Comment by room271
2 days ago
Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.
Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.
Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:
France: 31.8 Germany: 32.4 UK: 32.4 USA: 41.4
(https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI)
By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.
I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).
Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.
You make some good points. And thanks for taking the time to provide some sources and more nuance. I believe that overall we agree on the main points.
Re: the source (your suspicion is warranted but only marginally) - I've read numerous articles on freedomnews.org.uk over the years that were well-written, well-argued, and supported by research, at least as much as it can be expected from a magazine. It's not a scientific journal, they don't don't have a strict set of editorial guidelines (the current one is rather informal albeit still informed and focused [0]), and the article was published under the Comment section as an opinion piece.
That said, the publication has some serious history behind it; it started in 1886 by volunteers [1][2], it's arguably the longest running left periodical in Britain [9], and it's run as a cooperative / controlled by its volunteers - no small feat. It's the oldest anarchist press in the UK (and the English speaking world) and still runs the largest anarchist bookshop (one of the few in the world). [3] During the WW2 the paper played a role in disseminating the real but dismissed opposition against the war which led to a major free-speech prosecution case [10][11]. Because of its longevity it has inevitably documented a good chunk of Britain's late history, albeit from a perspective that was deeply hated by the government, the monarchy, and the industrialists [12]. (I personally see this as a positive rather than a reason to mistrust it.) Their bookshop was destroyed in an air raid in 1941 along with (critically) the remaining back-catalogue of early Freedom Press pamphlets that had been preserved up to that point [2]; it has also survived a bombing by a British neo-fascist group in 1993 and an arson attack in 2013 [13][14]. They are an institution.
Although not exactly a standard-defining magazine - they couldn't be anyway considering the philosophy they sport, they're entirely transparent about the radical perspective they bring to the table, and they're an independent media organisation funded by readers. We have to consider that fact that the majority of mainstream media players claim impartiality but they often instruct their journalists not to cross various (journalistic and non-journalistic) lines, censor critical voices, or are simply not transparent about the fact that, as businesses, they can't afford to be completely impartial if that upsets their clients (advertisers) or their owners. Another view point is at the very least welcome, even if it's not along the same lines.
I'm not looking to convince you that you should read it but I believe that you may change your opinion of it as an entirely untrusted source once I lay out a few more things.
Societies change through all kinds of contributions and actions, most of which remain unseen or unknown. A good number of famous thinkers have contributed to the magazine during its long life, many of which that we quote today as clear-minded, coherent social critics or analysts. Whether we like them or not is less relevant, what matters is that they were influent and their actions and writings have directly influenced or contributed to the social reality of today. To put it differently, FN is one of those semi-obscure magazines that has influenced the influencers.
* Peter Kropotkin (he founded Freedom News) - later influenced Aldous Huxley, Murray Bookchin, Kirkpatrick Sale, Henry Mintzberg [4][8], Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin [5]. The idea of mutualism comes from him and it's one of the most important correctives to the "all competition" misunderstanding. [6][7]
* William Morris, Michael Tippett, T. S. Eliot, Benjamin Britten [1][2]
* George Bernard Shaw, Max Nettlau [8]
* Herbert Read, Alex Comfort, Colin Ward [9]
* Emma Goldman, George Orwell, Ethel Mannin [14]
A good number of specialists, thinkers, professors, and writers still contribute to the magazine: Dr Chrys Papaioannou, Antti Rautiainen, Carlos Taibo, Owen Clayton, Spencer Beswick, John P. Clark etc.
[0] https://libcom.org/article/news-report-writing-guide
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
[2] https://freedomnews.org.uk/freedom-press-history/ & https://freedompress.org.uk/history/
[3] https://freedomnews.org.uk/about/
[4] https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/peter-kropotkin%25E...
[5] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joe-peabody-peter-kr...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(biology)
[7] https://daily.jstor.org/peter-kropotkin-the-prince-of-mutual...
[8] https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/freedom-press-arc...
[9] https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/activism-solidarity/freed...
[10] https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-court-england-april-19...
[11] https://freedomnews.org.uk/2021/04/17/freedom-press-and-the-...
[12] https://freedomnews.org.uk/2017/05/25/towards-a-timeline-of-...
[13] https://freedomnews.org.uk/2013/02/01/freedom-firebombed/
[14] https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/1229-london-anar...
Thanks too for the detailed reply. You've made a good case and persuaded me to take a closer look at their reporting in the future!