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1. zapthe+zf[view] [source] 2025-07-28 05:54:54
>>mmaria+(OP)
Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically is taking action - is the issue bigger there, or are they just more aware of and willing to act on it.
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2. cs02rm+Cm[view] [source] 2025-07-28 07:05:59
>>zapthe+zf
The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're seeing those with a few quid to rub together leave, but as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income.

On the NHS, I tried for years to push for improvements to switch to digital cancer screening invitations after they missed my mother (offering to build the software for free), which is now happening, but suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here. My sister who works in NHS DEI hasn't spoken to me since publishing a book on it.

Every time someone with the finances, vision and ability leaves I think the situation gets a little bit worse, it increases the proportion of people remaining willing to put up with all of it. Anecdotally, many of my friends have already left, some of the older generation want to leave but feel tied in. My flight out is in 6 weeks. Good riddance, no doubt.

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3. areofo+R51[view] [source] 2025-07-28 13:49:00
>>cs02rm+Cm
> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling)

> just mentioning increased immigration

One of these seems like the solution to the other.

> as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income

Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.

I started working with folks from the UK right at the start when social media really took off, and I personally think that what ails the UK is the same as what ails the world. Too much social media.

The UK has always been an empire in decline, but the wheels didn't come off until everyone became glued to feeds. It's Garbage In, Garbage Out. If your view of reality is driven by stuff that you see online, it's a distorted lens which then leads to distorted decision making that then leads to authoritarian creep.

Just my 2¢.

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4. system+1Q1[view] [source] 2025-07-28 18:24:28
>>areofo+R51
> I started working with folks from the UK right at the start when social media really took off, and I personally think that what ails the UK is the same as what ails the world. Too much social media.

There have been a number of public scandals regarding immigrant crimes, along with subsequent anti-immigrant riots started via social media and people being sent to jail for internet posts. Social media seems to be more of accelerant for social unrest than than the cause. For me (an outsider) observing the situation, it seems to be mainly caused by immigration.

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5. notaha+FR1[view] [source] 2025-07-28 18:36:18
>>system+1Q1
Many of the areas most upset by immigration barely see any immigrants, whilst many of the most persistent spreaders of rumours about terrible things caused by immigration to the UK don't actually live there. Of course, it isn't just social media that obsesses over immigrants in the UK (and many other places), mainstream print media and politicians are pretty obsessed with them too.
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6. system+RW1[view] [source] 2025-07-28 19:01:23
>>notaha+FR1
Personally, I would rate the grooming gangs scandal as one of the worse things that happened to a western nation in decades. It literally made me sick to stomach when I read the details. I think the obsession is somewhat justified.
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7. notaha+j02[view] [source] 2025-07-28 19:14:51
>>system+RW1
Sure, these guys were disgusting scumbags, but they weren't immigrants https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2dxj570n21o

News coverage of child grooming convictions in the month of their conviction was dominated by a different group of scumbags who were convicted of similar crimes up to a decade earlier though, which underlines my point about obsessions quite neatly

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8. system+042[view] [source] 2025-07-28 19:32:25
>>notaha+j02
THOUSANDS of young girls were sexually exploited for YEARS and the government did nothing about it because they didn't want to appear to be racist. There is no equivalence with any of the "average" sex crimes that happen in modern advanced nations. There really is no equivalence with anything that has happened recently - it is a crime unique in its depravity.
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9. notaha+f62[view] [source] 2025-07-28 19:44:27
>>system+042
No credible account suggests the Rochdale grooming gangs' victims numbered in the thousands.

Implying that the recently -convicted gang who spent several years hosting "rape nights" targeting minors in Glasgow I've linked to was somehow less depraved than people of Pakistani descent doing the same thing in Rochdale years earlier because they weren't members of an ethnic minority does kind of underline my point.

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10. jlawso+hA2[view] [source] 2025-07-28 22:39:35
>>notaha+f62
Not just Rochdale. You forgot Rotherham, Telford, Oldham, Oxford, Derby, Bradford, Huddersfield, Keighley, Halifax, Bristol, and Newcastle.

Your second point is a hallucination on your part. Nobody is saying it's bad because they're minorities. We're saying it's especially bad because the government was implicated - they very people charged with keeping children safe sacrificed them for political reasons, by the thousands, for years, and still are. That, combined with the scale of crimes by the Pakistani and other rapists and the acceptance these crimes received in their community, form a different type of crime - a massive crime committed by authorities and a whole community over years. That's what's so especially horrifying.

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