Hence police don't pursue thieves but will arrest people for twitter/x posts.
Add in things like suspending the right to jury trial for some crimes because "its taking too long" shows how ineptitude in governance can overlap with government overreach.
It's been a while since I watched it, but doesn't it falsely imprison people because they disregarded some of the data that went contrary to other data?
I mean technically a lot of countries already have laws against conspiracy to murder, without doing the actual murder bit. And we are broadly ok with this because it makes a lot of sense.
I feel like "conspiracy to murder" means "we found a plan of you murdering someone and a baseball bat in your car" rather than "The algorithm has decided you are evil"
It isn't precrime or "dissent management" that is the problem, but the engineering of behavior and thought in society where such concepts are acceptable to people.
I don't think we can discuss it in detail here, but with this , chat control, and all sorts of other controversial laws, you'll notice the people of the country actually support that stuff. There is an interesting conversation there about democracy, and the priority of the working class people. Naturally, a person living paycheck-to-paycheck and fighting for healthcare and keeping their job (or getting one) does not care about this stuff. So who does? Not the ruling class. A lot of people (including on HN) who think this stuff is important (rightfully) are not poor people, perhaps middle-class?
Is democracy itself something that can survive, if it is left entirely up to popular vote? Power has gravity, it always wants more. Ideally, there would be institutions that are democratically established and managed that would be trusted to safeguard the people's interests. In the US, there are executive department agencies for example like the FCC, FTC, FDA and more, but they are subject to those in power who are elected by the people.
My "food for thought" here is that similar to supreme courts, there needs to be a regulatory and oversight branch of the government, whose chiefs are apolitical (like actually, not like the US supreme court), well compensated, long-tenured (but not lifetime, more like 20 years), and appointed by confirmation of all other branches of government.
We need to address the problem of power, influence to wield power and incentives for those entrusted with power to act in good faith, but also with good competence. The last part is important, because I have no doubt, a lot of the politicians that come up with this Orwellian nonsense have good intentions, the outcome they seek are noble, just not the means. they just happen to be incompetent when it comes to the subject matter.
This doesn't work. The current POTUS is clearly trying to politicize the chair of the federal reserve who is independent and for his sociopathic fanbase it is working a treat, they do not even understand that Powell is not the sole decision maker of the interest rates
He is able to do that and a whole lot more because the regulators, attorney general, ombudsmans,etc.. report to him. it's a vulnerability in the structure of the US government he's exploiting. Even if he leaves peacefully, and a decent administration comes along, it will only be temporary, he's shown others what can be abused. What maddens me is not him, someone like that has been inevitable. It isn't even his opposition's lack of competence. No one talked about this stuff, constitutional amendments, curbing the executive power, passing laws to clarify limits of powers,etc.. even in the previous admin. No one is talking about now, and they won't even after this one leaves. They don't care, nobody does. They're all just sitting in the house and complaining about the arsonist burning it down.
Even as he's dismantling nato or trying to invade greenland, do you think it's difficult to get a handful of republicans to support a bipartisan law to forbid that? They're just spectators, the lawmakers. The judges are scared sh*#!less, and powerless. Everyone is hoping that problem goes away, or at best they only care about the latest and immediate issue.
Precrime in Minority report results in "Would-be killers are placed in an electrically induced coma and held in a panopticon-like prison facility." Obviously dystopian.
What they are doing in the UK is more chatting to people involved in gangs and the like to talk them out of screwing up their lives. Kind of common sense.
There was quite an interesting interview with Sadiq Khan about it yesterday https://youtu.be/SOhIxmYiZRg?t=202 (starting at the crime bit).
The MAGA types love to go on about Khan, who is a lefty Pakistani origin muslim, as being the downfall of London but the reality is kind of different. (typed in central London).
A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
Notably, stories on HN about the very severe repression on civil liberties in the US (get shot in the face for protesting about ICE...) get flagged for closure, but putting the boot into the UK for much more wishy-washy issues like this seem to be fair game.
I'm not saying there aren't genuine issues with civil liberties (for example, things like the Online Safety Act are ridiculous) but they are magnified out of all proportion by the US media / social media disinformation megaphone.
This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
> A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
> This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
British Anarchism isn't the American Right?
Concern for free speech traditionally cuts across the left-right divide, as it should. Sadly, there's been a greater erosion of it on the left than the right in recent years, despite the absolute centrality of free speech rights to key progressive causes: abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights, etc. At the same time that the left got softer on free speech, the right had a series of 'are we being shadow-banned?' scandals, which increased the importance of free speech to the right.
Twenty years ago the position was roughly reversed with the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act, 'free speech zones', etc. Arguably, that same reversal might be happening now with Gaza, ICE etc.
In my ideal world, we all love free speech, but in the real world, it seems to zig zag across the spectrum to the people not currently in power. I suppose an understandable reflection of its value in standing up to power.
100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
It feels pretty awful to have such a one-sided bias in the media of the UK getting clowned on for civil liberties, I have noticed so much more astroturfing on reddit about these issues with made-up ragebait lies.
There are absolutely issues with the police focusing more on "crime online" such as people posting or saying offensive things, I do think that saying something outright offensive to the benefit of nobody is a net bad for society but instead of punishing say British people for "wrong think" I think the police force should be really investigating where this kind of stuff comes from, Foreign influence bot farms ect and enact legal removal of protection to ensure that people when they say such online in a public manner are actually people
Yup… there's a very strong right wing streak in parts of the HN audience
Those with opposing views also tend to find themselves rate limited - dropped two comments on this story and now being told I'm posting too fast (even after going away for 60 mins)
This is a thousand times as concerning in the context of London than in the context of Baltimore. It addresses a concern that doesn't exist for the UK public, in a way that appears intended to oppress from the start, against a backdrop of arresting thousands of pensioners for disagreeing about a genocide.
The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group.
A group that broke a police officers back with sledge hammers, committed multiple acts of vandalism against our military, and have tons of links to Hamas
They can oppose Israel action in Palestine, they just can’t support terrorists
De facto, arresting 80 year old women for holding signs is always going to look authoritarian. They're not exactly the type to strap on a vest but we have to pretend we dont know what a terrorist looks like.
This is a jury trial in progress, there are rules against prejudicing such. Genuinely interested readers can read a trial report here: https://realmedia.press/the-filton-trial-4/
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West.
Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
> As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
I am a Brit and I object to a lot of the expansion of powers that have happened in Britain during successive governments since the "War on Terror" started which was pretty might right after 9/11. I would like to see much of this legislation repealed. However that is unlikely to happen.
> The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist
Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
As for sensationalist, possibly. But they seem to highlight genuine concerns that have been raised by other organisations.
> The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
All you are doing in this speil is repeating talking points found on the news sites. I find this sort of stuff tiresome to read. I don't care about what happens in the US generally. It is literally on the other side of an ocean. I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
> Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
> I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that you're a Brit and that your method of drawing superficial conclusions about the other participants is sound. Perhaps we are both bots here.
Instead of attacking the other participants for not being as enlightened as you may be and the source of the information, a more appreciated approach would've been to address the substance of the article.
For example, what are some "intelligence agencies and police networks in the West" that are routinely performing those kind of programmes, and why should we conclude that all of them are doing that? Are those programmes identical to the UK's "homicide prediction project", as it was originally called? Are there better legal frameworks for such programmes in other countries (say, a Constitution), or at least more democratic oversight than in the UK? Perhaps some sources that document such a conclusion would help.
You speak of lack of perspective from the commenters here, but haven't yet provided an informed one either.
> The UK is far more free than the US
Trump and his oligarchs aside, why do you believe that the UK is "far more free" than the US? And how exactly do you define that freedom? I'm no big fan of the US in general (mainly due to their neoliberal and religious culture), but to deny that they've enjoyed a variety of freedoms would be provably wrong. Different organisations measure these differently and the UK is generally not "far more free" in that sense, only marginally so - again, it depends on the frameworks employed. [0] [1]
If the definition of freedom includes democratic accountability + equal political power + civil liberties in practice: neither country is doing that great; the UK's unelected Lords/sovereignty/executive dominance and First Past the Post voting system are undeniable flaws - many if not most European countries don't have that. It's also entirely true that US has deeper structural distortions (malapportionment + Electoral College + gerrymandering + life-tenured apex judiciary).
Overall, the UK tends to score higher on broad civil-liberty/democracy assessments, but not by as far as you seem to imply. And judging by the recent developments, one wouldn't be entirely wrong to conclude that these freedoms are actively being eroded (which is what the article says). Let's not forget the deep drive of successive governments to privatise key public services which objectively gave the UK an advantage in terms of freedoms compared to US - for example universal healthcare, which works as a social safety net and effectively offering higher practical freedom of life choices for most citizens.
> levels of inequality
The UK has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. [2]
"OECD figures suggest that the UK has among the highest levels of income inequality in the European Union (as measured by the Gini coefficient), although income inequality is slightly lower than in the United States." [3]
"The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries." [4]
"The key findings are that the UK has high levels of income inequality compared with similar developed economies, with a (pre-pandemic) Gini coefficient that is the second highest in the G7 (after the US), and is more unequal than all the countries in the EU other than Lithuania and Latvia." [5]
Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.
Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.
Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:
By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.
I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).
Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.
I wonder how many people are actually from the UK on these threads. There is always comments about "diversity" and "grooming rape gangs" and how everything labour do is bad, or about how the UK is an oppressive regime or somehow fundamentally anti-freedom. This always reads like fear mongering / Russian psy-ops propaganda to me.
I have many bones to pick with the UK government but a large number of people sprinting to these talking points at every chance they get is highly suspicious to me.
I'm also surprised by the tone of this thread. HN discussions usually involve more nuanced debate, but many comments here are hitting very specific talking point. Comparisons to China, sarcastic references to 'diversity,' grooming gangs, that I more commonly see in certain Reddit communities rather than in typical HN discussions about tech policy or civil liberties.
There are legitimate concerns about UK surveillance, protest policing, and speech regulations worth discussing. But when the same cluster of talking points appears with this particular framing, it makes me wonder about the makeup of who's participating in this thread versus other HN discussions.
"We detected that you are about to commit a crime. Here is provisional 2-years sentence shall you decide to go ahead with the plans. It includes free single room, 3 meals a day, gym, library, daily walks and company of people like yourself. You will also receive counselling and you could take up a free course to advance your skills in desired field and post-release support for a year."
I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc.
Up until this point it was mostly that they would gladly fuck the other countries up but treated their own people way better than the other camp. But this difference is disappearing.
Of course there is always North Korea and other totally fucked up regimes they could use to compare and look white and fluffy
While you have a point, you are looking at this the wrong way.
20 years ago if you had told someone you needed to get a face scan or upload your ID to view certain websites or that you might get your messages and emails scanned in case you send something that the government deems suspicious to someone else, people would have laughed at you.
Yet as we are seeing currently this is what is happening slowly but surely.
Yes, the UK government is not gunning down protesters in the street but can you say with certainty that the screws are not being tightened and that the so called western values of freedom of speech are not being eroded systematically year after year under the pretense of safety?
It seems to me that every western government is looking at what China and Russia are doing and instead of staying true to their values, they are actually trying to figure out how to roll out the same exact measures in the west.
Will we see Gulags in the west make a comeback? Most likely not but in terms of freedom of speech and online privacy rights, we are seeing clearly a rollback and if we do nothing to stop it, we will end up like China with governments looking at everything we say and write on our phone and computer and that is unacceptable especially when these measures are cowardly disguised as 'safety" measures.
>"You’re incredibly naive if you think they’re the same as us"
And you are "incredibly" inattentive (considering the best case). I did not say they're "the same as us", I said they're heading there. Depending on what particular country we are talking about mileage can vary.
Two prominent Boeing whistleblowers, John Barnett (died March 2024) and Joshua Dean (died April 2024), have died in recent times, raising significant concerns about retaliation and safety at the aerospace giant; Barnett died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after battling Boeing in a retaliation lawsuit, while Dean died from a sudden infection after raising quality concerns, with his family suspecting foul play despite official rulings. Barnett's death was ruled a suicide, though his family's wrongful death suit claims Boeing's harassment caused his distress, while Dean's death followed rapid illness, with his family also alleging misconduct by his employer, Spirit Aerosystems, and Boeing.
Between arresting grannies for saying they support Palestinian Action and using armed officers to apprehend comedy writers I doubt they'll have the time.
Social movements don’t just happen from grassroots these days. They’re seeded by foreign states. A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting. If you don’t provide an id you get a limited number of views.
And I don’t see anything wrong with a preventative system in principle, we should be able to join up social services information with policing, because we have had cases where a mass murderer has been known to multiple services.
Edit: probably not ids but a token that verifies my nationality would be enough.
> A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting
It’s strange times when even the comments on posts about government overreach are calling for more government overreach and limitations on speech and privacy.
Do you really want to have to verify your ID to post anything online, including HN?
And I am willing to bet that on top of the chilling effect on regular people, it will only act as an inconvenience for the bad actors as they will find ways to circumvent it. Controlling the online discourse is far too valuable, they are not going to just shrug and give up because the government puts up a barrier.
This is how you govern from a position of unpopularity.
The government knows they’re on the wrong side of many issues, to the point they know they can’t win an open debate.
So media control, regulation by enforcement, and institutional control becomes the focus of effort.
There seems to be a prevalent notion within UK establishment circles, "we are being attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works. You see used for example to defend the supposed impartiality of the BBC.
The BBC has never been impartial to internal concerns - domestic politics in particular. Leveson Inquiry recommendations not being implemented is the tip of the iceberg in relation to the extent of client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-sc...
34 replies →
The problem isn’t the balance, it’s the police state. I don’t want an authoritarian Left government any more than I want an authoritarian Right or Center government.
31 replies →
> attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works
Exactly. Also because this is easily gamed by attacking the media that is already biased in your favour to get an even more favourable treatment.
3 replies →
One thing that is often missed in this narrative is that the UK has a voting system which was explicitly designed to counteract this issue reaching definitive results with the minimum amount of consensus.
I agree with you but I think this idea of being "fair" is something that is said but no-one actually believes in. Most recent government is one of the most extreme examples of this: do things that annoys everyone, say you are just being "fair" because everyone is annoyed...it doesn't make sense.
To say this another way, there is genuinely an easier option: stop doing things that people do not want.
The obvious implication is that "balance" between freedom and surveillance just moves things away from freedom.
Of course, on the note of being attacked from "both" sides, there are often more than two sides to a story. Also, not every side has to be, or maybe even should be, considered with equal weight.
The "eating shit" fallacy as I like to call it.
Just because a fascist and a communist agree that eating shit is bad, doesn't mean that eating shit is a good idea.
This has been ongoing for a long time, its not at all specific to this government.
Yeah, a lot of this is just .. well, I hesitate to use the over used phrase "deep state", but a lot of it is the work of people in the security institutions who "advise" the government, rather than the changing cast of the thin democratic bit on the front. There's long been authoritarianism in response to the fear of terrorism, from the IRA onwards. Then there's things like the "spycops" scandal, which make you wonder whether certain protest groups are deliberately engaging in really unpopular stunts in order to facilitate a crackdown.
The British public are in an odd place on this. There's a lot of "folk libertarianism", but that mostly consists of not having ID cards, while at the same time supporting all sorts of crackdowns on protest as soon as it's mildly inconvenient.
And then there's immigration. As in the US, it's a magic bullet for discourse that allows any amount of authoritarianism (or headshots to soccer moms) as long as you promise it will be used against immigrants.
1 reply →
Huh? Starmer is the least popular Prime Minister, I believe, ever.
19 replies →
I don't agree. The British State has been going in this direction ever since Blair's government and probably before that. I don't remember Blair's government being that unpopular.
New labour really laid the groundwork for alot of the orwellian laws that are in place now. Its a shame nobody who has been elected since sought to roll them back...
3 replies →
Also never look at what current government is going to do with the framework, but what future much worse government could use it for.
They’re also strengthening the criminal consequences for future governments that misuse their position: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/4019
4 replies →
Does it get worse? They are making a benchmark that is hard to beat.
3 replies →
Man, its like everyone is blind to the current state of things.
Here is the truth:
* Everyone with above sentiment always votes for anyone libertarian, which is necessarily conservative, and all conservatives are pretty much liars.
* These same conservatives that champion against government overreach, for law and order, and for personal freedoms do the exact opposite once they get into office. Nor do they give a shit about the law.
So yea, the whole libertarian ideology is pretty much dead. Its pretty obvious that the best course of action is to sacrifice personal freedoms and elect a government that can keep a tight rein over the populace and keep things like Nazi ideology from spreading.
3 replies →
Why is it happening in the UK though? Why does their government think that they need this?
It's not only happening in the UK. It's happening across the entire western world except for America. Australia, Canada and European countries have also been implementing retroactive speech laws, mass debanking, imprisonment for political speech and so on. The UK gets a lot of attention because it's historically been a fairly free country, and because it's English speaking.
1 reply →
[flagged]
> It’s very sad to see what’s happening over there
looks out window.
i don’t see a ministry of truth or posters of Big Brother. i think we’re still a ways away from 1984.
What’s going on over here?
You have ICE thugs executing citizens and being defended by the government while doing so
8 replies →
> So media control, regulation by enforcement, and institutional control becomes the focus of effort.
You forgot gun control. That's the first thing they took away. Thereafter, freedom after freedom has been made optional by the government [1].
When government becomes overreaching, and you don't have the means to protect yourself and your rights, that's where it goes.
[1] I said "government", but probably "regime" would be a more suitable term here.
The guns in the US don't seem to be helping people avoid getting shot by ICE.
(to the extent that armed revolution worked in the UK, the IRA were helped only slightly by US-backed supplies of Armalite rifles, and much more by a large supply of Libyan high explosives. Guns are a much less effective political weapon than the car or truck or hotel bomb)
7 replies →
I still don't know what's so important about guns and how it's a metric for freedom.
8 replies →
i’m absolutely, concretely and overwhelmingly fine with the concept of gun control here as a uk citizen.
i say this as someone who did target rifle shooting as a kid. so, i’ve been around weapons in a positive way.
the controls are a good thing.
1 reply →
> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest.
Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how they do prosecute noncrime crimes such as 'hate speech').
Here, for comparison, is a paragraph from an essay by Konstantin Kisin:
> A month earlier, I was walking through a posh part of London when I saw a young man in a balaclava snatch a bag from a tourist. When I told people about what I saw at various meetings, most people were surprised that I was surprised. Phone thefts, muggings and all kinds of petty crime are now considered normal and routine.
Which story is correct?
[0] -https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/theres-good-news-for-brita...
Anecdote is not data. It is both true that the police absolutely suck at handling petty crime, and the Met have a fairly terrible reputation; and that more serious violent crime is much, much less of a problem in London than it used to be (and less than US cities, of course).
> Anecdote is not data.
This is a situation where the data may not be capturing the reality, though.
An increasingly common tactic for decreasing crime statistics is to reduce reporting of crimes. The more difficult you make it to report a crime, the better the crime numbers look.
In one city I’m familiar with, it became so well known that reporting small crimes was a futile endeavor that people just gave up. It was common knowledge that you don’t bother calling the police unless it was a major crime. Not surprisingly, the crime statistics started to look better.
4 replies →
So far, I have never seen any article or even comment online explain explicitly why this is the case.
Almost everyone can see quite visibly that crime is not decreasing but then you have people with a clear political and financial motive saying: the stats, you are just a loon or (even worse) someone who might not be from London.
If you read the best source on this, hospital admissions, you will see that ~95% of the drop in "violent crime" is due to decreases in alcohol consumption. That is it. Ex this impact and in relative terms, violent crime in cities has been increasing significantly. And violent crime is supposed to be the rare subset of crime when, obviously, other categories of crime are generally increasing.
Btw, the group that publishes this data is also (strangely) unwilling to make this known and, afaik, do not include this information in press releases.
The other factor is that the composition of London's population has naturally changed over the last ten years. As London has continued to dominate economically, the poor have been emptied out from certain areas contributing greatly to a reduction in crime stats (and, unfortunately, an increase elsewhere in the country). For example, Camden has seen a huge reduction in violent crime, is this a surprise? If you look at areas that have stayed the same, crime has got worse (again, in relative terms/ex the above factors, crime in the UK is falling in many areas and rising in others).
I will say this another way: data is not collected fairly or accurately. There are massive political and financial incentives against accurate data. In London, this has always been the case because it is not possible to win elections in some areas in London with high crime if you admit that crime is high in those areas...you have to blame society. Twenty years ago, you had the same thing: city has never been safer, politicians doing so well, Met doing so well...once you have seen this a few times, you should start to wonder whether it is true...particularly as the current line is that crime was rampant twenty years ago...when it obviously wasn't. Anecdotes will always tend to represent the reality better than data which is produced for political purposes (and I think people know this, the stats exist in part so that people can hop online and say that everyone is doing a great job, you see the same thing online with central government...it is very weird).
3 replies →
from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/world/europe/london-polic...
2 replies →
Sure; but the article's premise is that street crime is falling (and as a result, the police, which, presumably, has more free time on their hands, can focus on other things). Assuming petty crime is street crime, and seeing that you agree that the police suck at it, is the article's premise correct?
4 replies →
[flagged]
Rape rates in the UK have more than tripled over the past two decades, why doesn't that count as serious violent crime? https://www.statista.com/statistics/283100/recorded-rape-off...
1 reply →
You know how the NHS reduced waiting lists a few years back? If you had waiting lists of say 100 for a surgery, they basically said - the list is maximum 15 people, after that it's whoever books first who gets the surgery. So basically you had to be lucky and be the number 15 on the list once a spot was open.
But! Magically NHS waiting lists got shorter! The government could say this on Question Time on the BBC, woohoo!
I imagine this is the kind of thing that's happening now with petty crime reports.
Claims about certain categories of crime rising or falling in England are usually based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is not based on police reports, but on surveying a random sample of people to see if they have been self-reported victims of various kinds of crime.
The people who gathered stats professionally are correct.
I’m twitchy about this because I’m hearing from relatives in far more dangerous countries and cities about how London is under siege from immigrant criminals and sharia law is being imposed in the streets. Their news bubble is full of current articles that use as “evidence” pictures of riots from a decade ago where the violence was not committed by immigrants.
This would be laughable if not for how completely these folks have swallowed this nonsense.
It’s at best unscrupulous journalists desperate for eyeballs but given how pervasive this is it feels naive to assume anything but a paid, coordinated campaign.
“Are you ok in the UK?” Yes, I’m right here in London. London is fine.
One of the really boring things about crime stats is that if you insist that "Nobody will do anything" and so you don't bother to report crimes, the crime stats go down -- because you didn't report a crime.
It suits a certain kind of person to have this obvious statistical fact portrayed as some sort of failing of existing institutions. Because it's just how statistics work it won't magically change if you're dumb enough to put them in charge but they can certainly tell gullible people like you that they've fixed it.
Reporting crimes is one of those tedious things citizens have to do to get a nice society to live in, like patiently queueing for things, or putting trash in the bin. You could choose not to do it, but don't blame anybody else if no-one does it and now your society sucks.
While this sounds true, it's also true that police often will try to bully you into abandoning a crime report or treat you with contempt of they don't consider the crime "worthwhle". So not only do you not get a resolution, as expected, but you get to waste your time and be treated poorly. All that to increment a couter that might in aggregate reach a number that might get noticed by someone that might result in a policy that might 5 years later start to address the problem but may also just be used to crack down on everyone's rights as part of a right wing fear campaign? It's nowhere near as clear cut as waiting in line or picking up litter.
1 reply →
A single data point does not show a trend
The man who says Rishi Sunak is not English [0] might be lying? Thats crazy.
[0] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/of-cou...
I guess it depends on what you mean by English. England is a country, but you can't have an English passport, you can only get a UK passport. so, English is a kinda-sorta a non-nationality, but it is very much an ethnic group.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Rishi Sunak isn't a UK citizen, but he certainly isn't a member of the English ethnic group, or any of the Celtic ethnic groups that also make up the UK's native population.
7 replies →
Everyone in London knows what happens if you try to report "minor" street crime.
Obviously everyone saying the UK isn't a utopia is a Russian bot, and we should be censoring them.
Fine, but also how to explain the crazy claims flying around the internet that London is a warzone and a no-go area? I live here and... seriously, nothing has changed. I feel perfectly safe and always have.
Yeah sure, there's some phone theft, it's not great. This phone theft wave is just a symptom of everyone carrying £500 devices around. Big cities have always had theft, pickpocket and snatching crimes. But it's nothing astonishingly new or different. I know one person who had their phone snatched, never seen it happen myself.
So how to explain this massive wave of social media posts making out that London's unsafe? There is definitely a narrative being pushed, whether by Russian bots or not, I cannot say.
7 replies →
"Everyone knows" says someone who now lives in Montreal!
1 reply →
Do you even go here?
1 reply →
In the UK what you are going to need to do going forward is essentially have an official and a non-official presence online. You are also going to need to use the cockroach strategy (at least tech wise), until this stuff gets unpopular enough amongst enough people that there is large push back that can't be ignored.
> The surveillance and predictive systems now being assembled are being designed not only for the current moment, but in preparation for what comes next. Whether in response to renewed austerity, military escalation, or widespread resistance, these tools are positioned to contain unrest before it surfaces. What’s emerging is a model of preemptive policing—structured around behaviour, association, and predicted risk. Individuals are reduced to data profiles, tracked not for what they’ve done but for their statistical proximity to disruption. Suppression is exercised in advance.
That is why they are so keen to backdoor any popular encrypted messaging platform. They can't monitor communications. Unfortunately most people seem to supportive of this. I was quite surprised when my Father (who is a layman) told me he supported this, this is a person that doesn't vote largely for the same reasons that I don't (I think all politicians are awful)..
Additionally. I was listening to someone that engaged at essentially Red Teaming for UK authorities (I forget who it was now). They stated that if you were a dissident, if you kept your activities offline and organise in person the authorities wouldn't be aware of this activity. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds plausible.
What’s unsettling here isn’t any single policy, but the convergence: predictive policing, protest restrictions, and administrative punishments all justified as “risk management.” Even if each tool seems narrow, together they normalize acting on suspicion rather than action, which quietly lowers the bar for dissent.
The UK faces real structural problems with the inflating cost of living regardless of government, roughly halfway attributable to failing the lower-level challenge of continuing to import adequate quantities of diesel at affordable prices and the rest mostly coming from an aging population. Spot diesel has come down from the price spike of covid to approximately 1.3x the 2019 price.
Almost all physical goods have diesel prices contribute to their sticker price in a significant way. The diesel exporting countries are all incrementally increasing their domestic consumption, leaving less for the world market year on year.
The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
Tens of millions of people, held hostage by a clique of crabs in a bucket.
I would say "so diesel uses should be encouraged to transition to electric where feasible", except the government has also dropped the ball on electricity prices and is now looking at increasing taxes on EVs.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle.
This is spot on, though. I joke that instead of state controlled media we have a media controlled state.
> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms
It doesn't know what it wants, nor how to prioritise between conflicts from vague pre (and post) election statements. It certainly doesn't want to make the hard compromises that are actually required.
That said...
I wouldn't want the job of trying to balance the books, fix the housing backlog, modernise our energy infrastructure, integrate social and medical care, address social cohesion, manage persistent inequality, improve our global competitiveness etc etc etc
I would, because despite having no idea how to accomplish any of that, I know how to delegate to people who do.
1 reply →
Costs are inflating because they have more money than things to invest in. Same thing happened to Spain after the new world was found and exploited.
All that gold and silver just went to paying off foreign debt and inflating local markets.
Same thing is happening because the UK only have the London Financial hub going for it.
In China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity"
I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
Brits already have more prosperity (=> median wages) even after adjusting for purchasing power.
Some stagnation is to be expected from high energy prices and trade disruption (brexit).
British surveillance state tolerance has always been pretty high for Europe, and is typically "sold" to the average citizen as anti-crime.
It depends where you are in the UK.
Almost all the wealth is in the South East of England. Outside of that the country is much poorer.
I drive from Manchester to Dorset once a month to visit my parents. There is a clear line where I notice all the street signs, the service stations, roads etc are better kept. Cars and houses are in better condition/news.
4 replies →
Some brits, most brits are worse off than the average Chinese in all but paper money. Restriced to Han chinese regions; PPP is on par. Overall china has much better social services and growth. Of the two I know which country I'd want to be born into in 2026
1 reply →
The difference is that the purpose of government in China is to govern effectively. They dedicate resources to producing leaders who have proven they can govern at lower levels to some degree (you always find that the corruption in China comes from leaders who came up through SOEs or similar). In terms of civil service and province-level leadership, it is just incredibly effective.
In the UK, you have leaders who are incredibly unpopular, they have no real skills, and they spend most of their time pandering to very small groups of people for various reasons. There is no real incentive to do anything relevant to voters, in fact you have seen over the last five years that political engagement has dropped significantly in a way that has generally benefitted incumbents.
To say this another way: the point of the UK system is so that people who are manifestly unfit to govern end up governing, and a small rotating group of special interests are continually pandered to (there is complete blindness to this in the UK, people often assume this is wealthy people when wealthy people are largely ignored...a politics grad working in research for a think tank will have more power in actual government than someone who gives £10m to the governing party).
It is important to note that this is a deal struck for just some ethnic groups of the citizenry. It does not apply fairly across the board to all people under Chinese governments' control so it's not even as good as it sounds for the average Chinese citizen.
[flagged]
[flagged]
2 replies →
[flagged]
The people who talk pretty get to keep buying nice houses for their kids. It seems like a pretty good deal.
Black Mirror continues to be a 5-7yr leading indicator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror
Orwell predates Black Mirror by decades. 1984 should be a must read for everyone.
I'd argue that makes Black Mirror more prescient.
In the case of Black Mirror, it was a set of studies on the dangers of current and near technologies. That some of those fears are materialising not long after the episodes, is in my opinion more damning than Orwell's fears of the state which didn't really come to pass in the same way, even decades later.
I don't disagree that Nineteen Eighty-Four is essential reading however. ( I'd also add Brave New World to that list ).
1 reply →
'Years and years' disturbing as well.
Shocking. I enjoyed Black Mirror from the start but found it a bit on the nose. A Prime Minister fucking a pig? That's a bit much. And before you know it, certain rumours of David Cameron arise.
I think that one PM episode was the only one totally out of whack. The rest were quite on point. There are dozens of episodes deep in the realm of reality.
https://variety.com/lists/black-mirror-best-episodes/
Not a word on Palantir. Is this because of the adept wording by the ministry of justice? I highly doubt they are developing this in a vacuum.
As re reminder, In the UK Palantir holds extensive contracts across defense (multi-billion MoD deals for AI-driven battlefield and intelligence systems) and healthcare (7y £330m+ NHS Data Platform). In France, its involvement is narrower but concentrated on *domestic* intelligence.
I'm aware this is a cultural difference, government betrayal and overreach are hotbutton and mainstay topics in the common culture of the UK and related states (e.g. the US).
It is nevertheless so weird to me that rather than trying to monitor and mitigate the abuses of legal instruments like the ones proposed, people are trying to prevent and abolish things wholesale.
Everything is depicted as a slippery slope to abuse or as an excuse for abuse, and perhaps because people actually believe in it, they do materialize as one too. Presents as a vicious cycle to me, and as if people were disallowing themselves from recovering of it.
I really have to wonder how much of it is the available options always being just two parties in these territories, and the electoral systems supporting that convergence. In such a scheme, I can indeed definitely imagine people being compelled to vote further and further from their own interests and values, and the slippery slope rhetoric being finding a manifestation.
The reason why this is the case in the UK is because we have two different parties and an election, and we have ended up with the same result.
The reason why people think it is a slippery slop is because it is. Government shouldn't have any of these powers. In the UK, it has been proven over many years that this power cannot be wielded effectively by people working for government or oversight provided by elected officials.
As an example, the OSA...no-one needs this. You may not be aware but there is a massive issue with parenting in the UK. Children are turning up to school at 4 years old unable to communicate with adults (with no learning difficulties) or use the toilet. There is a very strong belief amongst civil servants (not ministers, they are basically irrelevant) that the state must step in to perform parenting functions. Does this sound like a good idea? This is the justification in many of these areas, Ofcom use to be a small agency that regulated what commercials could run on TV, it is now grown into Newspeak regulator...this isn't over 20 years, this has happened within the last three years.
People are seemingly very unhappy with the status quo, but also even unhappier when the Government tries to legislate around real issues. For example, people in hacker news seem to bring up grooming rape gangs specifically when talking about "Diversity" in the UK as a cudgel when the UK tries to introduce safety laws.
Meanwhile some of the most prolific child abusers are being sent to jail (who happened to be young 20s and white) who were only enabled to abuse hundreds of young people over a matter of months due to online platforms.
The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
Do I want the laws? No. But other people have ruined it, and now we no longer live in a high trust society. I certainly want something that will try to lower the abuse women and children face from the Internet (and men).
I don't understand how comments like yours fundamentally misunderstand both complaints.
Regarding the Rape gangs. The complaint is "People migrated to the country and committed heinous crimes, the local authorities tried to cover it up". Therefore they want these people removed (in some cases they have not been deported) and be more picky about who is allowed to migrate. They also want the people involved in the cover up to face some sort of punishment.
They mention it because they believe it shows the establishments hypocrisy. I don't understand why you and others don't understand this.
> The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.
The problem is that the "think of the children" arguments are a tried and tested way of deflecting criticism when it comes to any argument about protecting privacy.
People aren't complaining about genuine attempts to catch online predators.
They are complaining about the fact that they have to put to put in their ID to go to Pornhub to watch some chick in her early 20s diddle herself.
Here is a good book on how pre-crime society is created, who is driving more "management" and who benefits
https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
God bless Managed Democracy.
I'm very confused by this, on many fronts.
I don't really know why the government is doing it. It's not for grand headline reasons, as it's all pretty quiet, for this and for prior changes.
I also really don't think the UK is in the grips of some kind of authoritarian nightmare. If anything, my experience is that it's impossible to convince the police to do anything. These days, surveillance state or not, when your car or phone get stolen, the police write you a crime number to take to the insurers and consider their job done. Even if it's all done for nefarious reasons, this would be an easy sidekick to running a surveillance state that earns the state some cash, and every autocrat likes money. The UK democracy is flawed in many ways, but I really don't think a spy state is currently the problem.
So... Why?
In my view a corrupt government tends to also be less effective at basic governance while looking out more for the government. Hence police don't pursue thieves but will arrest people for twitter/x posts.
Add in things like suspending the right to jury trial for some crimes because "its taking too long" shows how ineptitude in governance can overlap with government overreach.
Day by day these things sound more like Sci-Fi series announcments.
[dead]
UK dystopia: accelerating (Precrime)
EU dystopia: accelerating (Chat Control)
US dystopia: probably accelerating?
What a time to be alive!
> US dystopia: probably accelerating?
Yeah, absolutely no indicators whatsoever we can go off of right now.
Isn't Minority Report a documentary about why this doesn't work?
What do you mean by "doesn't work"?
Doesn't work to prevent crime? Or doesn't work too suppress dissent?
It's been a while since I watched it, but doesn't it falsely imprison people because they disregarded some of the data that went contrary to other data?
2 replies →
I don't know if this is a joke, but Minority Report was a fictional movie.
I mean technically a lot of countries already have laws against conspiracy to murder, without doing the actual murder bit. And we are broadly ok with this because it makes a lot of sense.
That generally still takes the person taking some sort of action in furtherance of that plan, not just thinking it.
1 reply →
I feel like "conspiracy to murder" means "we found a plan of you murdering someone and a baseball bat in your car" rather than "The algorithm has decided you are evil"
I think Orwell was prescient and attuned to this sort of thinking in England at his time. Perhaps, it never really went away? e.g.: "crimestop"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/725596-crimestop-means-the-...
It isn't precrime or "dissent management" that is the problem, but the engineering of behavior and thought in society where such concepts are acceptable to people.
I don't think we can discuss it in detail here, but with this , chat control, and all sorts of other controversial laws, you'll notice the people of the country actually support that stuff. There is an interesting conversation there about democracy, and the priority of the working class people. Naturally, a person living paycheck-to-paycheck and fighting for healthcare and keeping their job (or getting one) does not care about this stuff. So who does? Not the ruling class. A lot of people (including on HN) who think this stuff is important (rightfully) are not poor people, perhaps middle-class?
Is democracy itself something that can survive, if it is left entirely up to popular vote? Power has gravity, it always wants more. Ideally, there would be institutions that are democratically established and managed that would be trusted to safeguard the people's interests. In the US, there are executive department agencies for example like the FCC, FTC, FDA and more, but they are subject to those in power who are elected by the people.
My "food for thought" here is that similar to supreme courts, there needs to be a regulatory and oversight branch of the government, whose chiefs are apolitical (like actually, not like the US supreme court), well compensated, long-tenured (but not lifetime, more like 20 years), and appointed by confirmation of all other branches of government.
We need to address the problem of power, influence to wield power and incentives for those entrusted with power to act in good faith, but also with good competence. The last part is important, because I have no doubt, a lot of the politicians that come up with this Orwellian nonsense have good intentions, the outcome they seek are noble, just not the means. they just happen to be incompetent when it comes to the subject matter.
This doesn't work. The current POTUS is clearly trying to politicize the chair of the federal reserve who is independent and for his sociopathic fanbase it is working a treat, they do not even understand that Powell is not the sole decision maker of the interest rates
He is able to do that and a whole lot more because the regulators, attorney general, ombudsmans,etc.. report to him. it's a vulnerability in the structure of the US government he's exploiting. Even if he leaves peacefully, and a decent administration comes along, it will only be temporary, he's shown others what can be abused. What maddens me is not him, someone like that has been inevitable. It isn't even his opposition's lack of competence. No one talked about this stuff, constitutional amendments, curbing the executive power, passing laws to clarify limits of powers,etc.. even in the previous admin. No one is talking about now, and they won't even after this one leaves. They don't care, nobody does. They're all just sitting in the house and complaining about the arsonist burning it down.
Even as he's dismantling nato or trying to invade greenland, do you think it's difficult to get a handful of republicans to support a bipartisan law to forbid that? They're just spectators, the lawmakers. The judges are scared sh*#!less, and powerless. Everyone is hoping that problem goes away, or at best they only care about the latest and immediate issue.
Public money gets spent on the advice of AI systems and consultancies.
Costs overrun, benefits are unclear, and it quietly disappears.
Those responsible resurface later at consultancies, selling the same ideas elsewhere.
who chooses who chooses who watches the watchers ?
They all believe to be morally infallible. I don't think they would even be able to function as politicians without such cognitive dissonance.
Corporate. Google, Meta, TikTok. All governmental entities or tied to.
What's the harm if your data is "lost" along the way. /s
Orwell worked in Spain for about a year, 1936-37, his work on BBC during WWII was twice as long.
In my opinion, 1984 was shaped by his work in Britain.
And the brilliant MI6 / BBC propaganda made it as if 1984 were about the Soviet Union :)
As if it was not enough that the author himself put it in Britain.
If you want Soviet Style distopia, better read "We" from Zamyatin.
just think if the prior election went the other way in the US, this is where the us would be right now
Precrime in Minority report results in "Would-be killers are placed in an electrically induced coma and held in a panopticon-like prison facility." Obviously dystopian.
What they are doing in the UK is more chatting to people involved in gangs and the like to talk them out of screwing up their lives. Kind of common sense.
This has led to "London’s lowest murder rate in more than a decade" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/why-londons-...
There was quite an interesting interview with Sadiq Khan about it yesterday https://youtu.be/SOhIxmYiZRg?t=202 (starting at the crime bit).
The MAGA types love to go on about Khan, who is a lefty Pakistani origin muslim, as being the downfall of London but the reality is kind of different. (typed in central London).
I hope they name it Pickles
A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
Notably, stories on HN about the very severe repression on civil liberties in the US (get shot in the face for protesting about ICE...) get flagged for closure, but putting the boot into the UK for much more wishy-washy issues like this seem to be fair game.
I'm not saying there aren't genuine issues with civil liberties (for example, things like the Online Safety Act are ridiculous) but they are magnified out of all proportion by the US media / social media disinformation megaphone.
This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
> A lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for.
> This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
British Anarchism isn't the American Right?
Concern for free speech traditionally cuts across the left-right divide, as it should. Sadly, there's been a greater erosion of it on the left than the right in recent years, despite the absolute centrality of free speech rights to key progressive causes: abolitionism, civil rights, gay rights, etc. At the same time that the left got softer on free speech, the right had a series of 'are we being shadow-banned?' scandals, which increased the importance of free speech to the right.
Twenty years ago the position was roughly reversed with the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act, 'free speech zones', etc. Arguably, that same reversal might be happening now with Gaza, ICE etc.
In my ideal world, we all love free speech, but in the real world, it seems to zig zag across the spectrum to the people not currently in power. I suppose an understandable reflection of its value in standing up to power.
100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
It feels pretty awful to have such a one-sided bias in the media of the UK getting clowned on for civil liberties, I have noticed so much more astroturfing on reddit about these issues with made-up ragebait lies.
There are absolutely issues with the police focusing more on "crime online" such as people posting or saying offensive things, I do think that saying something outright offensive to the benefit of nobody is a net bad for society but instead of punishing say British people for "wrong think" I think the police force should be really investigating where this kind of stuff comes from, Foreign influence bot farms ect and enact legal removal of protection to ensure that people when they say such online in a public manner are actually people
Yup… there's a very strong right wing streak in parts of the HN audience
Those with opposing views also tend to find themselves rate limited - dropped two comments on this story and now being told I'm posting too fast (even after going away for 60 mins)
This is a thousand times as concerning in the context of London than in the context of Baltimore. It addresses a concern that doesn't exist for the UK public, in a way that appears intended to oppress from the start, against a backdrop of arresting thousands of pensioners for disagreeing about a genocide.
The only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group.
A group that broke a police officers back with sledge hammers, committed multiple acts of vandalism against our military, and have tons of links to Hamas
They can oppose Israel action in Palestine, they just can’t support terrorists
De facto, arresting 80 year old women for holding signs is always going to look authoritarian. They're not exactly the type to strap on a vest but we have to pretend we dont know what a terrorist looks like.
6 replies →
This is a jury trial in progress, there are rules against prejudicing such. Genuinely interested readers can read a trial report here: https://realmedia.press/the-filton-trial-4/
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West.
Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
> As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots.
I am a Brit and I object to a lot of the expansion of powers that have happened in Britain during successive governments since the "War on Terror" started which was pretty might right after 9/11. I would like to see much of this legislation repealed. However that is unlikely to happen.
> The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist
Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
As for sensationalist, possibly. But they seem to highlight genuine concerns that have been raised by other organisations.
> The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
All you are doing in this speil is repeating talking points found on the news sites. I find this sort of stuff tiresome to read. I don't care about what happens in the US generally. It is literally on the other side of an ocean. I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
I completely agree with criticism of expansion of government powers in some contexts but my original point was about gaining perspective and avoiding sensationalism, which I argue the article and many comments here fall into.
> Why does it matter if they are a anarchist organisation or not?
'Freedom' and government authority coexist to some extent (tax is an imposition for example, but funds a military which should ensure ongoing freedom, etc.). The article needs to be read on its own merits of course but the organisation who provide it adhere to a different value judgement about where the balance of authority and anarchy should lie in society than most would agree with. That's a helpful data point I think, even if only a small part of the story.
> I do care about the OSA, I do care about Digital ID, I do care about the expansion of government powers that I believe are unjustified.
You'll be relieved to see that the compulsory element of Digital ID (for work) has been removed at least (reported widely in press outlets yesterday evening).
1 reply →
As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that you're a Brit and that your method of drawing superficial conclusions about the other participants is sound. Perhaps we are both bots here.
Instead of attacking the other participants for not being as enlightened as you may be and the source of the information, a more appreciated approach would've been to address the substance of the article.
For example, what are some "intelligence agencies and police networks in the West" that are routinely performing those kind of programmes, and why should we conclude that all of them are doing that? Are those programmes identical to the UK's "homicide prediction project", as it was originally called? Are there better legal frameworks for such programmes in other countries (say, a Constitution), or at least more democratic oversight than in the UK? Perhaps some sources that document such a conclusion would help.
You speak of lack of perspective from the commenters here, but haven't yet provided an informed one either.
> The UK is far more free than the US
Trump and his oligarchs aside, why do you believe that the UK is "far more free" than the US? And how exactly do you define that freedom? I'm no big fan of the US in general (mainly due to their neoliberal and religious culture), but to deny that they've enjoyed a variety of freedoms would be provably wrong. Different organisations measure these differently and the UK is generally not "far more free" in that sense, only marginally so - again, it depends on the frameworks employed. [0] [1]
If the definition of freedom includes democratic accountability + equal political power + civil liberties in practice: neither country is doing that great; the UK's unelected Lords/sovereignty/executive dominance and First Past the Post voting system are undeniable flaws - many if not most European countries don't have that. It's also entirely true that US has deeper structural distortions (malapportionment + Electoral College + gerrymandering + life-tenured apex judiciary).
Overall, the UK tends to score higher on broad civil-liberty/democracy assessments, but not by as far as you seem to imply. And judging by the recent developments, one wouldn't be entirely wrong to conclude that these freedoms are actively being eroded (which is what the article says). Let's not forget the deep drive of successive governments to privatise key public services which objectively gave the UK an advantage in terms of freedoms compared to US - for example universal healthcare, which works as a social safety net and effectively offering higher practical freedom of life choices for most citizens.
> levels of inequality
The UK has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. [2]
"OECD figures suggest that the UK has among the highest levels of income inequality in the European Union (as measured by the Gini coefficient), although income inequality is slightly lower than in the United States." [3] "The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries." [4]
"The key findings are that the UK has high levels of income inequality compared with similar developed economies, with a (pre-pandemic) Gini coefficient that is the second highest in the G7 (after the US), and is more unequal than all the countries in the EU other than Lithuania and Latvia." [5]
[0] https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=all&year=2025
[1] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/United-Kingdom/liberal_demo...
[2] https://www.understandingglasgow.com/glasgow-indicators/econ...
[3] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/27/uk-spends...
[5] https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Tre...
Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.
Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.
Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:
France: 31.8 Germany: 32.4 UK: 32.4 USA: 41.4
(https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI)
By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.
I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).
Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.
2 replies →
I wonder how many people are actually from the UK on these threads. There is always comments about "diversity" and "grooming rape gangs" and how everything labour do is bad, or about how the UK is an oppressive regime or somehow fundamentally anti-freedom. This always reads like fear mongering / Russian psy-ops propaganda to me.
I have many bones to pick with the UK government but a large number of people sprinting to these talking points at every chance they get is highly suspicious to me.
I'm also surprised by the tone of this thread. HN discussions usually involve more nuanced debate, but many comments here are hitting very specific talking point. Comparisons to China, sarcastic references to 'diversity,' grooming gangs, that I more commonly see in certain Reddit communities rather than in typical HN discussions about tech policy or civil liberties.
There are legitimate concerns about UK surveillance, protest policing, and speech regulations worth discussing. But when the same cluster of talking points appears with this particular framing, it makes me wonder about the makeup of who's participating in this thread versus other HN discussions.
[flagged]
"We detected that you are about to commit a crime. Here is provisional 2-years sentence shall you decide to go ahead with the plans. It includes free single room, 3 meals a day, gym, library, daily walks and company of people like yourself. You will also receive counselling and you could take up a free course to advance your skills in desired field and post-release support for a year."
This is the end result of Finland annexing the UK, lol
I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc.
Up until this point it was mostly that they would gladly fuck the other countries up but treated their own people way better than the other camp. But this difference is disappearing.
Of course there is always North Korea and other totally fucked up regimes they could use to compare and look white and fluffy
Iran used machine guns in protesters
China used tanks against students
Russia still has gulags for people who criticise the government
You’re incredibly naive if you think they’re the same as us
While you have a point, you are looking at this the wrong way.
20 years ago if you had told someone you needed to get a face scan or upload your ID to view certain websites or that you might get your messages and emails scanned in case you send something that the government deems suspicious to someone else, people would have laughed at you.
Yet as we are seeing currently this is what is happening slowly but surely.
Yes, the UK government is not gunning down protesters in the street but can you say with certainty that the screws are not being tightened and that the so called western values of freedom of speech are not being eroded systematically year after year under the pretense of safety?
It seems to me that every western government is looking at what China and Russia are doing and instead of staying true to their values, they are actually trying to figure out how to roll out the same exact measures in the west.
Will we see Gulags in the west make a comeback? Most likely not but in terms of freedom of speech and online privacy rights, we are seeing clearly a rollback and if we do nothing to stop it, we will end up like China with governments looking at everything we say and write on our phone and computer and that is unacceptable especially when these measures are cowardly disguised as 'safety" measures.
1 reply →
>"You’re incredibly naive if you think they’re the same as us"
And you are "incredibly" inattentive (considering the best case). I did not say they're "the same as us", I said they're heading there. Depending on what particular country we are talking about mileage can vary.
> I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc.
When arbitrary extrajudicial killings happen at some scale on a regular basis?
I heard Boeing whistleblowers died unexpectedly.
Two prominent Boeing whistleblowers, John Barnett (died March 2024) and Joshua Dean (died April 2024), have died in recent times, raising significant concerns about retaliation and safety at the aerospace giant; Barnett died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after battling Boeing in a retaliation lawsuit, while Dean died from a sudden infection after raising quality concerns, with his family suspecting foul play despite official rulings. Barnett's death was ruled a suicide, though his family's wrongful death suit claims Boeing's harassment caused his distress, while Dean's death followed rapid illness, with his family also alleging misconduct by his employer, Spirit Aerosystems, and Boeing.
4 replies →
'Moral ground' was the product of a controlled media environment.
Dobleplusgood.
People don't like to admit it, but JD Vance was right about Europe. And the UK is up there with the worst of us. I am European.
where is my minority report?
[dead]
[flagged]
Between arresting grannies for saying they support Palestinian Action and using armed officers to apprehend comedy writers I doubt they'll have the time.
That’s just the way “freedom news” is framing it.
Social movements don’t just happen from grassroots these days. They’re seeded by foreign states. A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting. If you don’t provide an id you get a limited number of views.
And I don’t see anything wrong with a preventative system in principle, we should be able to join up social services information with policing, because we have had cases where a mass murderer has been known to multiple services.
Edit: probably not ids but a token that verifies my nationality would be enough.
> A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting
It’s strange times when even the comments on posts about government overreach are calling for more government overreach and limitations on speech and privacy.
Do you really want to have to verify your ID to post anything online, including HN?
And I am willing to bet that on top of the chilling effect on regular people, it will only act as an inconvenience for the bad actors as they will find ways to circumvent it. Controlling the online discourse is far too valuable, they are not going to just shrug and give up because the government puts up a barrier.
2 replies →
Yeah it might be just be a verified token to say I’m citizen of the country. Doesn’t have to be my actual id. The OSA is a crappy implementation.