Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It may have been different if… Genuinely, how? Give me the best case scenario.
Any answer I give would be found unsatisfactory so there is little point in bothering. 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.
The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
281–290 of 327 posts
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons. Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime, it would just make it harder for victims to defend themselves. 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…
> Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons 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…
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.
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdote is not data. It is both true that the police absolutely suck at handling petty crime, and the Met have a fairly terrible reputation; and that more serious violent crime is much, much less of a problem in London than it used to be (and less than US cities, of course).
So far, I have never seen any article or even comment online explain explicitly why this is the case. Almost everyone can see quite visibly that crime is not decreasing but then you have people with a clear political and financial motive saying: the stats, you are just a loon or (even worse) someone who might not be from London. If you read the best source on this, hospital admissions, you will see that ~95% of the d…
Also, on looking for incentives the very obvious incentive to try discredit these orgs is so that politicians outside London can blame crime on immigration in the city that has the most immigrants.
This is straight out of the playbook of groups who want to manipulate public opinion so that they can get away with something that is not in the interests of the electorate.
Look at the US where these capabilities have been under siege since the start of this presidency, for example NASA’s climate data and the EPA’s air quality health impact measurement. Or more directly relevant: “immigrants are eating dogs and cats” and it doesn’t matter that the people who track crime professionally say “no they aren’t”.
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#284> 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…
I’m twitchy about this because I’m hearing from relatives in far more dangerous countries and cities about how London is under siege from immigrant criminals and sharia law is being imposed in the streets. Their news bubble is full of current articles that use as “evidence” pictures of riots from a decade ago where the violence was not committed by immigrants.
This would be laughable if not for how completely these folks have swallowed this nonsense.
It’s at best unscrupulous journalists desperate for eyeballs but given how pervasive this is it feels naive to assume anything but a paid, coordinated campaign.
“Are you ok in the UK?” Yes, I’m right here in London. London is fine.
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
> client-journalism it engages in with regard to the Conservative party. 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 par…
I've no idea what Dr. Who, murder-reporting, period dramas or stock photography choices have to do with the Labour party, but I'll pretend you're arguing in good faith and address what I believe to be the point in your copypasta. 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 covera…
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.
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#286Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any answer I give would be found unsatisfactory so there is little point in bothering. 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.
That’s not true, I’m genuinely interested in hearing the argument. I don’t understand how it could have caused any improvement.
Which is exactly why any answer I give you would be unsatisfactory.
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#288This 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.
Why is it happening in the UK though? Why does their government think that they need this?
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure; but the article's premise is that street crime is falling (and as a result, the police, which, presumably, has more free time on their hands, can focus on other things). Assuming petty crime is street crime, and seeing that you agree that the police suck at it, is the article's premise correct?
Yes, it’s correct. Violent crime in London and the UK more generally has been on a long term downward trend. This is not incompatible with there being spikes in some specific categories of crime. But it’s consistent with the trends for homicide, for which the statistics are pretty hard to dispute, and where London has fewer per capita than Berlin, Brussels and Paris ( https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/l…
One reason homicides are down is because hospitals have got better at keeping stabbing victims alive. Stripped of context it looks like a win. Put in context the question becomes, why are there so many stabbing victims? Gang crime, etc.
Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
#290In 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?
Brits already have more prosperity (=> median wages) even after adjusting for purchasing power. Some stagnation is to be expected from high energy prices and trade disruption (brexit). British surveillance state tolerance has always been pretty high for Europe, and is typically "sold" to the average citizen as anti-crime.
Almost all the wealth is in the South East of England. Outside of that the country is much poorer.
I drive from Manchester to Dorset once a month to visit my parents. There is a clear line where I notice all the street signs, the service stations, roads etc are better kept. Cars and houses are in better condition/news.