Given multiple countries at the same time are trying to ram through this BS, we need an international convention to permanently enshrine online freedom and prevent the future of surveillance from becoming normalized everywhere
I genuinely don't think they care unless you're a wavering Tory Brexit voter who has (amazingly) reached their limit – at which point, they'll do anything to try to keep you coming back for more punishment. From the recently-announced plans to reintroduce imperial measures [1] to the fact that 96% of respondents to the Government's consultation on the sale (privatisation) of Channel 4 disagreed with it [2], this government is stupid, antidemocratic, nepotistic and downright dangerous. The list of rules broken and scandals encountered could not be larger, and still, Boris does not go. Urgh.
The guinea was imo a rather elegant thing, as it allowed retailers to impart additional value or eminence to a good simply by pricing in guineas rather than pounds. From wikipedia: "Savile Row tailors, bespoke boot makers, fine jewelers, and expensive motorcars were always priced in guineas".
The Guinea coin is no longer legal tender and it is not a unit of currency
Livestock sales are priced in Guineas as a convention
> Bids are still made in guineas for the sale of racehorses at auction, at which the purchaser will pay the guinea-equivalent amount but the seller will receive only that number of pounds. The difference (5p in each guinea) is traditionally the auctioneer's commission (which thus, effectively, amounts to 5% on top of the sales price free from commission).
[1] I actually don't think it makes a blind bit of difference if people sell a pound of jam instead of 454g or whatever. I don't think pubs need to stop selling Pints either. Hard to be outraged here.
It is losing revenue YoY (afaik?) along with diminishing relevance in a world that doesn't revolve around a small number of channels providing mass market content.
(Free depends whether you view the license fee as a tax, and whether the free license for pensioners is costed).
The main reason to sell it is simply a question of "is it fulfilling a societal good unavailable via a private enterprise". If not, the Government has no place owning it imo.
Just because Nadine Dories drunkenly talks nonsense about Channel 4, to an extent that she makes her cabinet colleagues look like geniuses in comparison, you don't have to believe her. Here's a snippet from Wikipedia for example, plenty of other sources are available:
"As of 2022, it breaks even in much the same way as most privately run commercial stations through the sale of on-air advertising, programme sponsorship, and the sale of any programme content and merchandising rights it owns, such as overseas broadcasting rights and domestic video sales. For example, as of 2012 its total revenues were £925 million with 91 per cent derived from sale of advertising."
They get no money from the license fee, from taxes, nor from the government. Except when the government chooses to spend tax money buying and spaces on TV, which would be no different to private companies selling ads to government.
I thought all content termed as "public service broadcasting" was given specific funding. A quick google suggests it is a term/requirement of having the channel at all, rather than actually funded?
I can twist my logic to argue charging for the channel with requirement for Public Service Content costs money etc, but would be dishonest xD
If you're an American you will probably be astonished to discover that the US has several Public Service Broadcasters, you might know them as "the big networks", if you're old enough you might remember receiving them, especially in poorer households by just purchasing (or renting) a TV set and there they are. No subscription, no cable feed, everybody can receive them.
They use a public resource (the radio spectrum) to broadcast television, in exchange for access to this spectrum the government sets requirements on what they can broadcast and so they are not simply ordinary for-profit companies.
If you think back to the last time you heard about the Eurovision Song Contest, the reason Eurovision exists is PSBs. The right to broadcast TV in European countries is held by a large number of distinct PSBs. The reason the ESC has weird breaks in it, if you watch it as a pristine video rather than from a source which makes that obvious, is that it's intended to be broken up with lots of commercials in most countries where - just like a US network, the PSBs are actually for-profit entities just under constraint of law because they use this scarce public resource.
Most of the Eurovision members have requirements on proportion of local content (no trouble in the US, but a for-profit Greek company may find English language sitcoms bought from North America, Britain or Australia are cheaper than making their own), news or current affairs coverage (the actual news isn't profitable since you can get that anywhere, so a profit seeking entity would rather not have a nightly hour-long news show), and children's programming (not very profitable in most European countries since advertising to children is very heavily constrained as kids are easy to manipulate).
Correct: it's public service without being public-funded. Channel 4 is ad-funded but because they're publicly owned they don't have turning a profit as the central reason to exist. That almost certainly would change if they were sold.
The danger is they're not dead, they're alive and well with a large part of a voting population.
Terrible idea.
As is [1]. Let's spend money for no reason, and also it makes it harder to integrate with the outside world, where the money London needs to launder is
I find it phenomenal that people in the U.K. are so caught up in the Johnson narrative - whether you’re for or against him, it seems absolutely everyone is within his thrall - talking about him, thinking about him, to the exclusion of all else.
Now, it’s not about “stick your head in the sand”, so much as it is realising that on both sides of the aisle you’re reading from the same script - the same paradigm, the same dichotomy of stay or go, the same stage and set dressing. Your protests are expected, appreciated, and necessary, as they further the narrative, and deepen his power - because power flows from narrative, from the ideas which you accept as “just is” within the story, as it doesn’t make sense without them - never mind that it’s all a fantastical fabrication.
This is how kings are made. Johnson has been telling a particular story for a while now, in which he becomes king. It gave him vast popularity in the run up to the mayoral election (apt control of narrative is commonly called charisma), and from there, he’s been punting the same can down the road whilst we all chase it like rabid dogs.
This only ends when a better, stronger narrative comes along - and nobody in any position to challenge him has it.
Labour own a narrative in which they stumble onwards, tripping on their scabbard as they scramble up the dusty ramparts of Fort Johnson, and are stuck in it, as they mistake their narrative for their reality.
For instance, they initially approached the antisemitism debacle by treating it as a valid issue - they played whackamole with the press on it, and it kept the story (“Labour are antisemites”) prime in the public mind. The whole thing has been rather quiet lately, because they changed tactics, are are hiding from that narrative and are hoping it will wither away. It might - but it only takes an ember to rekindle a bonfire.
Rather, they should be getting ahead of the story, and should pick on, oh, I don’t know, the greens, kick off a rumour that they’re a Masonic cabal of drag queen drug lords and make them defend it, and drag the Tories into that mess. The crazier and broader the accusations the better - grapeshot gives a lot of holes to patch, and distracts from the one which hit below the waterline. Play it right and you make everyone remember that it was the Tories that started it, as labour smearing the greens makes no sense. Punching up and doing minor damage makes you look weak and petty, punching down and demolishing an innocent makes you look strong. Children understand this - the world is a schoolyard.
I wrote a little while back about narrative control as being the thing which divides the ruling classes from the consumer classes - I went to a similar school to Johnson, and the main thing you’re taught, albeit largely unwittingly (you have to follow the lessons which aren't spoken), is how to dominate narrative.
So, you want Johnson gone, you need either events to run roughshod over his constructed reality, and that would take something very substantial - or you need a greater master of human reality.
Thing is, as long as the techniques of narrative control remain the domain of the elite, passed on to their children through expensive institutions and family neuroses that spread mimetically through the affected population, the leaders will continue to be from the same caste. Occasionally someone from the outside stumbles over the alchemy of mind control, and they do things with it, often involving gas and guillotines, but it’s the exception, not the rule, and from the perspective of the entrenched ruling classes reinforces the need to gatekeep.
So. Johnson will likely one day go, but the disease that allows Johnson will remain until the next revolution.
I really think this is a media bubble perspective. Most people aren’t engaged with politics - certainly not to the extent that they become obsessed with the prime minister. The media constantly talk about him because that’s just what they do.
And I also think the voting population aren’t the sheeple you’re painting them as. They don’t vote Tory because they love Boris. They vote Tory knowing that the personal failings of the leader have very little bearing on getting the policies that they want passed. “Hold your nose and vote conservative” works both sides of the Atlantic.
'narrative' is a fancy word that sounds important. It seems a pretty good rule of thumb that the more someone uses it, the less they have to actually say. You've used it 11 times.
Also it comes with a package of other nebulous abstract words and phrases, as you've exemplified "the domain of the elite", "that spread mimetically", "the alchemy of mind control", "entrenched ruling classes reinforces the need to gatekeep".
This is just bad writing. If you have said anything it's embedded in so much verbal dross I can't be bothered to extract it. I suspect it could have been said in a few sentences.
OP is probably explaining that the UK, like the US and most western democracies/republics are actually oligarchies, and have been for some time. It's hard to state simply since 'oligarchy' conjures images of super-yachts and old men, but that's not what is meant by the term in a classical sense, and no sensible oligarchy would ever speak its name.
No “narrative” is not a fancy word, it’s a word that has a definition and meaning. Maybe you don’t come across it in your day to day, but anyone who makes public statements knows exactly what it means.
It’s basically the story being told. The way to understand it is that politicians and the media have a millions things they could discuss that are relevant to the voters.
What’s interesting is NOT what they talk about. It’s what’s they don’t talk about. And if you actually follow what they say over time it’s starts to become clear pretty quickly.
And it’s not a conspiracy or some secret - I’ve been in the room of a Fortune 50 PR meeting where they discuss the “narrative”.
It’s usually “we only want to talk about X which makes us look good. We don’t want to talk about Y. Y makes us look bad, so if someone mentions Y, use this response to steer it back to X”.
A good narrative example was the Hunter Biden laptop. The narrative was "this is suspected Russian disinformation". Absolutely zero proof it was, but that didn't matter, just keep dropping phrases like "this has all the signs of a Russian operation". Instead of the content in the laptop or hell, even the story about the laptop, the news covers the Russian conspiracy side. That entire narrative was spun out of thin air, the laptop was Hunter Biden's.
There are often good example of narratives being broken, and what you see is suddenly a narrative is dropped entirely and another takes it's place. If you're paying attention you'll suddenly notice some news story has completely disappeared from public discussion almost as if it never happened.
The one big benefit of the internet is how easy it is to follow public statements now. It's much harder to say something at a press conference, have it on Twitter, then deny it the next week. Doesn't stop politicians from trying though.
I get exactly what you're saying but that misses the point which is it was just a load of tosh. If one[1] have something to say but can't say it clearly, one is wasting everyone's time at best and at worst become part of the problem.
[1] It's a shame that 'one' has dropped out of use in this context, it does sound so absurd and archaic, but 'you' can be mistaken for 'specifically you' so I hope one will forgive me here.
I’m a scientist with an increasing interest in how ideas form and which ideas establish dominance over others. The writer of the parent comment generally has rather interesting points to make on this topic, and I don’t recognise your vehement criticisms of either the language used or the points made.
Some of the comment in question very hard to make any sense of, e.g:
>Rather, they should be getting ahead of the story, and should pick on, oh, I don’t know, the greens, kick off a rumour that they’re a Masonic cabal of drag queen drug lords and make them defend it, and drag the Tories into that mess. The crazier and broader the accusations the better - grapeshot gives a lot of holes to patch, and distracts from the one which hit below the waterline. Play it right and you make everyone remember that it was the Tories that started it, as labour smearing the greens makes no sense. Punching up and doing minor damage makes you look weak and petty, punching down and demolishing an innocent makes you look strong. Children understand this - the world is a schoolyard.
Multiple parts of this make no sense, but one thing that stands out is that it doesn't make sense for the Tories to pick on the Greens either.
I recommend Bernays’ “Public Relations”, and “Propaganda” if you’d like to understand what I’m raving about, and why it would be strategically sound.
It isn’t necessarily about what makes sense, in a rational and deterministic fashion, rather what the stochastic outcomes of an action are. When you’re dealing with mass sentiment, the right move is often deeply counterintuitive, and you have to pretty much be a sociopath to execute adroitly. Demagoguery is a case in point of the veracity of this.
Are you then writing only for people who've read those books? If so, HN seems like a poor choice of forum.
I think, however, that you are redirecting because you aren't in fact able to explain how it would help Labour to spread crazy rumors about the Green Party. The Greens have a single MP. To a first approximation, no-one cares about any scandal involving the Greens – even if the scandal is true. If anything, it would make more sense for Labour to attack the Greens than it would for the Tories, as very few voters vacillate between the Tories and the Greens.
Well, it's not ideas, it's language abuse I'm griping over. Is "the alchemy of mind control" a helpful term in any way?
Wouldn't "as long as the techniques of narrative control remain the domain of the elite..." be better expressed as "while the elite use misinformation..." and perhaps ask what it is about the plebs that they'll accept being played? (if they are, which is semi-contentious).
Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.
> Is "the alchemy of mind control" a helpful term in any way?
Maybe your criticism is less about this writer than about the imprecision of written language as a communication tool generally. In which case, bear in mind firstly that the writer is writing a quick post on a forum, not for a scientific journal. Also that imprecise language may seem imprecise to you, but may encapsulate broader meaning for others. Alternatively, a particular piece of writing might just poorly transmit meaning which itself is valuable. For example, I find Slavoj Zizek to be incomprehensible. But when he is well edited or I have read secondary texts, I have found his insights to be revelatory.
> Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.
One of the common features of the ideas I mention is that they often garner an aggressive response, as people rightly dislike the idea that they’re enthralled by storytelling - but yet we are - it’s how we explain everything from the universe to other people, and likely originated with nascent theory of mind, sociality — lying.
So within us is the ability to sculpt narrative, to essentially deceive through attention manipulation or information selection, and also the response to that deception (anger, denial, pushback) - as they’re cultural ying and yang, the immune response and the illness.
It drives war when opposing stories clash, so great is the response that the wrong story, of which the story of stories is absolutely one, can evoke.
Anyway. I expect to be disagreed with. I may well be wrong and suffering under my own illusions - but my lived experience is that a good story is everything human.
> people rightly dislike the idea that they’re enthralled by storytelling
The fictitious narrative of free will could be the most potent narrative of all.
> but my lived experience is that a good story is everything human
I’m interested in the mechanisms by which narratives are conjured and mind control (this is too crude an expression for my liking but I don’t yet have anything better) asserted. Use of rhetoric, in combination with written and visual media are very powerful. This is well known. But the most powerful narrative web I believe can be created through the mechanism of introjection, where we don’t question our actions because this is simply what we see everyone else doing.
My underlying interest, I think, is the nature of reality. Peeling back the fictions of our own creation is a necessary ongoing part of that investigation.
>> The one big benefit of the internet is how easy it is to follow public statements now. It's much harder to say something at a press conference, have it on Twitter, then deny it the next week. Doesn't stop politicians from trying though.
Now they can also delete statements that become inconvenient. Or stealthily edit them.
> For instance, they initially approached the antisemitism debacle by treating it as a valid issue - they played whackamole with the press on it, and it kept the story (“Labour are antisemites”) prime in the public mind.
The antisemitism story became huge because it was seized upon by Corbyn's enemies who realised that it was an effective weapon against him. You cannot understand this story if you think in terms of the party as a unified force.
Yes, but the fiercest grip on the bayonet came from Corbyn himself - his handling of it was disastrous, and likely went against everything every one of his advisers recommended - you don’t engage is the prime rule - you make a small statement, and move on with a dead cat or a snazzy splash. Big statements, big movements, more to look at, more to push against, bad optics. See how Johnson handles his erstwhile crises - this is how he gets away with it.
In my view he was a good and integral man, somewhat guileless, and therefore utterly, utterly unsuited for politics - and he got eaten alive resultantly.
> I find it phenomenal that people in the U.K. are so caught up in the Johnson narrative - whether you’re for or against him, it seems absolutely everyone is within his thrall - talking about him, thinking about him, to the exclusion of all else.
“Occasionally someone from the outside stumbles over the alchemy of mind control, and they do things with it, often involving gas and guillotines”.
There has been no greater exponent of this mind control than Churchill: from “inside” not “outside” and he killed A LOT of people. Less of course than Stalin and Hitler. But still many. My point is that it doesn’t matter who wields the power, gas and guillotines may follow.
Bills like the online safety bill are cross party designed in committee. If you think a different government would do anything different you are mistaken - your only opposition from the back benches of the Tory party itself
Honestly would if really surprise anyone at this point? It's already widely known that a Tory member's family was receiving government money for PPE. Everything they do is for their own benefit.
You're probably right that it's better to cite things, especially on what is a US-centric forum.
However, as someone in the UK, the corruption that went on here with regards to PPE and many other government contracts is widely known and just a google search away.
Sorry - but your faux outrage concerning intellectual dishonesty reads as exactly that ...
That people speculate cynically over the actions of the current government is directly a result of the mistrust they have grown in the electorate. Reap it.
You are asking for evidence for something which hasn't happened yet. Obviously nobody can provide that evidence. How could they? The comment you are responding to was obviously worded as a speculation about a future event.
Latter on the thread you are asking for something else. Evidence for some other example.
> Why don't you cite the specific example then and we can discuss it.
Your wish is my command. Let me catch you up on the specifics:
Page 20:
"In total, we count at least 73 contracts relating to the
COVID-19 response between February and November
2020, worth over £3.7 billion, whose awards merit further
investigation. Mapping all of these contracts against data
from TED, we notice that by volume and value, most of
the questionable contracts were awarded during the same
heightened period of activity between March and June
2020 as mentioned above (see Graph 5). The majority
of these by volume (65) and by value (£2.9 billion) were
contracts for PPE equipment; 24 of which worth £1.6
billion went to those with known political connections
to the party of government in Westminster. A further
three contracts worth £536 million also went to politically
connected companies for testing related services. We
note there are additional contracts awarded to politically
connected companies relating to communications and
research services, although these were published after our
last data extraction from TED on 30 November 2020."
To avoid confusion, and because it seems you are naïve to the UK political situation I would like to mention that when the report says "political connections to the party of government in Westminster" that refers to the Tory party. Just mentioning because clearly you are not up to date on the recent events.
> You are asking for evidence for something which hasn't happened yet. Obviously nobody can provide that evidence. How could they? The comment you are responding to was obviously worded as a speculation about a future event.
No it wasn't, it was a statemet of specific fact. It was not phrased as speculation.
The government gave a contract to pretty much anyone who said they could supply PPE. A false emergency narrative was crafted to chuck procurement procedures out the window. Clapped on by catastrophists.
Complaining about people like Randox who were one of the only companies in the country with facilities to build covid tests getting a contract to manufacture covid tests is beyond inane.
This thing is just the absolute worst fucking mess. A stupid idea, which won’t work, proposed by stupid people, to achieve a stupid goal. “Britain” should focus on basically anything except this waste of time.
My local MP is championing this garbage. It’s really nice to know I don’t need to keep abreast of his opinions on anything because I’m already guaranteed whatever it is I’ll whole heartedly disagree with it.
He was huge fan of the whole Rwanda idea too. Pure trash.
"Let's treat the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda as an intellectual exercise in the free marketplace of ideas instead of a humanitarian crisis"
Or to phrase it another way, let’s listen whatever racist, draconian, bigoted policies or statements my local leader(who I am powerless to influence, I’ve tried) has to say today.
If a good health check to my political views comes at the price of an awful mental health check, I’ll pass.
I will seek balanced views. Not a car salesman with the power to influence lives.
I've personally noticed a tone shift since the referendum towards stronger conservative views in the Telegraph and Times. This doesn't seem to be borne out in polling, but I wonder whether that is because the entire political discourse has shifted:
- https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/is-the-daily-t...
Because the media are fairly non-central (particularly the right-leaning media), it's not very easy to find compromise. The stances taking by e.g. the Telegraph on transgender rights is fairly non-subtle. I don't think the rights of immigrants qualifies as a discussion where "it's just politics" applies. Since the referendum, the very core rights and institutions at the heart of the UK have been damaged and eroded, and that makes for conflict.
I think the context of with whom one is discussing really matters, and online for the most part, there is a strong in-group/out-group identity that makes it very hard to have reasonable discussions that don't dissolve into flame wars.
In person, I agree that it's good to be open minded and discuss things with people whose views you might usually not align with.
Indirectly related is the Paradox of Tolerance: that tolerance without limit is eventually destroyed by the intolerant.
We've said a lot of puff about what a shite government we have, but
very little comment about this so-called "online safety bill". What is
so wrong about it?
Thanks for the link. I read that and largely agree with it's
position. Some of it I disagree with as I think many aspects of
digital technology pose a genuine hazard to young people.
But my remark is really about how, in almost 200 comments we've gotten
distracted and almost entirely avoided dealing with the arguments on
their merits.
While made of smart and sincere people, in-toto governments are
idiots, and dishonest idiots at that. We can surely take that for
granted. But they remain idiots because we, as citizens, fail to
correct them. Have all the "experts", advisors, consultants,
lobbyists, think-tanks, specialists and witch doctors not understood
the first thing about the complex dynamics of strategic limitation of
information hazards, scale, freedoms, or enforceability, to come up
with such a blunt and naive bill? How can we "hackers" help them see
better? Or do we also not understand, and the only solution that will
prevail is "Shut it all down!"
Thanks, I understand that. My point, however, was that the comments
might better reflect the contents of the linked article and that the
various distractions into the personal failings of Boris Johnson etc
were disappointing.
The most important constituency of the UK government is old people, that want their pension to increase and the price of their house to go up and foreigners to go away (or at least to be pestered beyond reason), at all cost and with a 5 weeks planning horizon. This is all the government has been doing since 2008. Now they are somehow upset about the internet and here you have this bill.
While taxes on labour increase to finance this madness, while inflation skyrockets and the government sabotages the country’s supply chains and exacerbates the labour shortage to reach questionable immigration targets, some are still wondering why the UK has a productivity problem.
> The most important constituency of the UK government is old people, that want their pension to increase and the price of their house to go up and foreigners to go away (or at least to be pestered beyond reason), at all cost and with a 5 weeks planning horizon. This is all the government has been doing since 2008. Now they are somehow upset about the internet and here you have this bill.
What a very slanted view of old people to presume they dislike foriegners! As somebody who is close to 60 and with many old friends, I feel qualified to object to that blanket untruth. Honestly you will find most old people dislike the under 30's more than foriegners based upon my observations and experiences being part of this older demographic.
That all said, my faith in any goverment to address issues in technology is very much lost when they still can't manage to deal with and handle spam calls and texts, let alone emails. It's a crime of block and deny at best with no bite or drive to chase/track them down to the stage that society is normalised that it's a thing and you just deal with the effects instead of addressing the issues which is the root cause of most online fraud. Most know to spot and ignore such frauds early on, but enough do not and why it prevails.
But this isn't about one generation and whilst I find the whole flipped on the head "think of the children" angle amusing, it is not the case here and to distill it down to that ignored the real issues underlying here. Which is once again another poor solution to a poorly defined problem.
Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but any look at voting demographics shows people of your generation and older are fare more likely to vote tory and brexit than people born after the 1970s. Comparing the how people voted a generation ago, in 1997, or in 1979, and age is a far larger indicator
As is always the way when you make people vote on a specific Thursday when many people are busy juggling getting kids to/from school, themselves to work, and cooking dinner. Historically of course Thursday was pension day when the pensioners were all out to get their pension anyway.
In 1979 it was 42/45 for under 25s - 7% below average, and 47/45 for over 55s, 5% over average.
in 1997, over 65s voted 36% Tory vs 31% nationally - 16% above average. Under 24s voted 27%, 13% below average.
In 2019, over 65s voted 64% Tory vs average 45%. That's 42% above average. Meanwhile under 25s voted 19% tory, 38% under average.
That's a massive increase in age polarisation in just 22 years and increasing even more over 40. That is not a good thing.
One explanation or at least a factor I've observered is those with money (be that a house/assets or savings) tend towards voting for a Concervative goverment over a Labour goverment as they feel they better serve them financialy. Equally those less off (not hard these days) tend to lean towards Labour who they view more able to help those less off. So you get people who will lean one way and in later life, lean another way in general (not excluding other parties, mearly the CON/LAB core parties that have been the mainstay for generations).
But for the country, well, you need a full chest of tools, the hammer, the saw etc, yet stuck with a political system that offers you a limited choice of tool to pick and you can only use that for 5 years. So you end up with a flip, flop with one party in power for a while, then the other. It's how it goes.
In our local council elections, less than 50% voted and even then, voting like many others was a political voice against the current goverment over who should help run their local council and services for the next 4 years. Which again is testiment into how little accountable voice and say in what goes on that we the public have.
Personaly I would love to see an end of the party system. All MP's independent and those elected can truely voice for who they represent. Those elected then amongst themselves elect a goverment and we get the best of the best. Certainly be more demoractic and representative.
This whole party system has past it's time it's just rabble rabble playground point scoring more than doing the job right by the people they represent. They take second place to the party, which is in many ways akin to football supporters of the 80's in many ways a reflection upon the supporters today if you view the twitter landscape.
Imagine if you got to vote upon somebody based upon what they could do for you and not some sense of fan for life team supporter blindly ticking a box without a care in the world.
Would the political system be any worse if we scrapped the party system and all MP's were independant and the goverment formed via a vote amongst those elected MP's - they could even have an enclave and coloured smoke if they want some pomp , though hard to change a system that by it's very nature would mean it's own demise as it is currently. A party based political system.
I'd be more interested in why those who don't vote, didn't bother? That's the real crime today in the political system. Whoever they vote, maybe they could change the law? But focus upon why they don't vote is probably key to a fairer democratic system. That is probably the most important thing. May well be many young people feel that none of the party's fit their needs. Well even a spoilt ballet is counted and that is democracy over not voting at all.
After all - was Richard Prior wrong in the film Brewsters Millions when he said vote none of the above! As you get older, and look at the larger picture you feel it's not far off the mark, more so at times than others.
But then, watching the House of Lords is in contrast to the commons a whole level of decorum and civility and discourse without any of that political party rabble rabble. So it does show, debate can be done civil in goverment, albeiet by a group of people who are not elected by the people! Which is probably a whole level of debate that scares me at this hour.
Voting Tory is a minority position however you count it: no government has had even 50% of the votes cast (let alone the votes of those eligible to vote) for decades. Brexit meets the first 'majority' criterion, but not the second.
It is entirely possible to be pro-Tory and pro-Brexit while being anti-xenophobia. But the Conservatives have been carefully-mining the anti-foreigner vote for decades (as did New Labour) and it's not plausible to argue that Brexit would have won without that sentiment: it was too large a part of the expressed reasoning of Brexit voters as a group when polled.
The real loss here has been the AV referendum in 2011. It blows my mind how dense the electorate was for keeping the FPTP system.
Now the Tories have realized that they can spew bullshit lies and win an election with minimal consequences. They also have discovered how much easier it is to game the damn failing electoral system. (e.g. in Cam I have seen Tory pamphlets pushing for Lib Dems or Labour just to split the left vote).
New Labour mined the anti-foreigner vote? Are you actually from the UK? New Labour was famously pro open borders. They deliberately opened the immigration floodgates as much as possible, for instance, one reason there was so much immigration from eastern Europe to the UK when Poland etc joined the EU is because the UK was one of only two countries that didn't immediately utilize the 'transitional controls' mechanism to keep immigration restrictions in place. Despite the EU's rhetoric about open borders and such at the time, in reality most countries didn't want to be flooded with cheap ex-eastern bloc labour. UK under the self-proclaimed Labour party did.
Notoriously, a few years ago a former advisor to Blair went on record to say that New Labour deliberately encouraged as much immigration as possible in order to "rub the Right's nose in diversity", and:
"He said Labour's relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote".
It's really difficult to reconcile this history with the ideas you're expressing above. Far from "carefully mining the anti foreigner vote for decades" they were explicitly undermining it by hiding the true extent of what they were doing.
Yes, they pursued migration because they considered it to be economically beneficial. But their electoral coalition also included groups which disliked it - retirees in particular, and some parts of the older white working class vote too as you note. So the action to increase 'good' migration was never really openly argued for as a public good (your quote is from an advisor, and would never have been released at the time) while being matched with Mail-placating rhetoric on asylum designed to separate the idea of deserving and undeserving migrants and demonstrate 'getting tough' on those who were sufficiently unpopular. There was a huge increase in the use of immigration detention, for example, and the deliberate destitution of many asylum seekers as a means of appearing tough. As with many New Labour policy areas, the aim was not to get the policy 'right' and leave it, but to keep the issue live to generate a steady series of headlines indicating that something was being done. Criminal justice policy was similar, with more than one reform bill a year for most of the period of the government.
So overall, I don't see deliberately increasing migration and deliberately using dehumanising rhetoric and policy changes against (some) immigrants to shore up electoral support as being at odds. The current government is strong on anti-tax rhetoric whilst presiding over heavy tax rises. Labour wanted immigration to keep wages low and increase growth. It also wanted the votes of people who wouldn't want that. So it did the former fairly quietly, while performatively stoking up the Home Office's capacity for villainy. So is modern politics.
(FWIW 'Floodgates' is itself somewhat dehumanising, I think: people aren't an undifferentiated mass threatening to overwhelm the boat, they're just people. 'Gates' would have done just fine.)
If there’s anything close to a law in sociology, it’s that young people don’t vote. So what you’re saying doesn’t feel particularly specific to the U.K. One thing one might argue for would be a political system where old people’s votes are discounted (because they will die soon or because they are ‘over represented’ due to their bothering to vote).
I guess one could also make arguments about the structure of the system which feels a bit more specific to the U.K. eg rural–urban constituency differences or FPTP.
Counter point - older people's votes should be weighted the other way because they have contributed far more in taxes, done more productive work and may have even fought for your right to complain.
Contribution in taxes are not a measure of human worth, neither should people who own property get more votes than those who don’t (people who didn’t own property used to not be able to vote in the uk)
Speaking as an 'older person', many of the opinions I held as a 'younger person' turned out to be completely wrong. That's the problem with being 'older' you get the benefit of experience and seeing how certain ideals actually play out.
Many of these people you now hold in contempt were once just the same as you are now and changed as they became older and wiser - just like you will.
Great article! It articulates a lot of the frustrating trends I've noticed, which is an utter contempt for building the infrastructure we need to have a productive society from a dominant voting demographic, with a lot of insights I'd not noticed before.
Incentives are never straightforward. People can vote for policies that move others' money into their pocket. People can vote for policies that they don't understand (based on either stupidity or naiveté). People can vote for policies that benefit their town to the detriment of the neighbouring one.
People can also vote for people (MPs), who later renege on their promises.
Democracy is a mess, but be careful before disenfranchising your compatriots. If you succeed with that, 10 years down the line you may find out that someone managed to turn the same weapon against you. Politics is rotten enough as it is.
Apart from applying in a different range of circumstances and being capped, yes it's linked to income.
(Does raise the question of whether student loan repayments, which are also linked to income unlike other loans, and have been called a "graduate tax" by some of their advocates, are also an income tax that applies only to people born after a particular date ...)
They're only an income tax if you can't pay them off. Call it a tax on the poor and normal, while as ever the wealthier cohorts get a nice break. This is why there should have been an actual graduate tax.
That and the fact that a graduate tax would at least have been predictable, unlike, say, the soaring interest rates on student debt at the moment.
You’ll find people denying that nationalism or Brexit or anti EU politics has anything to do with xenophobia, usually coupled with “your attitude is exactly why we voted leave” as if by noticing the xenophobia, Brexit is your fault.
Anyway, many voters quite literally spoke into camera saying directly that they voted leave to “stop Muslims” and things like this. If you point this out, or point out that all racists and extremist nationalists supported Brexit they’ll further deny and claim it’s just an extreme minority that doesn’t matter. Or they’ll say “what about antifa!” Or some other strange comment.
Anyway here’s one example of a voter clearly saying why they voted
Also Tory party voting is a minority in the uk. The uk “democracy” gives a party with 40% vote share absolute power and absolute parliamentary majority.
Only five? I'd like to invite you to read this. Subheading: "The average house price is 65 times higher than in 1970 but average wages are only 36 times higher. "
My parent's house, bought in 1970 for £4,000 sold for £32,000 in 1986. That was the high inflation of the 1970s to blame. But a house I bought in 2000 for £185,000 sold for £550,000 in 2015. That wasn't inflation to blame but supply and demand; the demand being the vast increase in UK population from 2000 on.
If you're happy to accept mass migration, that's one of the effects as is bigger class sizes in schools, more traffic on roads and an overburdened NHS.
Mass migration has little to do with it. The fact is, adding taxpayers to the pool who we haven't had to raise or educate is a net benefit to us (even if it is a loss to their countries of origin). The problem is that we decided to turn housing into a speculative asset rather than a retaining it as a utility. Decades of policy have gone into this, be it the right to buy, the bank of England's mandate, lending ratios expanding over time, and permitting NIMBYism and massive flows of rent seeking capital from abroad.
The BoE's mandate is particularly salient as it is for maintaining 2% inflation: the official measure of which excludes house prices and includes wages. It is very much the way it is by design.
In 1945, the UK had far fewer people and it still had some slack when it came to resources such as land. Much of this slack has now been exhausted.
"The population rate of increase has been pretty constant since 1945" is actually a problem. This kind of eternal increase is not sustainable on a smallish island whose northern and western half isn't very suitable for housing.
It seems weird to single out population growth when bringing up unsustainability of growth. To address that an entirely different economic system will have to be created.
Pensions have not been going up. The triple lock was suspended. Inflation is wrecking the pensions of millions. The UK pension system is one of the worst in Europe. If it was ever to be substantially improved you will definitely hear about it.
All countries tend to have polarisation around the topic of "immigration". Statistically the UK is one of the most welcoming and least racially prejudicing countries in the world. There are numerous independent studies and reports that you can find to support this. You do need to pay though; the visas and healthcare surcharges ain't cheap. The same as any top tier country though.
The triple lock itself was an incredibly favourable deal to pensioners - a guarantee that pensions will rise at at least inflation introduced by a government which was furiously cutting everything else. The government decided to remove it with inflation hitting 9%, and promptly reversed course with Sunak's "save the PM's job" budget to give pensions a 10% raise. The fact the UK's pension system has for a long time relied more on private pensions than many countries doesn't mean that the present government hasn't spent the last decade giving pensioners real term rises whilst other services and especially other state handouts and salaries got real term cuts.
There are indeed many indications of the UK being welcoming to foreigners relative to other countries For example, the UK government's recently announced plan to export refugees at great expense to Rwanda with seven days notice doesn't have majority support in any group except the pensioners the policy is designed to appeal to...
> "Pensions have not been going up. The triple lock was suspended. Inflation is wrecking the pensions of millions."
The triple lock has been temporarily suspended (with the wages element removed, so becoming a double lock) for 2022-23. The government has repeatedly said, and it was re-stated again by Sunak just the other day, that after this year the triple-lock will be reinstated for the rest of the parliamentary term.
Critically, the consumer price index part of the lock is still in place, so pensions will still rise in line with inflation (as measured by CPI) in 2022-23.
Pensions have increased substantially since 2010 due to the triple lock, which was momentarily suspended in 2022 because this year it would have been unsustainable: wages have increased significantly in 2021 due to temporary changes of the composition of the workforce caused by lockdowns. The current spike in inflation will be accounted for next year, like many worker’s salaries that have been adjusted using last year’s inflation (2-3%).
Besides, British pensions are lower because British pensioners paid much less pension contributions than other European pensioners.
It is a fact that the current government stance on Brexit is both exacerbating the labour shortage and damaging the country’s supply chains. And it would be totally disingenuous to claim that this doesn’t stem from an idiotic stance on migration from the EU, that has been part of the Conservative manifestos/programmes since at least 2008 and that lead to their last N electoral victories.
Their stance on immigration was always fairly reluctant. They took it because they were losing their base to UKIP. Ironically (given how horrible it was) it was one of the few things they actually did because of democratic pressure.
The British business oligarchy are now pretty keen to take Johnson down and replace him with starmer - the wages, inflation and supply chain damage has infuriated them. Hence the british medias obsession with boris's parties.
> The UK pension system is one of the worst in Europe. If it was ever to be substantially improved you will definitely hear about it.
I assume you just mean the state pension here. Occupational pensions have long been a significant part of our pension system that tends to get ignored. The auto-enroll workplace pension introduced in 2008 seems to have been very successful too.
Overall, if I remember correctly, the UK actually has the second total pension assets in the OECD, and one of the highest per capita.
It does not really matter what the assets or number representing the assets are. The problem that countries with decreasing proportions of young and working to old and non working populations are that automation is not close to changing bedpans yet, so there is decreasing supply of units of labor and increasing demand.
This was mitigated for a few decades with the import of foreign labor and automation, but presumably this is no longer happening at a sufficiently rapid rate to be able to prevent labor prices from rising. Also, who really wants to change bedpans?
So the political question is: Who in society is entitled to the decreasing amount of labor and how will it be divvied up?
I find it remarkable that this is the metaphor of choice, given that bedpans are merely the final remaining situation where chamber pots have not been replaced with mechanism-clearing flush toilets.
As mmarq was saying the government doesn’t represent the people, it is entirely possible for the British population at large to be welcoming and friendly to immigrants while at the same time the government is being as hostile as they can get away with.
Which countries do you count as “top tier”? I migrated to Germany, I pay the same healthcare costs as anyone else here. I can’t remember exactly what my combined ID card and work permit cost, but it was a 2-digit number. I think naturalisation here is about a tenth the cost of the U.K. also.
Fealty and forelock tugging to the class above you and passive aggressively restricting the freedoms of the class below you is as much a part of British culture as the single digit amendments to the constitution.
Changing it would be like changing the language to French.
The UK has a constitution, just not one that is codified in a single written document with a special privileged status. (In practice, there is also a lot more to the US constitution than what’s written down in the document referred to as ‘The Constitution’.)
Until a major party comes out with a manifesto pledge to offer a public vote on moving to Proportional Representation I'm not sure why anyone would bother voting Conservative or Labour anymore.
I was just restating the question in a way that acknowledged your nitpicking response. It's a pretty natural inference from what you said. If you weren't suggesting that the referendums would have different results then I don't see the point of your original response.
AV was confusing. To those who knew what it meant, there were no obvious benefits, so why bother. To those who didn't know, the difference could only be explained by mathematics and unintuitive use cases, and no-one could make a compelling argument about why it was better, so why bother.
The argument for PR is far clearer. In the last general election (FPTP), Conservatives got 42% of the vote but won 50% seats; Labour 40% of the vote but 41% of seats; Lib Dem 7% of the vote but 2% of seats; SNP 3% of vote but 5% of seats; etc. THAT intuitively doesn't seem fair or democratic. PR seeks to reflect % of votes with % of elected seats, which does seem intuitively fair and democratic.
Im not sure why PR is being treated as a panacea. It has its benefits but I cant be wild about a system where, for example, far right parties pushing racial supremacy can get to play kingmaker like in Israel.
I wouldnt necessarily be against it but if I had limited political capital I could think of better things to spend it on than trying to make lib dem tory coalitions more common. The last one did sod all good.
Liz doesn't have any real power, at least, no more than any other very rich old ladies.
This is too often misunderstood or perhaps even just deliberately misexplained on HN. For example, you will see people saying that Liz blocked the Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill. Because hey, it says "Queen's Consent" so that means Liz had to authorize it right?
Nope. The power of Queen's Consent is operated on behalf of the government. Liz doesn't get to decide what "she" consents to. That Bill was blocked because the alternative was a (probably rather lively) parliamentary debate about Blair's [the Prime Minister at the time] enthusiasm for starting wars. He had the numbers, but this would embarrass him because it would have forced people who'd prefer to say they hate war, they wouldn't want a war, to admit yeah, of course they want to put troops in harm's way to further their careers. Queen's Consent isn't a matter for debate, so nobody had to be made uncomfortable.
If a non war-mongering government took up similar legislation, Liz wouldn't be like "Oh no, you can't take away my war starting powers" because they aren't her powers, they are government powers, and the government decides.
Remember, a predecessor of this Parliament executed the King for starting wars. Since that point it's clear that the Monarch's "powers" belong entirely to the Government, and the Government answers to Parliament. If you're wondering why you've got this nasty lying piece of shit in Number Ten, don't look to Liz, the people you sent to Westminster gave him that role and they could take it away today if a majority of them wanted to. You sent them there, that's democracy.
Queen's Consent happens in secret and is immune to parliamentary debate. You claim this is an advantage but it's actually a disadvantage. The Prime Minister is not a president and is not democratically elected by the entire country. He should not have the power to skip debate on embarrassing subjects.
Queen's Consent was used to give the Palace immunity to claims of race discrimination in their hiring. That's unconscionable. Nobody should be above the law.
The Parliament, and specifically the elected Commons, get to make the rules. If Blair didn't have a majority for even that decision to avoid debate he couldn't have done it †
This is why Theresa May couldn't get anything done, she didn't really have a majority for any actual policy. She needed the DUP (barely "allies" in any useful sense, even when substantially bribed to stay on side) and so even small rebellions in her own ranks meant she was constantly in danger of No Confidence.
It's uncomfortable to know that the majority of the people you sent, some of whom may have assured you personally that they agree with you, actually couldn't give a shit and are focused primarily on their own careers. But there it is.
† The Government controls the Crown powers, but Parliament's confidence in the Government is needed, any majority against the Government can get rid of it, with a single motion, "That This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty's Government". This was not a realistic threat against Blair, or, sadly Boris, because for all the pantomimed outrage they're actually annoyingly popular - but it is why May couldn't get anything done.
Yeah, there was even a bizarre period prior to the last general election when the majority of the House of Commons was in fact opposed to Boris but didn't want to hold a confidence vote because they knew he'd win the resulting election (and couldn't find a majority of MPs who'd support any replacement). So instead they tried to puppet him around using their legislative powers whilst carefully avoiding the possibility of an election, which really isn't supposed to happen. All this was only possible due to the ill-advised Fixed Term Parliament Act, which made it impossible for the Prime Minister to force an election or make any vote on government policy into a confidence vote. This failed in its goal of stopping governments calling an early election in the hope of electoral gain, but did block an election when the current prime minister had lost the confidence of the house and the UK parliamentary system really needed one. The press avoided pointing out how much of a disastrous anti-democratic mess this whole thing was because it was helping the anti-Brexit side...
In order to form a British government you need a working majority in the House of Commons (the elected half of Parliament), this is because you need Confidence, as if a majority don't have Confidence in the government it can be dissolved.
The very least you can scrape by with in practice is called "Confidence and supply". An agreement between your political party and whatever other tiny parties or individual members can make up a simple majority (half plus one vote) of the Commons, to vote that they have Confidence in the government, and to vote through "Supply" bills, taxes and spending.
Parliament can choose to do whatever it wants, but as we see, in general the Parliament will be dominated by the governing party. So to an extent this is a distinction which makes no difference. Except, as Democrats are keenly aware in the US, just because somebody is a member of the Party doesn't magically mean they do whatever the executive led by that party says they should do...
So yes, in practice the UK Government and Parliament are much more cohesive than in the US where the Executive and Congress are run by completely different people with different agendas even on the rare occasions they're politically aligned, this is on purpose, but not by definition. If Johnson annoys enough "back bench" (ie elected politicians who aren't part of his executive) Tory MPs there's nothing he can do to ensure they vote how he wants and then he's probably fucked.
Clearly one of the most powerful people in the world. She controls the majority of British wealth and doesn't pay taxes on it because she owns a whole countries to embezzle it with
Her son just sold a chalet in Switzerland for millions so he could settle an international case
That's without getting into the good graces from the media
No power literally can't name a single person more powerful and less accountable to any laws
> Clearly one of the most powerful people in the world. She controls the majority of British wealth and doesn't pay taxes on it because she owns a whole countries to embezzle it with
This is so wrong it is laughable. HN when discussing politics it seems is as big a cesspit as reddit.
There are real issues to be discussed here and its come to this.
> Do I need a counter argument?
She's been on the throne for a long time. Can you list the policies she has enacted into legislation that were not policies of the government of the day?
Look, I’ll absolutely be first to back scrapping the monarchy - but “she controls the majority of British wealth” is just objectively not true. We don’t have to make shit up in order to object to hereditary wealth and power.
Imagine a world where politicians (or their descendants) couldn't abdicate except though untimely death? Arguably they would take their profession much more seriously, like a monarch.
British Members of Parliament are, in fact, notionally forbidden from resigning. There is deliberately no provision to "step down" as the representative. Historically there were cases where people probably did not want to be made MP.
Today, however, in practice you can resign. What happens is you tell the people who look after day-to-day business in the House, and they arrange for you to be offered a job by the Crown which you then accept. Obviously the people's elected representatives can't be the Monarch's employees, that's no sort of democracy -- and so this immediately terminates their membership of the Commons (fresh elections will be held some months in the future to replace them) and immediately the same offer can be re-used. The "jobs" given aren't real jobs, one that's used is Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hundreds
Basically the wooded hills where I grew up were once bandit country and so the Crown used to pay somebody to sort out the bandits, the job still legally exists, but today the sort of bandits who live in those hills (bankers, executives, sometimes the Prime Minister himself) would need more than merely a "Crown Steward" to sort them out.
"Liz doesn't have any real power, at least, no more than any other very rich old ladies."
Technically you're right. However, I've seen first hand what the wielding of 'power and influence' looks like that comes from her position and institutions of the Monarchy.
It's very easy to dismiss her as just a bunch of money, but it's far more than that. Insiduously so, and is very representative of the culture of power in the UK.
Just as any CEO sets the culture of their organisation. So Monarchy sets the culture of the power in the UK. Take a small look at how the City of London works.
You may live in the UK and think she/they do not have any democrative power over you. But you'd be wrong in so much as the influence they have on 'democratic' and government institutions.
'Representative democracy' - where you vote for someone to represent you and thousands of others for years, over thousands of governance decisions - is not democracy. Even if we call it 'democracy'.
Representative democracy can be augmented by direct democracy though.
Switzerland for example has elected representatives who operate in a similar manner to other countries. The difference is that when the people have an issue with something the representatives did, they can trigger a referendum on the issue.
I think it's a good tradeoff between both systems.
I'd hate to see decisions delegated directly to the Great British Public in an endless series of referendums, though. For a start, I don't think I could stand to live in a state of endless political campaigning - it's bad enough reading the "culture war" nonsense in every paper now.
Secondly, within months, we'd have the immigrants deported, a statue of Maggie in every town square, transgender people made to wear badges with their birth sex and the BBC removed from the airwaves and replaced with a perpetual loop of the Nigel Farage show.
Yes, but also Scotland and Wales would be independent within *days*, so there's a strong upside. The south of England could be its own little corner of a declining empire, we can stick up a hard border around the whole sorry mess, and Scotland and the People's Democratic Republic of Yorkshire and Lancashire will, as always,just get on with the job.
Not entirely. Democracy isn't a fixed concept, and there are different interpretations of it. Direct democracy (via referenda) is fairly rare, and has clear flaws (look at the EU referendum!)
Equally, the Good Friday Agreement signed in Ireland in 1998 is an example of where an arguably good outcome arose from holding a referendum.
Clearly, referenda aren't "bad" in their own right, but they are a tool that should be employed when the circumstances are right.
If bending minorities to the will of majority is all the democracy is about then fuck that democracy. It becomes a tool of oppression driven by the worst masses could offer.
thankfully, in representative democracy we bend to the will of oligarchs represented by disposable sockpuppets whose campaigns they bankroll and retirement gigs they provide, instead of giving the unwashed masses of deplorable proles any say
"Direct" democracy or rule by public referendum goes against democracy, as it invariably results in a majoritarian democracy. While it may partly work in a small geography with a largely homogenous culture (like Switzerland) , it cannot work in India or US (and to a certain extent UK), that have multi-cultural society. In a multi-cultural society, one of the major tenets of democracy is that it guarantees the minorities certain rights that the majority swear to protect. There are many democratic decisions taken by good democrats that have proven unpopular in their times, but later hailed as visionary. A majoritarian democracy prevents this, and invariably turns democracy into rule by the mobs.
> While it may partly work in a small geography with a largely homogenous culture (like Switzerland)
Homogeneous as in 4 different language and cultural groups? Are you sure we're talking about the same Switzerland? Not to mention tons of migrants from all over Europe and the wider world?
The real problem with direct democracy is that most people are shortsighted. Governments often need to make long term decisions, like infrastructure, combat climate change, etc. and those are simply too big to be fully appreciated and grasped by your common voter - point in case, new "green" laws to reduce CO2 emissions were recently refused by referendum in Switzerland - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57457384
Their core issue is this, even though they present it as a kind of afterthought:
> ... the awkward fact that the sheer quantity of stuff posted to social media every minute means that most of the time, humans will not be making those judgments at all.
Why conflate that with free speech? Even if algorithmic moderation blocks some of your utterances, that doesn't mean your right to free speech has been violated. Social media have a detrimental effect on everything they touch, so why pick that hill to die on? Just for the money?
> Even if algorithmic moderation blocks some of your utterances, that doesn't mean your right to free speech has been violated.
Freedom of speech is the freedom (from interference) of (your) speech. An algorithm interfering with speech is no less a violation than if a human does it.
A technical point: that doesn't imply you have the right to type whatever you want on some website or app. If a journalist edits an interview, is that censorship?
Anyway, absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist and shouldn't exist. It's an insane idea.
> A technical point: that doesn't imply you have the right to type whatever you want on some website or app
It's not a technical point, it's a different point. I gave a slightly expanded definition of what is freedom of speech. You are now questioning whether freedom of speech is or should be a right, and if so, under what circumstances.
> If a journalist edits an interview, is that censorship?
That depends on whether they edited it to censor or not, as editing is not a synonym for censoring, nor for interfering. As the Oxford English dictionary helpfully states:
> interfere | ɪntəˈfɪə |
> verb [no object]
> 1 intervene in a situation without invitation or necessity
> 2 (interfere with) prevent (a process or activity) from continuing or being carried out properly
If they edit for a good reason who could claim they were interfering or censoring?
> Anyway, absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist and shouldn't exist. It's an insane idea.
The US does not have (and has never had) a doctrine of absolute free speech. Historically, we weren’t even particularly forward-thinking in our application of free expression (see: indecency laws, laws against political expression, &c).
Here the problem is not that a machine is suppressing your comments but that the government is telling the machine to suppress your comments, which is a pretty clear violation of the principle of free speech. Come to think of it I'm not sure whether this would be constitutional in America.
It isn't. It's a system to organize society and protect interests. These might not be the interests you take at heart, though, but that's politics, and politics are everywhere, even where there is no government.
That's quite hilarious accusing the right for wanting to do just what the left is always preaching, censorship and limiting the people rights.
Leting the left vs right apart, I strongly believe in free speech and I believe that Internet should be a free place for opinions. And it should be a free place for anything that doesn't break the criminal law.
But this last sentence is hard for maintaining freedom since every country is criminalizing different things and every country is going to try to control the Internet.
If we want some freedom of the Internet and avoid breaking the Internet in many controlled and censored national networks communicating to each other through gateways behind Great Firewalls, we should all come up with a set of rules enforceable at the international level. So, we can begin with some framework that only forbids selling weapons, drugs, forbid child pornography and anything that might help someone committing murders, committing theft and so on.
It is quite hilarious that "the right" in UK is more leftist that the left in other countries. You don't have left and right, you have various degrees of left.
