51–60 of 327 posts
In China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity" I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
This is how you govern from a position of unpopularity. 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.
This has been ongoing for a long time, its not at all specific to this government.
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.
Orwell worked in Spain for about a year, 1936-37, his work on BBC during WWII was twice as long. In my opinion, 1984 was shaped by his work in Britain.
As if it was not enough that the author himself put it in Britain.
If you want Soviet Style distopia, better read "We" from Zamyatin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting how you think being shot by authorities is less bad than being talked to for shitposting on X
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Police killings are extraordinarily rare here so hearing about any is eyebrow raising. Even more so the latest example of an ICE agent killing someone simply for pissing them off
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He wins or draws on every measure of unpopularity, other than YouGov net satisfaction where Liz Truss still beats him.
It's a problem with pretty much anyone. Things are bad from a fundamental structural failings for decades, elect new person, don't see immediate turn-around, they're massively unpopular. 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.
Isn't Minority Report a documentary about why this doesn't work?
What do you mean by "doesn't work"? Doesn't work to prevent crime? Or doesn't work too suppress dissent?
> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest. Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how the…
Obviously everyone saying the UK isn't a utopia is a Russian bot, and we should be censoring them.
Isn't Minority Report a documentary about why this doesn't work?
I mean technically a lot of countries already have laws against conspiracy to murder, without doing the actual murder bit. And we are broadly ok with this because it makes a lot of sense.
This is how you govern from a position of unpopularity. 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.
There seems to be a prevalent notion within UK establishment circles, "we are being attacked from both sides, therefore we must be right/balanced/fair", which is totally not how it works. You see used for example to defend the supposed impartiality of the BBC.
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.