VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

Post by const_cast » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 3:55 AM UTC

flumpcakes wrote: post #457

Spivak wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning porn depicting choking "to protect women from violence" is so funny. You could not ask for a better example of moral panic from people that didn't do their research. Choking is a strongly women preferred kink.

There's also a reported epidemic of women being choked during sex unprovoked, and who certainly don't want it. Unfortunately these laws are being made from things happening in the real world that get traction. Is the law a good way to stop this? I don't know. The main tool of governance for our elected leaders are laws, and so that's what they do.

Post by vithlani » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 4:26 AM UTC

areoform wrote: post #241

cs02rm0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're se…

> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling) > just mentioning increased immigration One of these seems like the solution to the other. > as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.…

Post by lisbbb » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 4:53 AM UTC

nwatson wrote: post #696

ben_w wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the wheels fell off decades before I was born. The peak of the empire was around WW1, where the victory was immediately followed by Irish home rule, and Churchill(!) putting the UK military into austerity to save money, which is how it came to be that evacuating from Dunkirk involved a lot of civilian ships, amongst other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Year_Rule WW2 was a Pyrrhic victory. Not that Wes…

As for WW2, Roosevelt worked hard to make sure Britain couldn't reconstitute its empire, and to work toward global self-determination.

Post by tomhow » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 6:08 AM UTC

rubyAce wrote: post #132

makingstuffs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word, division. The UK is so divided that people are too busy pointing the finger at each other to realise the root cause of the deterioration of our quality of life is entirely generations of mismanagement of the public purse. Instead of questioning how MPs are entitled to a pay rise while your average person gets made redundant, people are questioning why people fleeing persecution should ‘be paid for with my…

[flagged]

Post by derelicta » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 6:16 AM UTC

alextingle wrote: post #255

mft_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view (“the Bourgeois’, etc.) seems to imply there’s a group of very clever manipulators somewhere, overtly planning and executing this (presumably in a dark room with armchairs and cigars). But I just can’t imagine this, in the UK’s example. What I see instead is the other side of Hanlon’s razor —incompetence— coupled with a political class riven with pockets of self-interest, and very few seemingly with an inte…

Smells like coded antisemitism, in this case.