No need to speculate that the UK government "might" one day become the bad guys: they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.
Everyone should read the case of the IT consultant getting arrested in the UK because he posted a photo of him doing some target shooting during a trip to the US: <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-shotgun-florida-5HjdNhP_2/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-s...
Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.
There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
- We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
- Parliament routinely rebels against the government, and backbenchers have a lot of say about the business of government.
- We have a number of upstart parties; they might be populist, but at least it's not a two-party-forever system.
- We had a coalition government just a few years ago.
- We changed our constitution a few months ago (abolishing hereditary peers) and it was just another news among many.
- We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown, with a massive scandal before that when the PM accepted a gift of some wallpaper.
Compare and contrast to the ossified and corrupt American system, where the president is openly enriching himself and his family and friends, and there's nothing threatening the presidency. The last amendment was passed half a century ago, and there's zero hope for reform.
Democracy is a living, breathing system of government, not a number of checkboxes like "can I shoot a gun for fun" or "can I call someone N-word online". It's important to see the forest for the trees.
That's not necessarily evidence of undemocratic processes. One of the big downsides of democracy is that it gives the absolute knuckledraggers the same vote as anybody else. It seems to me like the UK has the same problem as the US: they have a revealed preference for autocratic policies, because no one gets excited about the government apparently doing nothing.
>because no one gets excited about the government apparently doing nothing.
Well yes. Precisely because the government was "doing nothing" while issues that plagued the voting population like migration, wealth disparity and affordability crisis were constantly growing for the past ~15 years until it reached breaking point.
Hence why people affected by this are now voting to give the new extremist parties a chance at the helm, because just voting more "doing nothing" by the parties who stood by and enabled this, just guarantees the same issues aggravating. So then what else do you expect to happen at the elections?
I expect a variety of more extremist parties - some offering to kick out the immigrants, others offering to delete all regulations and let the free market prevail, others offering to delete billionaire wealth. Like in the Berlin mayor vote this week, where both the extreme left seize-billionaire-wealth party and the extreme right ban-immigrants party both won sizeable shares (in fact the extreme left party won a plurality)
>Like in the Berlin mayor vote this week, where both the extreme left seize-billionaire-wealth party
And how is Berlin planning to seize the wealth of billionaires?
Because I've seen this play out before, where every supposed promise to tax the billionaires, just ends up as another tax burden on the working class high earners and entrepreneurs who already pay the highest tax rates and are the furthest thing possible from billionaires, but still gets political support from the unwashed masses since it's entirely envy driven.
How is the ban immigrants party going to ban immigrants? How is the delete regulations party going to delete regulations? Last time the extreme left party had any power, it set a city law saying rent couldn't be higher than a certain amount, but the landlords sued the city government in federal court, and won because apparently there is a constitutional right for landlords to collect as much money as possible.
failbuffer · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-are-being-thrown-in-uk-prisons-over-what-theyve-said-online-can-free-speech-be-saved/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.
There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
shrubby · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
dgroshev · · focus · HN ↗
- We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
- Parliament routinely rebels against the government, and backbenchers have a lot of say about the business of government.
- We have a number of upstart parties; they might be populist, but at least it's not a two-party-forever system.
- We had a coalition government just a few years ago.
- We changed our constitution a few months ago (abolishing hereditary peers) and it was just another news among many.
- We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown, with a massive scandal before that when the PM accepted a gift of some wallpaper.
Compare and contrast to the ossified and corrupt American system, where the president is openly enriching himself and his family and friends, and there's nothing threatening the presidency. The last amendment was passed half a century ago, and there's zero hope for reform.
Democracy is a living, breathing system of government, not a number of checkboxes like "can I shoot a gun for fun" or "can I call someone N-word online". It's important to see the forest for the trees.
sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
- We can't beat off to porn anymore without a VPN, because our nanny government has blocked it.
- Our government sends hilarious fines to foreign websites when it disapproves of their moderation.
OkayPhysicist · · focus · HN ↗
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
Well yes. Precisely because the government was "doing nothing" while issues that plagued the voting population like migration, wealth disparity and affordability crisis were constantly growing for the past ~15 years until it reached breaking point.
Hence why people affected by this are now voting to give the new extremist parties a chance at the helm, because just voting more "doing nothing" by the parties who stood by and enabled this, just guarantees the same issues aggravating. So then what else do you expect to happen at the elections?
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
And how is Berlin planning to seize the wealth of billionaires?
Because I've seen this play out before, where every supposed promise to tax the billionaires, just ends up as another tax burden on the working class high earners and entrepreneurs who already pay the highest tax rates and are the furthest thing possible from billionaires, but still gets political support from the unwashed masses since it's entirely envy driven.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗