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ORIGINAL: Awareness
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ORIGINAL: tamaka
So... what does everyone think about the Investagatory Powers Act that the UK passed?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-surveillance-becomes-uk-law-with-barely-a-whimper
It's completely consistent with the socialist agenda of the UK.
Remember, Orwell called it "IngSoc". English socialism - and my my, haven't the Poms just done their best to make his dystopia a reality.
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
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ORIGINAL: MariaB
So are you suggesting the big banks have a socialist agenda?
No, I'm suggesting Britain is run by an oligarchy committed to social control and that it operates at a level above that of the quasi-differences between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
The Tories have done nothing to roll back the Labour Party's extensive program of anti-male legislation and until they do, that's effectively tacit approval of what is undoubtedly a socialist agenda. (It goes without saying that Britain is an absolute hell-hole for your average man in the street).
The socialists pursue their idiotic Utopian paradise where everyone is nice to each other and the Conservatives pursue the dollar but unless they actually roll back legislation they're effectively continuing down the socialist path. Brexit is the first anti-socialist move in quite a long while - and one that came about as a dramatic miscalculation of popular sentiment - and while it's encouraging, there's no doubt in my mind that Britain is still comprehensively fucked.
No it's got bugger all to do with any "socialist agenda". Whatever made you think that the last Labour government was particularly socialist?
It's got far more to do with an underlying conservatism (with a small c) which pervades much of what happens here. That is why the Conservatives (with a big C" are the default party of government. Every so often we rise up against being controlled and actually change a few things but we quickly forget why we did and go back to allowing large institutions (including the government) to control our political life. Parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage (both for men without extensive property and women) was incredibly hard won, but many people don't really appreciate any of that now.
That's why we don't have much of a constitution and a confused mish-mash of rights. Incredibly the Brexit camp think that the single vote for a completely undefined exit from the EU was democracy enough and shouldn't be subject to parliamentary approval and scrutiny. The executive (which has far fewer controls and balances than in other western democracies and operates on Royal prerogative) should just get ahead and do it, whatever it is. The referendum vote was certainly a poke in the eye to the establishment and a vote against EU political institutions but beyond that it was just the delivery of a blank piece of paper.
Theresa May is not your average evil capitalist but a good old fashioned undemocratic matriarch (not patriarch only because she is a women), which is something most Brits feel very comfortable with. She believes in a sort of benign dictatorship and is even willing to try to give something to the disadvantaged.
However in her benign dictatorship she also believes in complete social control. This is her law. She made it as Home Secretary and has implemented it as Prime Minister. In a weird way it is an improvement on previous legislation as it involves a level of scrutiny of the secret services not there previously.
But it is still based on the old maxim that "if you aint doing something wrong you have nothing to hide". That however is bullshit on an unimaginable scale. In this country of the strangest paradoxes we love eccentricities and public displays of perversion but demand a dishonest level of purity from those in public positions (and I don't just mean politicians, I mean public servants, social workers, health workers, company directors etc.).
Sadly in a country where sexual kinks are accepted in a disembodied way, they are still used to ruin people, strike them off professional registers and criminalise them by making viewing "extreme porn" an offence.
It is this essential hypocrisy that makes this law dangerous, where the Police will trawl your net usage to find something juicy so that they can get you on something if their main case proves unfounded. Our largely right wing press is only too pleased to smear people for just about anything, and a large proportion of the public lap it up.
All this has fuck all to do with socialism, and everything to do with a constitution based on trust, an underlying attitude which dislikes rights and an instinctive social conservatism.
Of course the UK also has a strong history of liberalism, diversity, dissent and radical philosophy (much of which it exported to the US in the 17th and 18th centuries). Unfortunately our complete failure to turn any of this into meaningful legal protections for our citizens means that, in effect, we have to rely on the good will of those in power, unless we rise up in revolt, which we rarely do. Hell, we don't even have a meaningful right of assembly any more.
It is sad that, although we wrote the European Convention on Human Rights, we can't wait to be rid of it. I wish I could say that is just because of big business or big politics but all too many of our "citizens" do not want people's rights protected because they believe that "if you have nothing to hide, and you are just like us, you have nothing to fear or to hide".
This is a case of people getting the legislation they deserve. There could have been more of a fuss. There could have been more vigorous objections but there weren't.
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RE: Be careful what you search for... - 
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