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.
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.
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 only way out of this is if you successfully blame $marginalised_group for the peoples problems. Or spend decades undoing the damage, but nobody ever gets decades in power.
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.
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.
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.
(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)
That being said - the blame lies squarely with Labour here. I have a gut feel a lot of it has to do with donors to the Tony Blair Institute.
The woman who was shot was a democrat without any guns, maybe if she'd had a gun she wouldn't have been shot.
† Local in the sense of being the ones who turn up, my guess is that a good number of them travel by car from quite some distance, personally I live five minutes walk away.
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.
Dominic Cummings had a bunch of interview appearances online. His experience in office when he was working with Johnson (and many Ministers in general) is that they don't actually understand what they can and can't do in the job. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar situation is present under Starmer.
I appreciate this in an anecdotal but I've spoken to quite a few people I know in my family, that saw it as their civil duty to vote and they told all told me some variation of "there is nobody worth voting for", "I don't think it matters who I vote for".
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.”
He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
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.
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...
Not exactly. I think you need to listen to the interviews.
Dominic Cummins has solid rationale for why he believes what he believes. I would need to listen to them again to remember what he said, but what you are describing was too simplistic.
Also his opinions on Brexit have nothing to do with some of the things he said about how COVID was handled.
> He changed his mind on Johnson, but he seems to be of the view that nothing works and that there is nothing for it but to burn everything down and start again according to the Dominic Cummings vision.
I don't remember him saying that exactly.
That... speaks volumes of the citizens of the said country.
I've viewed and read an interminable number of interviews with Cummings.
He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out), b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected, and c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.
I don't want to start another Brexit debate or even take position on it. However I'd like to point out that the key with Brexit is the plan on what to do afterwards and that is what has been completely lacking.
Whatever one's opinion of Cummings, he did put forward a plan and that plan was never attempted (probably too bold, shall we say, for politicians to touch it). I am not commenting on whether that would have worked or not, but at least he put forward a plan and strategy. On the other hand, Bojo's "plan" for Brexit seemed to have been limited to becoming PM...
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...
But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff as I have been for a couple of decades now is always incredible. Take the beam from your own eyes. And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
I don't see ICE prowling "the cops don't come serve a warrant here with anything less than a SWAT team" parts of New Orleans or St. Louis.
Stop thinking about this based on indoctrinated emotion and politics. Think about it in terms of an all out war and "how do I force my enemy to expend resources not toward his goals".
Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an AGTM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. Making any potential target substantially more prickly to a potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone that records things the government does not like or a media platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the masses.
The idea that any cranky old man or mentally on the edge person might just snap and put a bullet in your favorite bespoke enforcer (i.e. not a cop but someone who hands out state backed fines all the same) puts a huge damper on your ability to deploy those people for example. The risk that your informants might get clapped increases the cost of your informants for like results, etc, etc. And when you game it out to it's ends what it comes down to is that the population doing the subjugating might simply not be rich enough or motivated enough to have or be willing to allocate the resources needed to do the job.
This is a large part of why drugs won the war on drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a couple cops it would've gone on way longer.
>(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 semtex wouldn't have gotten anywhere useful if the Brits could just walk into wherever all willy nilly chasing down every lead in search of it. Bringing enough credible threat of violence to force their enemy to actually behave like a proper occupying force burning money and political credibility as a result limited the Brit's ability engage (at the right price) in the kind of police action they needed to catch the bombs.
If they could've just sent pairs of cops after every lead in an "oi you got a license for that meme" manner they'd have dredged up all the semtex and none of it would've made it to London.
I don't think there has to be any negative motive. I'm not from the US or the UK but have lived in both countries, so feel I can be somewhat objective. What's going on in both countries is disturbing to me, but they have differences with what they are doing.
> But go on, tell me about how “free speech zones” are meaningfully different to this. You won’t be arrested so long as you stay in your zone down the street and round the corner and out of sight.
That hasn't been a thing for a long time. There have been nationwide protests the last few days not restricted to any kind of 'free speech zone'.
Consider what you are trying to defend: holding up a blank sign. Are you really OK with that? You really think that is reasonable?
> The UK has serious problems, but reading Americans catastrophising over this stuff
Pointing out a legitimate concern is not catastrophising anything.
> And stop believing lies about the streets of London being a war zone.
I never mentioned anything like that.
It’s still the law, was expanded under Obama and is used widely. It is used to control dissent at events where protest would be unsightly, much as the UK incident you brought up.
> Consider what you are trying to defend:
Consider that I didn’t defend it.
Arresting people for holding up a blank sign is very different and much worse.
> Consider that I didn’t defend it.
Do you agree it was a problem?
It’s possible to move through this to a place of stability. After all, China only had to kill 15-55 million people in the Great Leap Forward and a couple thousand more in 1989. Today they are fairly stable and prosperous, even with tight controls on information. Perhaps the UK will have a similar path!
On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight.
It’s exactly the same use of police in concealment of dissent by the state.
> Do you agree it was a problem
Of course, it’s fucking awful. It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
This is my very point - the UK is used as some sort of out-there example of Orwellian repression, but the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
It’s in this thread. We have your assertions above, and below we have someone decrying how unimaginable it would have been for a government to attempt to wholesale spy on people’s communications two decades ago, seemingly completely unaware of the activities of the NSA in AT&T and other companies’ data infrastructure in the US, revealed in 2006.
It’s a weird mix of jingoism and ignorance.
Everyone in the US agrees with the inequalities and segregation and find it acceptable that an individual has to become a predator to survive because they don't find it acceptable to help each other on a governmental scale.
Some countries have worse inequalities than the US but they don't think they need guns to have freedom in their daily lives.
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...
You are not being genuine here IMO, and this seems to be a case of the very tribalism I spoke of. The two are not remotely the same. One is restricting a protest to a zone. The other is punishing people for what they are saying, even when what they are saying is a blank piece of cardboard.
> It’s your contention that “nothing like this ever happened in the US” that I took issue with - it does and it’s entirely routine.
> ...
> the US, often painted in contrast as some sort of bastion, albeit a troubled one, is usually doing exactly the same damn thing.
Can you cite an example of people in the US being arrested for holding up a blank piece of cardboard?
> It’s a weird mix of jingoism and ignorance.
This only describes your behavior.
I can't imagine it's paid work because what would be the point? It's not like he is influencing anyone's opinions.
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-...
This is the same BBC that's put Nigel Farage on Question Time more than any other politician
Or frequently gives a platform to the various think tanks of the Tufton St mafia
If you believe the most relevant political division in the UK is Labour vs Tory, then it does all seem a bit random.
Anyone can propose a brave or bold course of action. It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.
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.”
Have you considered that by choosing different time periods you get different results.
Maybe the BBC bends the knee to whoever is calling the shots, that's what it looks like to me.
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.
This is from 2024
https://www.thefire.org/news/how-milwaukee-and-chicago-circu...
The point clearly stands that had Reform not been a thing, 2024 would have been a conservative landslide.
What we got was a Labour landslide, what we should have got was some coalition.
Increasingly I see people offering simplistic solutions that don’t even pass basic smell tests.
And then when you point out the obvious flaws the response is that you just have to be brave or take a risk.
But I do agree - we seem to be in a world full of intractable problems and doing something may be better than nothing.
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.
Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
> Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime
Of course it would - see the reduction in gun violence in countries where this has been implemented.
> 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
Oh. You're one of those.
It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
The statements you have made don't really line up with the interviews I've listened to.
The context around the events and what his involvement was and was not, is important.
You are leaving out key information that he mentioned in many interview appearances.
> He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out)
Without re-litigating everything. It may have been different if the politicians and those that worked for them hadn't frustrated the process. I was genuinely disgusted by the attitudes that many of the politicians had after the Leave won. That was my interpretation of what happened. Your obviously differs.
It also says nothing about the validity of his other statements, which is what I was referring to.
> b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected
Yes, but the way you are talking about it is omitting events both before and after the 2019 General Election.
Theresa May had been ousted by the Conservative Leadership. Earlier she ran an awful election campaign, squandered a huge lead in the polls and had to form a coalition Government with the DUP to maintain a majority.
Cummins said he was contacted by Johnson because Johnson had a minority government and couldn't call a re-election. His first job was to get Johnson out of that Quagmire, then prepare for re-election. He decided to help Johnson under certain guarantees / conditions. Which tells me that he didn't actually trust Johnson.
He claims to have been gradually forced out by Carrie Johnson and his team shortly after the election.
If you are being hampered by the Prime Minster's wife on the agenda that you are supposed to implement. It is likely to fail.
I've actually experienced something similar in my career where I was being blocked (for political reasons) by another team. It makes getting anything done impossible.
So there is no reason to believe he is lying, back tracking or retconning events.
This is because his statements about Carrie Johnson's involvement line up with other accounts from other people that I've heard during the time period shortly after his departure.
> c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.
It not about it being an approval or disapproval of his government. Often you must work with people that you would rather not to, to achieve things.
His feelings about the Johnson government doesn't change his the validity of his statements about how Whitehall operate while he was present.
His comments about ossified organisations lines up with my past experience of working in both ossified Public and Private orgs.
His account of the events around COVID match up with the timeline of events, and I re-watched old interviews of him and he hasn't backtracked at all or changed his story around what happened. He has mentioned things he couldn't mention at the time e.g. his residence was broken into and he was advised not to mention this at the time.
I have no reason to not believe him, since his statements match up with both what I have experienced and a known timeline of events.
I think your dislike of Cummins and his involvement with Vote Leave. As a result is clouding your judgement on the validity of his statements about how Boris Johnson behaved and how Whitehall operates.
Generally there is a lot of stuff in his interviews that I've seen that quite honestly changed my opinion of him (which was somewhat negative). I believe he is telling the truth.
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.
Just because a fascist and a communist agree that eating shit is bad, doesn't mean that eating shit is a good idea.
Also not every Reform voter would vote Conservative if Reform didn't exist.
I think that the UK won't solve its issues until it gets a PM with a bold plan and great leadership, whatever side they may come from.
Regarding Cummins, Why exactly? Dominic Cummins is articulate, seems to be quite intelligent and seems to be very fact/data orientated. I've also heard him describe how he would action particular policy.
Therefore I find it hard to believe he had didn't have any idea on how to execute his plans.
BBC News on the web vs BBC News the programme, vs BBC worldwide (which is a seperate org inside the BBC), then there's regional BBC and the prime time talk shows (the hard hitting Andrew Neil and co).
So, when someone says "the BBC is biased against the left" or "the BBC is biased agains the right"; ironically they can both be right, and it's not an indicator of impartiality. It depends on which section of the BBC we're talking about.
And you're totally blind to the bits of the BBC you agree with; you will think those bits are the impartial ones.
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.
And how do you imagine that, exactly? You think that cop was fine shooting her for driving away in panic, but would patiently wait for her to grab a gun? And what would you like a person in her situation to do with the gun? Shoot him? The fact is, pulling a weapon in front of a US cop is begging to be killed on the spot. A common point of advice is that if you're stopped in the US by police, you should never look like you're reaching for anything, because the worst-case penalty for that is death. It instantly escalates the situation to life-or-death for a group of people that is largely already itching to pull the trigger.
* Pro the royal family since it is chartered by them.
* Against Scottish independence since it would lose 10% of its funding.
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)
I was talking about protestors being arrested for holding up signs, he said the same thing happened in the US but his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police in the US, which while very bad is an entirely different issue.
My facts here would have been previous HN discussions that would have been very hard to find.
> I promise you that a lot of the pushback you're getting from Brits is down to the factual inaccuracies and exaggerations in your posts
No, that isn't the case, and you're not in a position to promise that; it's an assumption you're making, and I would ask you to question your motivation for doing so.
In the previous posts I was using as an example discussion the coronation, people were downplaying protestors being arrested for holding up signs. Nothing was being exaggerated, all the facts were accurate as they had just happened - sources were abundant.
I am sure many green voters felt the same way for many years and now they stand a decent chance of getting many seats!
I've already stated my impression of what happened in Parliament leading during that time period, it was obvious that people were being obstructionist and that alone doomed any hope of a positive outcome.
Additionally Britain generally has a problem with politicians believing that the only solution to a problem is banning/regulating things, regardless what the root cause might be. Banning/regulating something requires new legal powers. So more laws.
This been true as far back as I can remember with them talking about banning the Lotus Carlton back in the early 90s because one vehicle the infamous 40RR was used in a spate of ram raids which embarrassed the police. I remember this on the news when I was about 9-10 years old.
I don't vote. There are many reasons I don't vote. However the biggest reason I don't vote is that the whole premise or at least how it is presented to you is false. The way it is presented to you both in school, media etc. is that you are supposed to read the manifesto, consider the candidates arguments and history etc. etc.
People don't do that, they vote for their team. People have their political teams, much like Premiership Football it often comes down to the "Reds vs the Blues" (literally Man U vs Man City).
> 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
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.
My assertion was that "they haven't been a thing", and they haven't. Your sentence implied they were a nationwide issue still, and they very simply haven't been. Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
> your central point about the arrest of a protestor who it turns out wasn't arrested.
At least 64 people were for simply holding up signs saying "not my king". The guy holding up blank paper was intimidated by the cops, which sure, is better than being arrested, but not great.
> 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"
What's sad is you're being the very example of someone being overly defensive about the UK's decline instead of just agreeing these are real issues. This isn't a competition, I think the US is going in a horrible direction as well, andnot once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse' - that's a strawman birthed from your defensiveness.
> but instead believe you were attacked by unreasonable, tribal British people defending authoritiarianism.
I do think you are being tribal and unreasonable, yes.
> But that's arguing on the internet I guess.
Unfortunately, but it's honestly only a minority of people who act like that. Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
I gave you another example from last year, but it was in an edit so you might have missed it.
> Again, the numerous nationwide protests easily demonstrate that point.
Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there? People were arrested for protesting at an event, the coronation. This is the same sort of thing free speech zones have been used to suppress in the US. Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr, but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
> not once did I claim the UK was 'significantly worse'
Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
> being overly defensive about the UK
> Reasonable people wouldn't be this deep into the conversation and would just have agreed, yeah, the British government overreached against protestors and some other examples of overreach appear concerning if indicative of a trend.
> But, nah, let's just defend King and Country without stopping to actually analyze or self-reflect.
Do you have no reading comprehension at all? I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful. The King can go #### himself.
OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
It doesn't really matter though, the point was it hasn't been a national issue in over a decade, and that remains the case.
> Protest marches occur regularly in the UK as well, so that's evidence it's fine there?
The point was people were being arrested in the UK simply for holding up signs. You tried to equate free speech zones with that, but as I said it's an entirely unrelated matter, a desperate whataboutism sprung from defensiveness.
> Sure, the last time they were used in the exact same way was probably under Bush Jnr,
So, over a decade ago like I said.
> but they're still used where protest is considered inconvenient (like the ICE protests in the article I linked above).
There are giant protests all over the country. Free speech zones don't make the news because they are not an issue. No one is being impeded.
> Not with those exact words, but it was heavily implied with your repetition of emphasis on the guy being arrested (or not) for holding a piece of paper.
Not at all, you inferred it. I've been consistently clear that I think the UK is going down a bad path but in a very different way from the US, I never said worse.
> I have agreed with that, several times. I haven't defended the actions of the UK once. When you directly asked me if it was a problem, I said yes it's awful.
Honestly, only once that I'm aware of, and I had to drag it out of you. All your posts are pushing back, which gives the impression you want to defend the problems being mentioned.
> OK, I'm done with this conversation, at some point dang will be along to put an end to it anyway I imagine, as it's fruitless.
I shan't expect a reply then. Cheers. Hopefully we can have a more productive discussion on a different topic in the future.
Since you bring up Europe, I can give you a counterexample of Switzerland, which is armed to the teeth and still has a significantly lower homicide rate than the USA. The same applies to Canada. Even some countries with prevalent illegal guns are not even close to the USA. Heck, there's a war in Ukraine, guns are everywhere, and still, there's a very low homicide rate.
> Oh. You're one of those.
One of which? Say it or shut up. Or are you one of these? ;)
> It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
I'm not even an American. But given the above counterexamples, it's clear that the availability of legal guns is not the only, and probably not the biggest deciding factor for high homicide rates.
Want to understand the cause? Open a Wikipedia page, look at the stats, and identify the fact that most of the homicides in the USA can be tracked down to some specific population. That's not racist, since facts can't be racist. You won't reduce the homicide rate by ignoring the facts.
> Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
Can you explain that logic? First, if you look at the stats again, most of the Black Americans are killed by the members of their race, probably due to higher exposure to threats.
So yes, Black Americans need legal guns to protect themselves even more than White Americans, since they are more endangered.
The OP gave many examples but you only need to know one: the BBC broadcast fake footage of Trump created by splicing together different parts of a speech he gave. The parts were separated by more than 50 minutes and they hid the splice by cutting to the crowd. This manipulation of the public only came to light because an internal whistleblower tried to report what happened, then discovered the BBC institutionally supported this kind of video manipulation so blowing the whistle internally was useless. He reported it to the Telegraph instead.
In other words:
• The BBC broadcasts fake news clips.
• It does so deliberately, with the full approval of its board.
• They refused to apologize or clean house.
• They probably do it a lot and get away with it.
That's it. That's the only thing you need to know about the BBC's political bias.
And it's not just them. Channel 4 News broadcast an entirely fake video of Farage during the last election. It framed him by using an actor who was collaborating with an undercover film crew (and the actor was acting at the time). This was proven beyond all doubt and C4 refused to do anything about it. Once again, institutional fraud in service of election manipulation.
There's no real gap between using actors or mid-sentence splices and using AI, special effects or other standard Hollywood tactics. So the idea that British TV news is biased in favour of the right is farcical on its face. Let us know when they're regularly faking videos of Starmer! I grew up in Britain and the state of Britain's institutions is just shameful. It's tin pot third world stuff. British people need to understand that their state owned TV channels are completely unreliable sources to learn about the world from.
Which is exactly why any answer I give you would be unsatisfactory.
If he didn't have a gun, maybe he would be driven over by the car. Possibly a few more people too. In Europe, where guns are less prevalent, cars are the favorite weapon used by terrorists.
Luckily, he had a gun, so he was able to save himself and who knows how many more people by shooting an attacker.
I did a long detailed response in this thread where I spent a lot of time detailing why I believed somebody's assessment of about about Dominic Cummings was incorrect (I actually listened to what he had to say). So I've already have put weight behind my opinions.
Your reply on this topic is essentially leading to a re-litigation of Brexit which happened a decade ago now, which isn't anything to do with Dominic Cumming's observations on how Whitehall worked while he was present during COVID.
Brexit isn't something I wanted to get into, but both you and the other person I was replying to seemed to be focused on Brexit when it isn't the topic of discussion. I made that abundantly clear in my long reply to them.
TBH. You can do a web search or ask an AI the various exit strategies that were present at the time. Many scenarios were proposed before and after the vote. This was discussed to death at the time. Loads has been written about it. Why do I have to summarise something that is easily found via a search engine for you?
That said however they can't make things up, or overtly bury critical stories...but putting a softer slant on them wouldn't be unreasonable.
> Additionally Britain generally has a problem with politicians believing that the only solution to a problem is banning/regulating things, regardless what the root cause might be. Banning/regulating something requires new legal powers. So more laws.
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
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.
Actually it wouldn't. There are many arguments from fringe figures to more mainstream with various rationales. Much has been written about it.
> If you’re not interested in someone’s question then you should probably just ignore it rather than write paragraphs about why you’re not interested in it, but you do you!
I answered your question. The way I answered while a bit sardonic is supposed to make you think a bit. Obviously you don't appreciate it, but it isn't in bad faith.
Not everything has to be some sort of logical back and forth debate to get the point across.
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...
But in general the better armed states in the U.S. had less restrictive covid rules. So perhaps there is a link between how armed the population is and how well it resists restrictions it doesn't like.
In the middle, there is an acceptable range of compromise. Social media is the new town square. People shouldn't be able to post stuff on there without recourse for lying and spreading misinformation, just like they shouldn't be able to do this in public. History shows that this leads to bad outcomes. Also, history also shows that we can't just have personal freedoms unrestricted.
And just because that "freedom" is being taken away, doesn't mean that the leftists are in charge.
Their coverage of the Scottish independence referendum was laughably biased and often clueless.
They do seem to have an odd attitude towards Nigel Farage (UKIP & Reform) though, and kept putting him on Questiontime and the radio. It seems unclear why they would promote him so much given much of their other content.
Now of course this is about the UK. But to my knowledge and based on research there are no laws or cases about lying in public. As long as you aren’t committing perjury or slander, or urging violence, or inciting a panic, this isn’t illegal.
If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
I wouldn't say backtracked. I acknowledged a correction. The pont still stands, people are being arrested and/or intimidated by police for expressing a non-hatespeech, non-violent opinion.
> I'm pointing out that your "People were just arrested for holding up signs like 'abolish monarchy'" might be on similarly shaky ground.
I gave a source elsewhere in this thread.
> If it's not clear, I'm also heavily implying that you should be questioning the veracity of whatever source you're getting this easily-debunked tripe from.
It's not tripe, and if you want to attempt to go ahead and debunk it. I was wrong about the arrest for the blank sign as admitted, I'm not wrong about people being arrested for holding up signs expressing non-hatespeech, non-violent opinions, for which sources are abundant.
People in the US get killed at a higher rate than all European countries by vehicles.