The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

> That hasn't been a thing for a long time

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.

I think Orwell was prescient and attuned to this sort of thinking in England at his time. Perhaps, it never really went away? e.g.: "crimestop"

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/725596-crimestop-means-the-...

It isn't precrime or "dissent management" that is the problem, but the engineering of behavior and thought in society where such concepts are acceptable to people.

I don't think we can discuss it in detail here, but with this , chat control, and all sorts of other controversial laws, you'll notice the people of the country actually support that stuff. There is an interesting conversation there about democracy, and the priority of the working class people. Naturally, a person living paycheck-to-paycheck and fighting for healthcare and keeping their job (or getting one) does not care about this stuff. So who does? Not the ruling class. A lot of people (including on HN) who think this stuff is important (rightfully) are not poor people, perhaps middle-class?

Is democracy itself something that can survive, if it is left entirely up to popular vote? Power has gravity, it always wants more. Ideally, there would be institutions that are democratically established and managed that would be trusted to safeguard the people's interests. In the US, there are executive department agencies for example like the FCC, FTC, FDA and more, but they are subject to those in power who are elected by the people.

My "food for thought" here is that similar to supreme courts, there needs to be a regulatory and oversight branch of the government, whose chiefs are apolitical (like actually, not like the US supreme court), well compensated, long-tenured (but not lifetime, more like 20 years), and appointed by confirmation of all other branches of government.

We need to address the problem of power, influence to wield power and incentives for those entrusted with power to act in good faith, but also with good competence. The last part is important, because I have no doubt, a lot of the politicians that come up with this Orwellian nonsense have good intentions, the outcome they seek are noble, just not the means. they just happen to be incompetent when it comes to the subject matter.

I'm aware this is a cultural difference, government betrayal and overreach are hotbutton and mainstay topics in the common culture of the UK and related states (e.g. the US).

It is nevertheless so weird to me that rather than trying to monitor and mitigate the abuses of legal instruments like the ones proposed, people are trying to prevent and abolish things wholesale.

Everything is depicted as a slippery slope to abuse or as an excuse for abuse, and perhaps because people actually believe in it, they do materialize as one too. Presents as a vicious cycle to me, and as if people were disallowing themselves from recovering of it.

I really have to wonder how much of it is the available options always being just two parties in these territories, and the electoral systems supporting that convergence. In such a scheme, I can indeed definitely imagine people being compelled to vote further and further from their own interests and values, and the slippery slope rhetoric being finding a manifestation.

I think tribalism is the simpler explanation. One of the worst offenders I saw was a guy on here who wrote one of the new generation shells written in go...went out of his way to say the US had the same behavior as the UK, arresting people holding a blank sign, except his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police. An entirely unrelated issue. The point was though he was flailing due to feeling defensive, and unable to take a step back and analyze the criticisms objectively. This is super common behavior in pretty much all countries, and I think it's a huge problem.

If we go by the explanation from wikipedia [0], Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage would not be considered English, as their families are not part of the English or Celtic ethnic groups. Their ancestors are Turkish and German who came to the UK after 1850. Do you believe they are not English? I mean even the current King of the UK would not be considered English by your definition! He is descended from Greek, Danish and German people [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_monarchy_of_the...