https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-sc...
I've come across various sources that lean center-left, note, CENTER-left, saying this. I think there might be something to it.
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...
[0] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/of-cou...
You’re posting an article by someone with eccentric views on a lot of topics and an anti-multiculturalist agenda to advance. (For example, they believe that Rishi Sunak is not English.)
It's not even funny that you can trace almost any person responsible for the deterioration of human rights in Western society to one of the WEF alumni or associates.
These supernatural institutions and interest groups should be made illegal if we want to continue as a civilization.
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)
Johnson's incredibly colourful reaction to Starmers trade deal, in that he was 'acting like an orange-ball chewing manical gimp', speaks volumes about the discourse around Starmer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ld3qkz
Hislop is particularly scathing, albeit cynically pragmatic, since Starmers appointment - "“Keir Starmer is the man who likes to sit on the fence unless you don’t like fences and then maybe he can find a hedge, or if you don’t like hedges he’ll find a wall."
“People have suggested Keir Starmer is very boring, but I think that’s partly his superpower, in that being interesting in the way his predecessor was manages to lose you elections.
“You have to be careful when you dismiss people as boring. Everyone thought John Major was boring, but then you had him for two elections.”
https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
God bless Managed Democracy.
20 years ago we already knew the US government was watching everything.
You haven’t been paying attention.
https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2021/0526/12239...
Remember also that when Sunak stepped down, Priti was put forward for leader. If she had played off her Zionist aspirations just a few years later she'd be right in the current newscycle re proscribed organisations and 'domestic terrorism' charges in the UK, and possibly in the running for the big chair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priti_Patel#Meetings_with_Isra...
Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population, which is not that common in comparable countries. If that population were to be removed from the statistics, the murder rate in the USA would drop significantly.
> According to the FBI 2019 Uniform Crime Report, African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1%, and "Other" 3% in cases where the race was known. Including homicide offenders where the race was unknown, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, "Other" 2.1%, and "Unknown" 29.3%[48]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
As far as it is known, Kelly walked a mile (1.6 km) from his house to Harrowdown Hill. It appears he ingested up to 29 tablets of co-proxamol, an analgesic drug; he also cut his left wrist with a pruning knife he had owned since his youth, severing his ulnar artery. Forensic analysis established that neither the knife nor the blister packs showed Kelly's fingerprints on their surfaces [0].
and a letter to the editor:
As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide.
Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood.
The ambulance team reported that the quantity of blood at the scene was minimal and surprisingly small. It is extremely difficult to lose significant amounts of blood at a pressure below 50-60 systolic in a subject who is compensating by vasoconstricting. To have died from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood - it is unlikely that he would have lost more than a pint.
Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Although levels of Co-Proxamol in the blood were higher than therapeutic levels, Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
We dispute that Dr Kelly could have died from haemorrhage or from Co-Proxamol ingestion or from both. The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, has spoken recently of resuming the inquest into his death. If it re-opens, as in our opinion it should, a clear need exists to scrutinise more closely Dr Hunt's conclusions as to the cause of death.
David Halpin - Specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery C Stephen Frost - Specialist in diagnostic radiology Searle Sennett [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)#D... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2004/jan/27/guardian...
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_monarchy_of_the...
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...
BBC Caught Altering Budget Article to Be More Favourable to Labour - https://order-order.com/2024/11/01/bbc-caught-altering-budge...
When Ivor Caplin, the former Labour MP that, among other things, attacked Musk for talking about Pakistani rape gangs, was arrested for pedophilia [1], this is the article they published - no photo, no name, no party affiliation, and no followup article - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg45y4r0yngo
BBC omits identity of Nigerian murderer from article about how he killed his wife [2,3], making it entirely about "gendered violence" instead. Readers can't make the incorrect inference if you simply withhold information from them.
BBC omits all criticism of Starmer from their reporting on his meeting with Trump [4].
The famous Trump capitol speech splicing: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-revea...
When Farage's private bank account was closed due to his politics, the BBC first simply took the bank's word that this was entirely due to financial considerations. When Farage obtained internal documents of that bank, explicitly saying he met financial criteria for an account, but it was closed despite this due to his politics, the BBC issued a correction article trying to imply his politics were merely "also" considered [5].
BBC uses all-white stock photos to warn about obnoxiously loud phone use on trains [6].
But makes sure to use a racially-diverse cast for the 1066 Battle of Hastings [7].
This is not the only such instance, nor a coincidence, by their own admission: Moffat even talks about the idea he mentions above — the excuse of “historical accuracy” that some people often give to justify an all-white cast — “[W]e’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’” [8,9]
"Piers Wenger said failing to update the classics with diverse characters would be a dereliction of duty" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/24/bbc-drama-boss-d...
They cropped a photo to remove a weapon from a protester: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/bbc-cropping-out-weapon-black-...
They instruct white parents to teach their children about white privilege, and to examine their biases if their toddler has only white friends: https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/articles/zrgcf82
They had and defended a no-whites-allowed internship (despite BAME-workers already being slightly over-represented at the BBC [10]): https://metro.co.uk/2018/01/19/bbc-criticised-for-banning-wh...
They censor their own shows to be more racially sensitive on re-broadcast - without mentioning it until pressed: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/the-bbc-quietly-censo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Caplin
[2] https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/benalmadena-torremolinos...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyw7g4zxwzo
[4] https://x.com/chrismid/status/1950163250852540547 (contains links to full Trump-Starmer meeting and the BBC articles, on the off chance you don't trust a random tweet)
[5] "On 4 July, the BBC reported Mr Farage no longer met the financial requirements for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. The former UKIP leader later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered." - https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66288464
[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce83p1ej8j7o
[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/07/racially-diverse...
[8] https://www.themarysue.com/steven-moffat-on-doctor-who-diver...
[9] https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/moffat-on-diversity-in-doctor-...
[10] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/670266/BBC-advert-white-pe...
The most empirical and robust study regarding bias was performed by Cardiff University in 2013. Its major finding regarded the dominance of Conservative party political sources in BBC coverage; in coverage of immigration, the EU and religion, they accounted for 49.4% of all source appearances in 2007 and 54.8% in 2012.
The data also showed that the Conservative Party received significantly more airtime than the Labour Party. In 2012, Conservative leader and then Prime Minister David Cameron outnumbered Labour leader Ed Miliband in appearances by a factor of nearly four to one (53 to 15), and governing Conservative cabinet members and ministers outnumbered their Labour counterparts by more than four to one (67 to 15).
In reporting of the EU the dominance was even more pronounced with party political sources accounting for 65% of source appearances in 2007 and 79.2% in 2012.
In strand two (reporting of all topics) Conservative politicians were featured more than 50% more often than Labour ones (24 vs 15) across the two time periods on the BBC News at Six
This is evident right up to the 2019 election - BBC Question Time editing out audience laughter at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's fumbling responses, and soft-shoeing his ascendancy by excusing him from the tender mercies of Andrew Neil - unlike his opposition.
https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-...
On 12 September, Charles addressed parliament as king for the first time. The Metropolitan police called in reinforcements in case of protests. Powlesland, who works nearby, walked from Parliament Square to Downing Street and back with his blank piece of paper. “Then a guy from Norfolk police came up and spoke to me, and that was the video that went viral.” Powlesland recorded the encounter on his phone. “He asked for my details, I asked why and he said, ‘I want to check you’re OK on the Police National Computer.’ I said, ‘I’ve not done anything wrong, so I’m not giving you them.’ I wanted to test it without getting arrested. So I asked, ‘If I wrote “Not my king” on the paper, would I get arrested?’ and he said, ‘Probably, because it would be a breach of the Public Order Act; it would be offensive.’” Was he right? Powlesland laughs. “No! Just having something someone else finds offensive is not a criminal offence because then pretty much anything could be.”
This is from 2024
https://www.thefire.org/news/how-milwaukee-and-chicago-circu...
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.It's certainly not a given that all the 2024 Reform vote would have gone to the Conservatives: a good chunk of it would have likely been disgusted abstention, another chunk to other anti-system parties (mostly of the right fringe, I suspect, but not excluding the Greens despite wild ideological differences), and likely a further (if smaller) chunk to other parties which were simply not the Conservatives (including Labour and the Lib Dems).
Edit: the best analysis on this is likely to be in the latest volume of the long-standing The British General Election of XXXX series, which has just been published online[0]. I haven't had time to look at it yet, though.
All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
By being sloppy with the facts you're only reinforcing Nursie's point that much of the discussion around these issues on HN is based on exaggeration and poorly sourced claims. That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
Painfully accurate.
The fact even Lily Allen, of all people, made a music video about delusional Londoners telling themselves it's all fine, when it's not, speaks volumes, and they're still at it. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYT79tPvLg )
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.
I was under the impression it was not a single incident, but that's great that it wasn't.
The bigger problem, though, was people being arrested for holding up "not my king" or similar signs. According to one site[0], there were 64 arrests that day. I don't think it matters that no charges were filed or whatever, what matters is they were taken at the time for expressing an opinion.
> All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.
That's also good to know. I should have been clearer, but I meant within the context of my experience online. I also don't know that they are truly in denial, it just seems they are overly defensive about it and want to point out the US is worse in various ways.
> That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.
I'm misinterpreting anything, and certainly not in this discussion. In past discussions, closer to the coronation, there were Brits being very active in downplaying the arrests, that to me would seem to be denying there was an issue. If it was widely reported in British media as a bad thing, it would seem these particular people being in denial were outliers.
[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...
[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...
In the UK? The police shoot very few people of any colour! Two in 2025: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_police_in_...
Is there even a bit enough sample to draw such conclusions (let alone that correlation does not imply causation)
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).
> Police Scotland said the 22-year-old woman arrested outside St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Sunday had been arrested for “breach of the peace”.
> The woman was holding a sign reading “f** imperialism, abolish monarchy”, but the sign is not understood to be the reason for her arrest
> 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.
And look at you - making incorrect assertions about both free speech zones (they are still used) and your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
It's sad that you're not going to walk away from this discussion thinking "Huh, maybe I wasn't very well informed, it's pretty terrible in both countries so calling out the UK as significantly worse might actually be wrong" but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
By the way, here's another example of the use free speech zones and the arrests of people for having their say -
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/12/protesters-keep-gett...
"Since state officials created a “free speech zone,” local police continue to make arrests that have “no apparent purpose other than just intimidating people away from that line, and sending a message that they’re going to be controlling the area with force,” said civil rights attorney Joe DiCola."
Suppression of protest is unfortunately a popular thing for governments in a lot of places right now. It's as bad (if not worse) in Australia, where I live, especially in New South Wales where they seem determined to find a pretext to ban any and all marches.
And to make it absolutely clear - I do not support any of it nor am I defending the actions of the UK authorities. Also not a monarchist, that family of parasites needs to be stripped of all powers, lands and assets stolen from the British and other peoples, and I was disgusted by what the British authorities did to suppress dissent leading up to the coronation of King big-ears.
Why are you claiming that members of Palestine Action are the only people being arrested in the UK for speech? That is not true. Low-effort, bad-faith trolling contributes nothing to the discussion.
https://archive.ph/20250906150110/https://www.telegraph.co.u...
They were/are nice cars. I did dream of buying a Lotus Carlton, but unless a few million falls into my lap it will remain a dream :D
> I mean it's true and it does work for the most part. The bans on knives, drain cleaner etc have reduced the number of these kinds of crimes especially in London. It's hard to argue against something when a lot of this kind of policymaking is effective
Does it? The stats seem to suggest the opposite.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-lo...
> The increase in knife crime witnessed in London has occurred alongside a general increase in overall crime throughout England and Wales. In 2022/23, there were approximately 6.74 million crime offences across England and Wales, compared with just over four million ten years earlier. During a similar time period, the number of knife homicides also increased, and reached 282 in 2017/18, compared with 186 in 2014/15. Due to strict gun laws in the United Kingdom, firearms are rarely used to commit homicides, with knives or other sharp instruments being used in over 46 percent of homicides in 2023/24.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2019/dec/03/chun...
I have to also laugh at Channel 4 (decidedly not the BBC in the first instance) putting some small thumb on the scales of justice re: Nigel Farage and the Reform party generally - the biggest political and institutional frauds outside of the Reese-Moggs clan.
My favourite prominent example: footage originally taken from GB News was used by a local Reform Party to falsely claim a rival MP was abusive to Nigel Farage in Parliament
https://inews.co.uk/news/mp-falsely-accused-calling-farage-a...
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...
Also, hospitals have got better at treating knife injuries in lots of places, not just London. This would not explain why London has a low homicide rate per capita compared to lots of other cities.
People in the US get killed at a higher rate than all European countries by vehicles.