I'm pretty cynical about both the current and previous government, but it feels like there's been a shift since Labour came into power. Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back. There was chatter but it was met with resistance. Now it feels like the discussion is being squashed and there are invisible forces at work.
If by some miracle the UK and EU agree on a new Youth Mobility Scheme I'm out of here.
I had hoped Labour would roll back the anti-protest legislation, snooper's charter, internet censorship and voter ID laws.
After all, it was mostly left-wing climate protesters getting arrested, and young (more left-leaning) voters being prevented from voting.
Turns out no, quite the opposite - if anything, Labour thinks these laws didn't go far enough.
With hindsight, it was naive of me to think the former Director of Public Prosecutions would share my scepticism about expanding the powers of the system the Director of Public Prosecutions stands at the head of.
That's basically how the news, including the BBC, tend to report on these laws. "Some think they are good. Others think they don't go far enough. Experts say risk remains." Never ever do they interview the EFF.
Read this around 2007ish, shocked by what the previous labour government did, so I had zero hope this lot would be any different and it's worse than I thought possible.
Labour generally has a "paternalistic authoritarianism" to they way they govern, but this is dialed to 11.
Quite a mistake to think politicians would act to better anyone's lives, including those who helped elect them.
That‘s not my impression at all about the UK. They are known for mass CCTV surveillance since more than a decade. There’s even a wikipedia page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
There is a Wikipedia page on surveillance in Austria, and the US. Not sure what your point is, it's not like most of the west isn't under surveillance or that the UK is more monitored than other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
Or are you implying that Germany doesn't have any surveillance because it doesn't have a dedicated English Wikipedia page?
There is a lot of rhetoric aimed at the UK, and I'm not saying it's great, but there is a lot of convenient omission on other countries actions.
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...
Hanlon's razor applies here. The truth is most people simply don't care because they don't understand, and don't care to understand.
You can sometimes infer what's going on from looking at the before and after conditions, much like how particle physicists infer events from what particles flew out, but not seeing the event itself.
Lol. That's how democracy (doesn't) works. The elected people only care about the wishes of the NGO that pushed them in power.
Better luck next time.
"Anarcho-Tyranny"
From Gemini:
"The concept was coined in the early 1990s by political theorist Samuel Francis. He described it as a state where the government performs its basic duty of public safety poorly (allowing "anarchy" among criminals) but creates a web of bureaucracy and surveillance to control the innocent (imposing "tyranny" on the law-abiding)."
This is exactly I how feel.
It's not anarcho-tyranny. This is simply the end game of an ever-growing State that has become bloated, greedy and unaccountable to the public it is supposed to serve.
One example of this is how the most recent interview Starmer has been given at the time of writing was to the newly-promoted politics correspondent of Sky News, the spouse of one of his most loyal Labour MPs, formerly an assistant editor of The Spectator, a popular politics magazine that promotes the abolition of inheritance tax, reductions in the age of consent, the introduction of qualified immunity from war crimes for the armed forces, the introduction of civil forfeiture, the return of the death penalty and holocaust denial. Unless an outside force compels other factions in UK politics to act, the media faction will likely replace Starmer with some other NEC loyalist who avoids flubbing line delivery on camera sometime this year. After all, the Starmer government has set a record in UK politics for the fastest decline in polling numbers and Starmer has personally put out the message in news briefings that removing him from office in 2026 would be a grave mistake for the party.
What I do know and is more and more apparent to me, is that the current systems of world relating to governance, here in the UK, no longer work. Not fit for purpose. Broken beyond repair. Scary.
Utter nonsense. They are the very definition of populism. Johnson appealing to the hoi polloi with the wishful thinking of Brexit, Starmer running his government on opinion polls rather than pragmatism and a modicum of consistency, to the point of turning Labour into Tory-lite selling its soul just to capture a little more mind share, but effectively becoming hateful for both sides.
After the recent X CSAM generation arguments and the potential for X to get blocked in the UK, it seems like more people than I expected will defend it.
I don't think anyone is defending it. It's all astroturf.
X installs went UP the in UK when the gov said "X allows you to generate child porn, lets block it". Thousands of brits go "free child porn on X better check it out"
We've seen the X/CSAM issue this week and both the government and regulator are clearly unwilling to stand up to American big-tech.
Leave your devices at home and expect zero privacy rights.
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc...
