I would read the links in the article. The problem is that social media companies worked with civil servants in European countries to remove posts being made people outside Europe. This also happened in the UK where there were parts of the government that were able to make requests directly to social media companies to remove posts on their platform, regardless of where the poster was from.
For obvious reasons, the linked article does not explain that fully.
It is kind of weird to see the turnaround on here from people who complain about the US government being too powerful but, for some reason, are quite okay with an unelected EU bureaucrat being able to govern their internet usage. There are no principles at play here.
Posts being distributed to people in the Netherlands that is.
Magic mushroom truffles are decriminalized here in NL, you can sell them openly in shops. Doesn't mean you won't get in trouble if you send them to the US.
Honestly, rather a "unelected EU bureaucrat" (What does this even mean? Are we going to individually elect the entire civil service, or require elected officials to delegate nothing and personally review every decision?) than an American tech-bro governing my internet usage.
The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
The issue with the EU is that they lack the capacity for any kind of strategic thought. There are multiple reasons why but the underlying cause is that it is possible to move into local minimum where there is a very strong disincentive for any kind of change. Countries in the EU have generally been in that place since before the EU...that is why the EU was created, to limit change. It is isn't political incentives, it is a fundamental aspect of the political culture. If you also look at the stuff that has changed, this only becomes more strange (i.e. government intervention, immigration, regulations). Change is limited to preserve control.
> The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
To add to your point, despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government. Local minima, everything is fine, there is no fire, I'm going to make some tea while the tables turns to ash under the pot.
As the other answer says, surely this would always be the case. People do not deal with government regularly and there is a strong disincentive to report upon this.
I think you see the same thing in every Western democracy where people believe there is no corruption or believe in rather comical forms of corruption, but the corruption is actually systemic and a function of some political configuration that can't really stand change. This is certainly the case in Germany where you have this odd alliance between unions and billionaires that has basically led to, despite the amazing talent of their people, amazingly poor policy delivery.
And pray tell, what does the American or the Chinese worker in this case get out of their higher productivity and competitiveness? Because it really seems that it's not quality of life, that's for certain.
More money and material comforts? Well perhaps, but then again, I do wonder just how many would willingly take that rather than for example a proper work-life balance or clean environment. And we'll probably have to rethink the relationship of our societies with material consumption etc. in the coming decades anyway due to the climate emergency, and so maybe it'd actually be better for the US or China to adopt our "less competitive" stance rather than for us to try to agonise on trying to get ourselves competitive with them.
No one has yet figured out just what one's material possessions will do for them after they're dead. At best you can pass them to your next of kin, but that doesn't need the kind of hyper competitive, hyper capitalistic mindset espoused by the US or China.
It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America?
Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition.
Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either.
The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.
There are still some protectionist issues on the single market itself.
For example, Poland defends its rail operator, PKP Intercity, against foreign competition by a series of dirty tricks, including "just never registering a sale of a depot to a competing corporation in the land registry".
Almost every major EU country, has implanted some domestic protectionist rules to protect some of its politically well connected lobbyist industries or jobs from cheaper or more efficient intra-EU competition buying them out. The restrictions almost never are in reverse.
I don’t understand how you can believe that about the EU. The union has been evolving so much since its creation. It is itself one of the greatest innovation in governance ever created. GDPR is an innovative framework making the EU leader in privacy protection. European open banking initiatives/frameworks are unique and have been leading the way forward for the past 20 years, and we are now reaping all the benefits with the latest payment system developments (PSD2 and others were already awesome but the payment standard is what makes the day to day citizens actually see the results). The 28th regime[0] in development is innovative. Schengen/TFEU Art. 45 is such an innovative policy. Where else can you move freely between so many countries?
That’s only from the top of my head and the few examples I’m familiar with
I assume you don't live in the EU either...yes, there is an absolutely huge industry behind it, that is why it passed. Companies have to employ data protection officers, effectively a no-show job, and there is a whole industry of people connected to governments that facilitates this. And that also protects existing companies from competing because it is so expensive to handle customer data...as you need to employ an EU bureaucrat who is the equivalent of a CCP party official...that you have to pay for.
The weirdest thing is that the EU is maximally corrupt, and people are unable to see it because they are so enured to the corruption. It is all corruption. GDPR does not increase productivity, it is tax on consumers to produce something that is required by government with the surplus being passed to insiders (civil servants, unions, and billionaires).
Also, the per capita rate of billionaires in countries like Germany is higher than the US...this is whilst they have a population that has the same net financial wealth as Greece. In Sweden, 60% of total GDP was produced by companies controlled by one family until the 70s. The whole system is based upon large government in concert with large businesses and large unions. If you are in the club, you get a lifetime of free money. If you are out of the club...well, good luck competing with the migrants they are flooding into the country.
Of course it doesn't, because the whole point of having GDPR is preventing companies from doing some productive stuff that would involve collection of personal data.
> Companies have to employ data protection officers, effectively a no-show job
No… an employee of the company can be designed as the data protection officer. Do you have literally no experience working in the EU? If yes you have really strong positions for someone that misinformed. Where are you getting your information from?
I can tell you that if you work in a large company with sensitive data it’s definitely not a no-show job, that can for sure be a full time position
> .as you need to employ an EU bureaucrat who is the equivalent of a CCP party official
Either complete lie or you are delusional. Wtf are you talking about
> GDPR does not increase productivity, it is tax on consumers to produce something that is required by government with the surplus being passed to insiders (civil servants, unions, and billionaires)
Ok, I think you’re completely out of your mind. The thought process makes absolutely no sense. Now I feel bad I have wasted my time engaging.
The only people that think global free trade is a good thing are the top .001% net worth individuals which use it to wield power.
Trading blocks (like the European single market) are specifically designed to protect their members from shit that global corporations or other nations attempt to get away with.
I'm not sure what "Trade within Europe has massive restrictions." means without context. Compared to some Randian capitalist utopia where there are no rules and no governments? Or compared to before the creation of the European single market?
“The International Monetary Fund estimates that the persistent barriers to the EU single market still represented the equivalent of a 110 % tariff on services.”
There is a good amount of work to be done to complete the single market, what we currently have is way too fragmented
That is politically impossible. Everyone knows it is impossible because if you open up some countries to free services trade then the political basis for the EU and the traditional governing countries would collapse.
The limitations on trade within Europe are intentional design. The attempts to stop the economy from collapsing with these massive government spending packages are the death throes.
I mean, it is extremely difficult, but the whole union was seen as impossible the last century. With strategic developments over decades I don’t think it’s impossible
The European Coal and Steel Community was established over 74 years ago.
The idea of Europe as a nation goes back to the early to mid 20th century, at least. One example i can find a citation for (but it was far from the first): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_a_Nation
What you said comprises the exact error in logic that people make. Because we did this, this other thing is possible.
The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc. Free trade would be a massive change, that is why it hasn't happened. The EU is basically the logical conclusion of European forms of governing.
I have no idea how you can be aware of the history of Europe or the people involved with the EU and think this. It is incomprehensible. One of the most bizarre aspects of the EU is that has become a religion for people who have no idea that the basic principles of the EU are everything they oppose.
But the EU started out as an industry group, the ECSC, to limit competition in coal and steel (with the helpful side effect of making German industrialists who did very well under Hitler even more rich).
If there is any founding principle of the EU, it is that competition should be limited because the view of people who founded the EU was that economic competition caused WW1/2 (a very generous interpretation of Germany's role in events but one that was used because there were a lot of wealthy Germans who wanted to use the EU to limit trade...btw, the situation today is beyond their wildest dreams, it is has made a small handful of German billionaires very wealthy for no effort).
The ECSC was about creating a common market. So we are talking about free trade within the community. Which is the literal opposite of what you’re describing? We are talking about a trade community that is literally about blocking countries from introducing discriminatory policies. I assume you see the EU as anti-democratic somehow? You seem to have pretty much everything backward. The ECSC is something covered in school as a teenager, it’s not a secret or hidden history you’re somehow finding out. Yes after the world war there was a huge push to get neighboring countries to compete in a local free market instead of via military expansion. And yes that eventually served as a framework to develop EU institutions. And yes some people in Germany and other countries made quite a lot of money from the trade. How do you arrive to the conclusion that the region is hostile to change, wants big governments (we are talking about a region split in multiple countries, each with their own political systems, multiple of which are federations split in states that have their own autonomy and political systems. Somehow this huge community of small political entities becomes a huge government?), want centralization, and are suspicious of democracy?
Somehow whenever European powers collaborate together it is framed as anti democratic, anti innovation, anti trad. Complete nonsense
I wish European countries would love big government and centralization just as much as EU detractors say. We have way too much fragmentation, the overhead of coordinating so many small entities is just so high and a waste
My hope is that eventually the "fast ring, slow ring, adjacent ring" system of the EU becomes a thing. I then imagine BeNeLux, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, maybe Czechia entering that fast ring. And as they synchronize their business and tax laws and capital markets, it'll show such an acceleration of growth that almost immediately more EU countries will want to go in on it. The nice thing is that because the "fast ring" would be more of a gentleman's agreement than a true EU institution, it wouldn't be bogged down.
The only hair in the soup I see for the start is that Denmark and Sweden would have to join the Euro, but their currencies are already effectively pegged to it anyway.
Services trade within Europe is often less free than services trade outside of Europe. The reason why is because there is a strong political constituency within Europe to ensure that certain kinds of sinecure jobs are not impacted by competition (and yes, as you helpfully point out, to blame that on "global corporations"...and people wonder why Europe had such a long period of dictatorships in the 20th century, "globalism", right? wink, wink).
> Trading blocks (like the European single market) are specifically designed to protect their members from shit that global corporations or other nations attempt to get away with.
Most of those global corporations are in favour of these trading blocks - they are the best placed to take advantage of them.
The EU is far more than just a trading block. The trading block is the countries they have free trade agreements with - the EEA,, plus the UK, plus Turkey. The EU is a political union.
Global corporation can lobby far more effectively than anyone else at the EU level.
FWIW our local car industry had decades to prepare to compete in the EV sector and decided to do pretty much nothing + train China how to take over their market. We’ve been way too protective of that industry, I’m personally happy they finally have to face some real competition. Protectionism has its place in global trade but it should be with a very specific goal in mind, such as giving the companies some room to breath while transitioning to new technologies and avoid a complete disruption of your economy. You cannot do it just to keep a dying industry alive. But you’re supposed to replace the external economic pressure with internal political pressure (or similar), otherwise corporation just go with the status quo
That is because of population aging. Despite the US importing effectively endless amounts of young people, per capita income growth for working age population since the 1990s has been identical between US and Japan. I am unable to say why exactly but it should be obvious.
It is important to note, however, that the starting point is very different. The idea of employees robbing those evil shareholders sounds good but has resulted in capital markets that effectively do not function. Tidying up that mess will not be simple and improving equity markets will go a long way.
Also, the structure of Japan is a function of US policy after WW2 to dismantle the zaibatsu. In every single other historical case that I am aware of the result of "employee-friendly" policies has resulted in the kind of permanent underclass that people fear, incorrectly, that AI will lead to (i.e. Germany). It is a known bad idea. Japan avoided this because all the wealthy people's assets were taken, this didn't happen in other countries (i.e. Germany) which led to significant financial instability/risk/inequality (Germany also has inequality within a completely stagnant economic system, which is different from inequality in a system where the composition of wealthy people is continually changing...Germany's billionaires are a combination of people who mysteriously got rich in the 1930s very quickly and people who have been rich since the 10th century).
Japan is interesting but it is a complete outlier. Even with their relatively good relative economic performance, they could be producing absolute-terms growth that is double or even quadruple where it is now. Comparing middling economies like Japan or Western Europe with countries growing the same rate and per-capita incomes that are double is a misunderstanding of potential. Average economic performance should be double the US consistently for multiple decades.
The same mistake was made with Amazon, and a million other tech companies in the early 2010s.
Amazon were losing money, they were losing money because were growing and spent all of their cash flow on growth. It wasn't merely regarded as a hopelessly unprofitable business, if was regarded as potentially fraudulent. The share price collapsed in 2014 because, some thought, the profit would never come, investing in growth was pointless, etc.
Last year Amazon made nearly $100bn in profit. Stock is up 20x from then...this is after AWS was known (everyone also that was a massive fraud, could never be profitable...we know it was printing from day one), after it was the world's biggest retailer, etc.
It is difficult to understate how consistently people make this mistake, not just individually but in aggregate. You see the same thing with restaurants, consumer products, office leasing, so many businesses. This is not to say that the future will happen any particular way but that what Anthropic and co are doing is obviously rational and based upon very real cash flow. Anthropic's growth in revenue is, I believe, unparalleled in modern corporate history. A slight difference in this case is also that the economics of training these models is improving exponentially over time.
I think the bigger issue is that management clearly have no idea how to tell which people are actually working. Output could be higher with less people but the situation that managers have crafted is the maximum number of people with minimum level of output. Not good.
The answer to every problem at my place is: more headcount, productivity drops further and further, more headcount, more headcount.
Because that's the incentive that management faces. Their promotion is dependent upon having more headcount under them. The key metric in their resume that determines which jobs they are qualified for is how many people did they manage. They don't personally pay for that headcount. If they meet some baseline of output people don't really ask questions (or are able to judge) whether that headcount was necessary. So of course they seek more headcount.
I suspect the economy would look very different if total headcount in a manager's org was the denominator in a manager's performance review, such that if you employ 10x as many people, you better have generated 10x as much profit. But this would also have lots of unintended consequences: management would be incentivized to employ as few people as possible, which means lots of people would be out of work and would be competing with your firm.
> management clearly have no idea how to tell which people are actually working
they probably do, it's just a matter of incentives, i.e. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
maybe companies try to fix this with PIP quotas or something, but then this gets taken and perverted by the managers to where it has the opposite purpose and the highest rating goes to whoever helps build the empire the fastest
There has been no violence at any of the previous marches iirc. I think people assume there must have been because Starmer and co are foaming for violence...but there weren't.
Also, they have banned 11 people from getting visas because they were "agitators" and are deploying 4k police officers.
Just as a reminder though, the UK has people standing for political office who were convicted of terrorist offences, we have people here leading terrorist groups in other countries, we have people turning up illegally who are carrying out terrorist attacks in the UK regularly...it is a very odd situation.
One of the groups at the pro-Palestine protest is also funded by the same groups that fund Labour. There has obviously been quite a bit of violence at these events and adherents of this ideology have carried out terrorist attacks in the UK...but they are allied with a group that funds Labour so...all good.
> There has been no violence at any of the previous marches iirc.
His last protest was in september, it was pretty violent. 26 police officers were injured.
Tommy robison has the advantage here in that its not illegal to express public support for him and his march, unlike palestine action where its very much illegal to do so (hence why there are >2000 arrests)
> they have banned 11 people from getting visas because they were "agitators"
if this is a march for uniting the british realm why would he need foreigners to speak? Last time Musk incited violent overthrow of the UK government. Which is rich coming from a fucking Afrikaner.
> we have people turning up illegally who are carrying out terrorist attacks in the UK regularly...it is a very odd situation.
Nice I see what you did there. Everyone immigrant is a terrorist. Look, if people turn up illegally, then its fair to process them fairly and return. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is changing the law so its impossible to do that, unless we pay £300k a year to send 4000 people to an african country. yes, just 4k people, not a year, total.
The biggest issue facing the UK is that we have not had a working government since 2007.
We also have foreigners people paying people £300 to fire bomb ambulance stations. Its almost like theres a vested interest in fomenting unrest...
> His last protest was in september, it was pretty violent. 26 police officers were injured.
Given the number of people involved, that is a pretty low level of violence.
> unlike palestine action where its very much illegal to do so (hence why there are >2000 arrests)
Specifically the arrests were for supporting a group banned as a terrorist group. I am opposed to that law, but its important to be clear why they were arrested.
> if this is a march for uniting the british realm why would he need foreigners to speak
More fundamentally, visas are issued at the discretion of the government. I can think of people with far better cases for entering the country who have been refused visas - for example, academics attending conferences. I wonder how many of the people protesting about these 11 people getting visas were upset about those?
> unless we pay £300k a year to send 4000 people to an african country. yes, just 4k people, not a year, total.
That is just £75 a year per person. it is a LOT cheaper than keeping them in the UK. I think they get something like £50/week if not in catered accommodation.
> Look, if people turn up illegally, then its fair to process them fairly and return. There is nothing wrong with that
What is wrong with the current process is that it is slow and inefficient. There is also a problem with what to do with those who do not have documents as its hard to return them without evidence of where they should be returned to.
It is also grossly unfair as it actually lets in a lot of people who have no real claim while a lot of people who are genuine refugees cannot get here: look at the ratio of people belonging to religious minorities vs majority from Iraq or Syria. In 2025 there were over 2k asylum claims from Sri Lankans, a safe country (the civil war is long over). There are a lot of other countries I am sceptical about but do not have the same direct knowledge of. Why not send people who are clearly from a safe country back immediately?
> The biggest issue facing the UK is that we have not had a working government since 2007
I think that is optimistic. I would put the date a lot earlier!
I was of that opinion, alas it was not £300k for 4000, it was £300k _per_ person. double checking again to make sure I am not talking bollocks the spread is 100k-450k per person depending on how you calculate (ie total cost or ignoring upper bounds on people being processed)
Its was an exceedingly badly designed policy, that meant that it was illegal to process any asylum claims outside of sending people to rwanda. So the actual cost is even higher, because we had to find a fuck tonne of temporary accommodation. Even worse was that we were sending people who were granted asylum to rwanda, not people who failed.
It prioritised optics over solving the problem.
hence my anger.
> Why not send people who are clearly from a safe country back immediately?
because it was illegal to process any claims until the Rwanda scheme was up and running. At its height, there could only be 4000 people processed.
My friend, I think we both want the same thing, We want fair and legal processing of migrants. We want to make sure that those in need are offered compassion and care, those that take the piss, sent packing.
An entire class of commentator and politician decided that performance was more important than delivery, and we end up where we are. The _most_ annoying thing is that it drives a wedge between people who would otherwise normally agree.
With regard to sending people back to safe countries immediately, I do not mean as part of the Rwanda scheme, but in general. i.e. if someone from a country that is known to be safe claims asylum why not just immediately refuse them?
I agree what the vast majority of people want is a fair and efficient system. I think there are two things going on as well as the focus on optics rather than reality. One is that politicians contempt for the hoi polloi is such that they interpret any opposition to immigration as racist. The reality is that it is a lot more nuanced and most people are opposed to some immigration, not all immigration (e.g. skilled vs unskilled, legal vs illegal, etc.). The current government is very proud of having reduced immigration by reducing the number of skilled workers and students entering the country! The other thing is that it is a useful distraction from other issues and a scapegoat.
The reason it "cost" so much is because it was never used. You have confused stack with a flow. Basic error. In addition, the expectation was that it would be a deterrent because people are coming here primarily for economic reasons. The reason the government believed this to be the case is because the same thing has been tried in other countries and worked, Australia did this and now (in a turn of events that will presumably shock you) people are complaining that the cost of the deterrent is too large...because no-one tries to get there by boat anymore.
We have to find temporary accommodation anyway. Rwanda changed absolutely nothing about that policy, I am not sure how anyone could think otherwise. It is enshrined in our law functionally: if someone comes here illegally, we have to house them in a hotel and then we have to provide them with a council house if their claim is successful.
One of the bills, theoretically, created the legal basis to detain anyone who comes to the UK by irregular means. However, and despite the usual noisy crowd saying it was the end of democracy, there is no functional capacity within the Home Office to effectuate this...quite simply, there is isn't the administrative capacity (or, with Labour, the political will). This power exists and is completely unused. We are also unable to return people which makes indefinite detention of 300-400k people at a minimum challenging.
But this act is used to detain some illegal migrants in prison in some cases. Usually this is terrorism-related but, I believe, this has also been used in the many cases of sexual assault.
It was not illegal to process claims whilst the Rwanda scheme was running. One, it was never started, it was due to start after the last election if the Tories ran. Two, it did not change the status of people arriving, the Tories put substantial resources into the Home Office to reduce the backlog (one of the issues here is productivity because so many claims are accepted and there is a large industry dedicated to helping claimants, average processing time is 14 days...it is very slow).
Labour policy is to create a wedge because, to be frank, reducing immigration is devastating for a party that relies so heavily on voters who feel a kinship with the vast majority of illegal migrants. In some areas, Labour majority is almost all this demographic, and almost all illegal migrants make up this same demographic. We are speeding down the path to balkanization, this happened under the last Labour government and has happened under this one. There is a long historical record here of this happening in other countries that people are determined to ignore. One of the reasons why Labour went for student visas immediately, in addition to the massive level of fraud, is because people from these countries do not vote for Labour in the UK. Leaving Pakistan off the list, when it is a country that also does not accept returns and has huge number of fraudulent student visa was very obvious (and btw, some UK unis no longer accept students from Pakistant because of the fraud...this is exceptional). That is the wedge.
> Basic error. In addition, the expectation was that it would be a deterrent because people are coming here primarily for economic reasons.
You cannot get asylum on economic grounds.
> Australia did this
And it didn't work. They spent $12 billion(aussie dollars) on ~4000 people. which is a pointless waste of cash, even more so when they had to evacuate those granted asylum back to aus because they were so badly looked after.
> We have to find temporary accommodation anyway. Rwanda changed absolutely nothing about that policy,
Correct, but temporary accommodation is >>£ than normal accommodation. If you can't progress a claim because the destination is blocked, then you need more temporary accommodation. The crucial thing is, when your claim is processing, you can't work, which means we have to pay for everything.
Once the claim is processed and they have asylum, they can work, which means we don't need to pay anywhere near as much to look after them.
> But this act is used to detain some illegal migrants in prison in some cases. Usually this is terrorism-related but, I believe, this has also been used in the many cases of sexual assault.
No this is just the law. anyone who commits those acts are meant to be in jail, because it's illegal. thats how the law works.
> detain anyone who comes to the UK by irregular means.
What the bill actually does is make it almost impossible to claim asylum in a catch 22 style. Basically if you come here any any means, with the intention of claiming asylum, it invalidates any visa you may have. This means your entry in the UK was illegal. So there are no legal routes to claim asylum out side of the two special schemes for ukrainains and Hong Kongers.
the problem is, because they didn't do the ground work that would remove the contradicting laws. Which means its not really possible to defend it in court.
> Rwanda changed absolutely nothing about that policy, I am not sure how anyone could think otherwise
Basically because it was illegal to send people to anywhere other than rwanda, and rwanda was ready, and wasn't legal to send anyone to for processing, it meant that no-one could be processed. This was a known and telegraphed problem of the bill. This act: https://www.legal500.com/developments/thought-leadership/ill... made it legal to process claims again.
> the Tories put substantial resources into the Home Office
Yes, and it was spent on accommodation and rwanda.
> We are speeding down the path to balkanization,
No, we really are not. Go to Rotterdam and look at how integration happens there (hint, it fucking doesnt) In Britain we do integration really well. kids of immigrants have excellent outcomes in education and employment. For example out of the last 8 years there has only been 4 months where someone who isnt a child of a migrant held the top spot (6 out of 8)
> Labour went for student visas immediately,
Actually the tories did that first. The best part? now we have to pay more to bail out universities.
> There is a long historical record here of this happening in other countries that people are determined to ignore.
...but it obviously wasn't. 150k people attended, and a lot of the issues with police are because the police come to this stuff tooled up. The same thing happened with the student loan protests 15 years ago. When almost all of the incidents involve police, that is usually an indication.
People outside the UK have been banned from attending because they are "agitators". The reason why Palestine Action is illegal is because they organized terrorist attacks, this protest is not illegal and one of the pro-Palestine groups attending is the largest donor to Labour.
Why would foreigners not be allowed to speak? Britain is a diverse melting pot where all peoples can discuss ideas freely. Petty nationalism and xenophobia isn't welcome here.
I didn't mention anything about every immigrant. I am saying that undocumented people have entered the country and carried our terrorist attacks. It isn't impossible to fix this, Labour changed the laws to push people back aggressively in 2004 (iirc, it was before the GE). What has changed is the electoral makeup of the UK, there is a massive constituency for as many illegal immigrants as possible. That is fomenting unrest because it involves massive social and cultural change in order to make up for the fact that Labour's support collapsed amongst their core vote. This isn't a complex or unusual situation: these things are happening because people are heavily incentivised. Changing the law is "wrong"...of course, you wonder why we have't had a working government at the same time? Lol. If any of this stuff was actually fixed, it would be very bad for political parties.
I believe the total number of attendees was 150k. The same thing happened with student loans protest where the police go in very hard and manage to produce the arrests required. But the vast majority of people do not go to commit violence. Same thing happens at pro-Palestine protests and every other protest (although due to the funding situation and the executive structure of the Met, the policing guidance given to those protests tends to be different).
And btw, yes it is possible the Met are lying. There have been multiple FOIs in the recent past where police forces have lied about this kind of thing. Aston Villa policing being one of the most obvious examples. It isn't particularly relevant to this case though but, given the massive changes in policing over the last few decades, it is generally wise to be cautious. This is why the IOPC exists and has been so critical of the Met.
Yes, the fact that large number of criminal activities have effectively been decriminalized would tend to beg the question why this is being deployed at a political protest.
The implication of police state is that they care about crime, but they do not care about crime. Anyone can turn up in Britain, claim asylum and will be sent to a hotel closed down for their comfort. Many visas were denied for speakers at this protest.
It is a politician state, not a police state. Facial recognition is being deployed against political opponents, not criminals.
The boring reality is that you can bribe a civil servant with £5k in the UK. They are remarkably cheap.
Whether the civil service is a shit place to work or not (it is), there should be a recognition of the fact that the government still controls a large budget. Whilst MPs are scrutinised quite heavily, that same scrutiny is generally not extended to civil servants (because they make the rules). The number of senior civil servants who have been bent beyond belief is long (Heywood, Sedwill is still being put forward jobs even though he has been selling access to the government...it is incredible).
For obvious reasons, the linked article does not explain that fully.
It is kind of weird to see the turnaround on here from people who complain about the US government being too powerful but, for some reason, are quite okay with an unelected EU bureaucrat being able to govern their internet usage. There are no principles at play here.
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