131–140 of 158 posts
URL should be changed to source [1] and title changed to reflect that the UK govt is also surveilling TAs, not only. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-governme...
I mean, does this actually need to be said? Would anyone think TAs are the only citizens under surveillance?
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The United Kingdom is not a state in the United States.
Thanks to Brexit it's also becoming less "United" /s
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Yes, because obviously the only possible options are a state surveillance program to flag up any teaching assistants who criticise any aspect of government policy and teaching bureaucracy, or the sort of "free speech absolutism" that concludes that literally nothing a teacher could say could ever render them unsuitable for a teaching job. No middle ground is possible.
Good to get the sarcastic straw man out of the way, so we can get back to the actual conversation.
> The scope and depth of this surveillance has led to growing skepticism about the Department’s priorities and resource allocation. Lol. That about sums it up. Whenever a dystopian UK government surveillance thread makes it to the front page of HN I generally try to remind people of two things: 1. This will not make headlines in the UK. 2. People in the UK do not care about privacy. The fact that the person they spok…
> 1. This will not make headlines in the UK. That probably needs some qualification since it was the Guardian which broke the story (and the prequel story two weeks prior) and that's two headlines right there. If you check the front page of The Observer for 2023-10-01[1], the prequel ("Education ministry keeps secret files on critics of schools policy") is fully a third of the front page. Which is also a headline. [1…
Normally these stories get a little attention here and there but there's rarely ever much mainstream interest. If I were to talk to people in the UK about this story I'd be surprised if anyone is aware of it, and if they are they certainly won't think much of it.
Contrast that with this community who really cares about stories like this, and even the average American who probably more concerned about mass surveillance in the UK than Brits.
What one posts on public social media sites is public . Is this surveillance?
I think it counts as surveillance when it's published material, but surveillance of public material does not seem so troublesome to me. For ex. if these teachers had instead published their complaints in old-fashioned letters-to-the-editor in print newspapers, I don't think anyone would be complaining that the government reads the newspapers. You could still complain about the chilling of dissent and the waste of res…
I think we can and should differentiate between what we say in casual conversation and way we state as a declaration of our public opinion to which we purposefully attach our name.
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But that activism is free speech itself always funny when the free speech absolutist gets mad when people use free speech to cancel someone
People conspiring to raise up hatred of an individual, and people of the same mind in HR departments green lighting the acquiesence to that hatred, is the problem. Someone shouting a swear word at me while killing me is unpleasant, but I'll allow it. It's the killing that's the problem.
no one is getting canceled for saying something that isnt shameful
happy to help
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Dunno... If I followed you around while in public and recording everything you said and did, in public, is that surveillance?
It is very much legal, and law enforcement don't need a warrant to do so.
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But, posting publicly to social media is almost exactly like a letter to the editor. You send your message to a company, the company reviews it, and then usually publishes it publicly for all to see. I would not feel "chilled" if someone (an employer, government, or whoever) trawled through my HN posts and made some kind of judgment or took action over what I post. I would expect it. It's public after all. I certainl…
> I certainly moderate what I say here knowing this (maybe that's the chilling effect you mention?) Yeah that is the chilling effect. Yes, it's likely there are some things that are better to be "chilled". For instance if you were advocating for violence against public figures. But imagine the day your credit rating gets dinged because you post online that you disagree with some new tax reform bill being proposed. Th…
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They were obviously joking, it was probably funny to watch an American (?) believe all that. More seriously, more people should be concerned about the Conservative party's disdain for the Human Rights Act and suggested intention to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights: https://www.theguardian.com/law/human-rights-act (So you'll see the UK does have a list of rights, but like everything else it's a no…
The greatest difference between the US and the UK is just that: the US is a far more chaotic, violent, and generally unpleasant society compared to the UK, but it has an extraordinarily robust legal system and institutions that balance each other's power so that nobody is ever really in full control. The UK is a fairly pleasant place to live--at the moment. But things are starting to go downhill a bit, the government…
However, down is not the only direction. The nation has been far more authoritarian in the past; we will be more liberal again in the future. Liberalism is not a spent force, and there is a sizeable constituency which values personal privacy.
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He's no different : https://skwawkbox.org/2023/03/02/starmers-labour-abstains-on...
He has made some worrying decisions. Including much sitting on the fence on important issues, such as Brexit. I'm not wild about him getting in with a massive majority.
I think his calculus was bang-on to avoid taking a Brexit position. He probably captures the anti-Brexit vote by default, whereas Brexit support was strong in the labour heartlands (and he can not afford to antagonise that base - they flipped improbably blue just to support Brexit). By doing nothing, he's made Brexit an albatross that the tories must wear.
Everything I've seen from him suggests that he's a canny operator. He's been very anodyne in his economics, because the only thing he can achieve by setting out his stall is to alienate. The voters he's already got aren't going to vote harder.
His strategy is to be "not tory" and his tactics are to not prevent the tories from making blunder after blunder. I think this is absolutely the right strategy and tactics. By contrast, the Lib Dems have much more work to do.