
Why Do Brits Accept Surveillance? - lelf
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/opinion/why-do-brits-accept-surveillance.html?pagewanted=all
======
Tzunamitom
What a trite article. To claim that the British are complacent about state
surveillance because we all perceive ourselves as "royal subjects" smacks of
fire-starting by a Guardian columnist desperately trying to draw attention to
his newspaper's position to gather more readers.

There are a number of factors why this is less of an issue in the UK than it
is here in North America, including:

1\. Brits fundamentally trust their government more - not politics, but the
concept that a state government exists first and foremost for the good of the
people is more prevalent in the UK.

2\. The influence of special interest groups and corporate electioneering is
much more muted in the UK.

3\. As someone else mentioned, CCTV cameras in themselves are not bad - most
are privately operated and NOT linked to a central government data store.

4\. As someone mentions in the article comments, the UK has been a target of
terrorism for much longer than the US.

5\. Increased education levels in the British armed forces, garner more
confidence in the military to do the morally correct thing given a tough
decision.

6\. Britain is institutionally far more liberal than the US with less
interference in policy from religious extremists and a history of judges
making activist decisions in order to preserve civil liberties where
legislation threatens to undermine established convention tantamount to
constitution (given the choice I'd rather have a country that is self-
restraining and no constitution than a constitution that restrains, but a
government that looks for ways to usurp it).

This is not to say that there is not a worry about civil liberties in the UK -
you only have to look at the furore about the proposed introduction ID cards a
couple of years back to see that the Brits care a lot about civil liberties,
they just see the threats in different terms.

~~~
objclxt
I agree with most of your points, except for these two:

> _Britain [has] less interference in policy from religious extremists [than
> the US]_

This seems a slightly rose-tinted view of British history. I would argue
Britain actually has _more_ interference in policy from religious extremists
than the US. What would you call the Lords Spiritual (the 26 seats in the
House of Lords reserved for Anglican Bishops) if not religious interference in
policy?

Or how about Section 28, which was proposed and pushed through primarily by
religious groups? US government policy is frequently influenced by religion,
but the separation of Church and State tempers this, and the Supreme Court has
frequently overturned legislation that has been drawn up with religious
influence (and indeed, directly overturned legislation that actively promotes
religion in state institutions). In the UK _the church is the state_.

You only have to look at the recent issues surrounding gay marriage (versus
civil partnerships) in the UK to see there is religious interference in
governmental policy.

> _a history of judges making activist decisions in order to preserve civil
> liberties where legislation threatens to undermine established convention_

I would argue the US has an equally strong history of this, and the current
Supreme Court system in the UK owes a lot to the US. Indeed, I think the
etymology of the phrase 'activist judge' stems from the US, not the UK.

~~~
richardjordan
In much of the US atheists are forbidden from holding many electe offices.
This is not true in the UK. Fretting over the Lords Spiritual and their lately
ceremonial role is to misunderstand the nature of political power and the lack
thereof vested in the House of Lords, and in particular the non-party-
political members.

~~~
vinceguidry
> In much of the US atheists are forbidden from holding many electe offices.

This is ridiculous. I wouldn't be surprised if there were laws on the books
dating back to the 1800s as Wikipedia states, but no way are they being
enforced, the first time they try would spell the end of any such law.

Now, atheists may well be unelectable for many offices, but that's neither
here nor there.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Definitely, distinctions without differences are neither here nor there.

~~~
vinceguidry
Are you just trying to sound smart?

------
Silhouette
Many of us don't willingly accept the level of surveillance that we now know
is happening. Unfortunately, our electoral system is very much an all-or-
nothing proposition, and therefore who holds power tends to be dominated by
how the major parties deal with a very small number of issues that can each
have a big effect on a lot of people.

Other than right after an event like the 7/7 bombings, neither national
security nor civil liberties get anywhere near the top of most people's lists.
Those people are too busy hoping they have a job next week, or trying to get
the best possible education for their kids, or worrying about the quality of
care that sick or elderly family members are receiving, or wondering if
they'll ever be able to buy a home somewhere they really want to live.

All the main political parties in the UK obviously understand this, and that
means policy on other issues is dominated by concerns other than the immediate
will of the electorate. In some cases, it's special interest groups. In this
particular case, there's probably some of that going on, but there's also the
politics of fear, where no-one wants to be the guy who didn't vote for
something security-related if the next horror happens on their watch.

This is a horrible situation if you are a citizen who believes the threats are
overstated or the privacy concerns are dangerous, but it's a rational response
-- indeed, it's probably the _only_ rational response -- under our current
political system, and that's why basically every major party here is reluctant
to oppose these kinds of infringements too strongly.

------
jsmcgd
I think a major reason for the indifference is ignorance. Many people here in
the UK are not well informed on this issue. I'm shocked at how many people
I've spoken to about this and they're only hearing it for the first time.
Apart from the Guardian no major news outlet that I have seen has given this
scandal any prominence. They have mostly acquiesced with the recommendation
from our security services that they don't report on this issue. In my opinion
another scandal in itself.

Another factor may be that people in this country don't think the risk of
tyranny returning as credible. They don't believe that the danger posed by
mass surveillance will ever be anything but hypothetical, that somehow a free
society is our national destiny. This shocking complacency manages to both
totally ignore human nature and the lesson from almost every history book ever
written.

As a country I really hope we get real about these issues and that we stop
taking our hard won civil liberties for granted. Ultimately they're the only
things that can be trusted to truly protect our democracy.

~~~
richardjordan
I think to the contrary that Brits, an Europeans in general are vastly more
sensitive to the threat of nazi-style or communist-like government - and
corporate - oppression than Americans who are, by and large, complacent on
this topic despite all the anti-government rhetoric you hear. As a result
governments can't get away with as much because people watch closely. Combine
this with the greater sense that the government runs the provision of critical
services like healthcare and people have a better relationship with their
government so fight over what matters, and there tends to be a good sense of
what that is. Also the British political system is far more responsive to the
electorate than is the US system which famously has less churn among elected
officials than the old soviet politburo. This means that the electorate has
more confidence in its ability to effect change.

------
codex
Mass surveillance is the natural state of man. When humans lived in clans and
tribes, everybody knew everyone else's business, including the leaders. Today,
that social surveillance network still exists (tips given to police, etc.) but
in a degraded form now that people live more individually.

People instinctively dislike spying because they want to be in control of
their own PR (social status), and secrecy gives them advantage even while it
hurts society as a whole due to information asymmetries. Gossip networks tend
to distort the true picture as well. This, humans evolved to protect their own
secrets while simultaneously snooping and gossiping on their neighbors.

However, living in an organized society involves compromise for the greater
good, and community surveillance is one of those compromises. One might as
well ask why the Brits accept paying taxes. Instinctively, you hate to part
with your money, but you must do it.

~~~
kazagistar
However, permanent record is in no way the natural state of man. The problem
of constant surveillance now is problematic, but only to a limited extent
because of how surprisingly not evil the people watching are; black bags and
public executions are reserved for people with funny skin and strange
religions in far away places. However, there is an even bigger problem in that
the surveillance record _stays_. It follows us around forever. Any mistake or
error you make will haunt you til the rest of your days.

People are forgetful, but less forgiving. If you "fix" forgetfulness, and make
memory of your actions eternal and immortal, you destroy second chances.

~~~
allochthon
_It follows us around forever. Any mistake or error you make will haunt you
til the rest of your days._

I can't help but think that we've crossed that bridge, and that in the near
future everything about anyone will forever be obtainable. Avoiding this
situation will require collaboration around safeguarding individual privacy on
a scale we haven't accomplished up to now.

------
oracuk
Some of the commentators on the original article also pointed this out.

We've been facing domestic and foreign terrorism for a very long time. We
found our societal balance for freedom and security some time ago.

If anything the Internet and commercial surveillance for marketing purposes
are the things that have disturbed the balance rather than the previously
accepted concept that we are surveilled by the state in every public and
private forum.

Written down it sounds terrible but it works in practice.

~~~
walshemj
Yep there are places in the uk (NI) even today civil servants and others
considered "crown" agents have personal protection weapon licenses.

------
JulianMorrison
I think the fundamental difference UK versus USA, is that it is very hard to
inflame passions in the UK about abstractions. Concrete examples of abuse are
needed to arouse our ire, and we only get angry at the actual abuse, not the
potential for it. So for example, we get more annoyed about police undercover
spies having sex under false pretences, than about the fact that there were
police undercover spies in peaceful protest groups (despite the fact that is
clearly egregious overkill and bad for democracy).

------
DanBC
It depends on the surveillance.

GCHQ slurping all my data doesn't have much negative effect. But some of the
surveillance the Americans go through isn't okay here - drug testing in the
workplace is limited for example.

And GCHQ's slurped data is tricky for law enforcement to use, which is why
there's been a debate about changes to the law to allow (or not) collection of
metadata by domestic law enforcement agencies.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Drug tests and credit checks in the workplace always struck me as being
screwed up.

~~~
walshemj
Yes its only really jobs requiring DV clearance that do the drug test thing -
though Amazon is requiring it for warehouse workers which is taking the piss
they really need to lose a court case over that.

~~~
richardjordan
Really? Not in my experience. I lived in Texas a few years and every job
seemed to require drug testing and often credit checks. I always wondered why
folks just didn't say fuck you but once I'd lived there a while I learned that
in those parts of the country where people like to talk about freedom and
independence they sure like to accept their obedient roles when it comes to
companies telling them to jump.

------
iuguy
The article completely glosses over the fact that the reason for the media
silence is the D-Notice (officially DA-Notice but no-one calls them that) in
effect. This is a 'voluntary scheme' in which the government asks the media
not to cover a story on the grounds of national security, but really it's only
voluntary if you don't mind having your access to government more or less
killed off, which for most news outlets is a no-no. Only the Guardian has the
balls to stand up on this one, and you've seen what's happened with shadowy
goons destroying laptops, people detained at airports and the attempts at
intimidating the editor.

~~~
walshemj
And the fact that the media have been grossly hacking and spying on the public
- the media in the uk dont have the rosy view of "journalists" that the USA
has.

People are more concerned about shady media moguls and the importation of
invasive hr practices that for example amazon are doing in the uk.

And we dont have the paranoid style that infects the USA political discourse.

------
basicallydan
I think it's because it rarely directly affects the majority of people in a
negative way, so it's hard to notice what the problems with over-surveillance
might be. Also, we hear about the good that comes from surveillance - such as
preventing and punishing crimes - more than we hear about the bad that comes
from it.

~~~
devx
That will always play a role in situations like these. However, you can see
things are turning around in US, at least with the population.

I think the issue in UK is the old "boiling the frog" theory. They've gotten
used to it, they've embraced it, so now they aren't particularly in a rush to
throw stones at it.

But that's the population. The article already mentions why nobody in the
Parliament says anything bad against it - the opposition started all of this,
and the others are in power.

I do think the lack of a proper Constitution is also a major problem for UK.
For example, in US, whenever someone tries to stop you from speaking, you can
easily point to the 1st Amendment and say it's your _damn right_ to say
anything you want, even if it's scary law enforcement people. In UK, you don't
really have anything like that, so people may "feel" something is wrong - but
in comparison to what?! They haven't really put the principles on paper. It's
all pretty vague and it's hard to get angry at a vague target.

~~~
audiodesigndan
There is exactly something like that in the UK. Freedom of speech has long
been a Common Law, with centuries of precedence.

Not only that, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights
guarentees freedom of expression, which was incorporated in the UK as part of
the Human Rights Act 1998.

Learning more on the subject will help you greatly.

------
epscylonb
I'm not convinced by the idea that surveillance in Britain is worse than in
America or other first world countries.

Yes there are a lot of CCTV cameras, there are a lot in most American cities
too, in both cases most of them are operated privately.

What is different is that Britain has a much higher population density, so the
surveillance appears more obvious, and makes for some skewed stats.

As for GCHQ, I would be surprised if they were notably worse than the NSA when
it comes to snooping.

------
ballooney
This is disappointingly poor for Jonathan Freedland. The most remarkable thing
about the session he cites was how unremarkable it was; no one expected any
great revelations and no one got any, as even Freedland himself said in a
radio interview on the BBC after the session. It was just a bit of theatre.

The argument about CCTV cameras as evidence of complacency about surveillance
seems silly and tired to me, as silly as an article would be in a British
newspaper that concluded that Americans are obsessed with killing each other
on the basis of gun ownership rates vs the UK. They're not, of course, the
overwhelming majority of gun owners do not buy them with the intention of
killing another person.

Likewise, the one camera per 11 people crops up a lot and (as far as I know,
having a small interest in the actual figure) no groups trying to find
evidence for it since have managed to do so, in fact the most high profile
study that investigated the number concluded that there were 1.85 million CCTV
cameras in the UK, of which 1.7M were privately owned, 0.03M were fixed and
publicly owned, and 0.12 were on public transport. [1]

That's 92% of them under private ownership. They exist, by and large, to deter
criminals from breaking into and stealing from stores and commercial premises,
just as you might be put off from robbing a convenience store in the US in the
knowledge that the store-owner might be armed, here it's completely normal to
see signs outside a shop saying "These premises are protected by CCTV" \- note
the use of the word protected - and indeed most hardware shops will have this
sign in stock right next to the 'no smoking' signs. They're there so you can
give something to the insurance company and if lucky there will be something
to help the police get an ID. I find their presence as much a threat to civil
liberty as dash-cams are to the civil liberty of the average russian.

Likewise stuff is called 'Her Majesty's $FOO' for entirely vestigial,
historical reasons. When Obama says 'God Bless America' at the end of every
speech we don't _honestly_ think that he's designed a policy whose success is
contingent upon divine intervention, jokes about healthcare.gov aside.

There are differences in the relationship between people and their state in
the UK vs other places just because of different evolutionary paths (socially
rather than biologically!). For instance, an American economist friend
expressed surprise that we didn't have a legal separation of church and state,
and how dangerous it was, and how we should get one like in America. Well,
people here are just not that religious in comparison to the US, and my
experience of the US is that the church has enormously more influence over US
politics than it does in the UK anyway, despite the law. It's just not really
a thing here. I'm sure if a modern British Prime Minister were to say 'God
Bless the UK' at the end of a speech he'd be sectioned under the mental health
act, and the PR people would go into overdrive to explain that he didn't
really mean it. Similarly, If UK employers were to switch to a policy of only
allowing two weeks holiday per year, and why not add random drugs tests while
we're at it, there would be riots at the outrageous and dangerous attempt at
enslavement of the population, and the government would likely be overthrown
if it failed to act. I use these just as an example to illustrate the
differences in what's considered important, and of what people are vigilant,
between the two nations.

"Many Brits accept the old securocrat formulation: If you have nothing to
hide, you have nothing to fear. " Do they? I don't think I've met that many
people who think that - maybe I just move in the wrong circles - but my most
prominent encounter with that sentiment was as an argument whose flaws we had
to point out in a Critical Thinking class homework at secondary (ages 13-18)
school, as part of one of the national school syllabuses.

I'm very worried about state surveillance, it's a constant fight, and while
I'm thankful that the most egregious proposals of recent years - national I.D
cards and 90 days detention without trial - were rightly defeated, I'm under
no illusions about winning a battle vs winning a war. But you have to pick
your battles, and the reason I think this article is guff is because it
misidentifies what to fight, and plays up to superficial and lazy observations
of the UK from outside, as if to appeal to its intended audience. All that's
missing is a reference to bad teeth.

Like I said, surprisingly bad from Mr Freedland, who otherwise has been quite
eloquent on the subject, I think.

[1]
[http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/cctv](http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/cctv)

Edit: typo.

~~~
myko
> I'm thankful that the most egregious proposals of recent years - national
> I.D cards

Maybe I'm not thinking very creatively but I don't see the problem with
national ID cards, could you elaborate?

~~~
rdtsc
A lot of it is cultural and propaganda related.

Remember how we (well Americans) used to joke during the Cold War how in
repressive regimes people had to carry papers and then at each checkpoint a
guard would stop and ask "papers please".

Americans have been proud to be the opposite of that. We are "free" people, we
have "privacy" at work here, nothing or nobody restricts our freedom of
actions. Government is all elected by the power of the people and they fear
us, not us fearing them. Anyway that explains why that is a sore point, it
tingles the cognitive dissonance nerve quite a bit.

So now if you move from state to state, you have to get a new license and that
becomes your ID. Coupled with your social security card. Coupled with all the
crap Facebook, Google, and Choicepoint has on you. Coupled of course with NSA
registering every number you call. All those things have raised eyebrows at
various times, but well at we can say "we don't have government mandated
papers to carry" and that is why when government mandated papers appear in
conversation people get all upset. Nevermind that effectively all the privacy
is lost and it doesn't really matter and it would probably make many things a
lot simpler if we just one national "driver's license equivalent".

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Right. We Israelis have National ID cards and National ID Numbers, the number
being printed on your driver's license if you choose to carry that instead.

Both cards are small, fit inside any adult's wallet (and children aren't
required to carry), and just overall tend to make dealing with any kind of
officialdom _massively_ easier than it was in the USA. Why? Because my
National ID links to an Interior Ministry database about things like, for
instance, my residential address.

So rather than having to provide several different pieces of official
documentation to prove local residency and some others to prove citizenship, I
provide one card which then proves both residency _and_ citizenship and
entitles me to the services of my municipal government and the local branch of
the Interior Ministry, while also unifying all official identity records under
one number.

Strangely enough, there have not been mass purges of Israeli Communists or
anything. I should know, having been to a few party meetings.

------
e12e
I think it's more that Brits have been subject to massive (CCTV) surveillance
for so long that these new revelations doesn't seem as shocking.

Additionally, all of us from Europe have assumed the US have been spying on us
ever since the first Carnivore/Echelon rumours -- I mean what did we think all
those NSA listening stations in the UK and Germany were for, if not monitoring
communications?

We don't have any protection from spying by the US constitution (or against
being killed by drones, for that matter) -- the favourite trite semantic straw
man of US "libertarians"[1] (We the people, but not, you know _foreign_ people
- they we can assassinate and spy on even if they're our allies -- and _that_
's certainly not a legal or moral issue -- it's only an issue when the
private-government military-industrial terrorcomplex are actually turned on US
citizens it's a problem...)).

After the intelligence agencies got away with incompetence/malfeasance
regarding Iraq, contributing to hundred thousands of civilian deaths in an
illegal war (arguably for the benefit of Big Oil and military contractors),
without anyone being prosecuted or even fired -- why would we assume they
didn't play fast and loose with moral grey areas that _fall within their legal
charter_ (spying on foreign nationals, ie: us) ?

Anyway, the title of the story brought to mind this story from 2008:

The Get Out Clause, Manchester stars of CCTV"
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/1938...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/1938076/The-
Get-Out-Clause-Manchesters-stars-of-CCTV-cameras.html)

[1] Note the quotes, there are of course many individuals and groups in the US
that do good and important work for privacy and other rights-issues.

------
makmanalp
I had heard that during the peak of the conflict with the IRA, more brits came
to view surveillance as necessary to safety, and then it remained that way.
Don't know how true this is.

It's eerily similar to the 9/11 situation and the Patriot Act though.

------
KaiserPro
Its because of many things.

One thing for our american cousins to note is that up until recently we were
regularly being bombed because of our (in)actions in Ireland.

THis is why there are no bins on the underground, and why there are only hand
full of ways to drive into the city of london.

another problem is that our media is on the whole sympathetic, or apathetic to
spying. The mass hysteria surrounding paedophiles is a wondrous tool for ill
thought out laws.

The public don't really like being spied on, but assume if you are against,
you must be up to something.

------
rwmj
We don't. We also know the committee meeting was a whitewash and the ISC is
not doing their job. And at least some of us will punish MPs for this at the
next election.

------
ris
Answer: if I decided to point a camera out into the public street from my
window and record everything I would expect to be allowed to do so. And as
such, I extend the right to anyone else, so that when I'm in a public place,
I'm fair game.

There's nothing anyone can do about it, so it's pointless worrying about or
trying to control it.

------
boredstat
I don't really like this phrasing:

"1.85 million CCTV cameras in the UK, of which 1.7M were privately owned,
0.03M"

And the later argument about proportions:

"That's 92% of them under private ownership. They exist, by and large, to
deter criminals from breaking into and stealing from stores and commercial..."

I'm curious about the distribution of the 0.03M (30,000) cameras apparently
"fixed" and publicly owned. If they are concentrated in certain regions, which
is more like what I think I've read about before, then you really do have
surveillance centers.

------
vacri
_It helps that Britain ... has a curiously complacent attitude to civil
liberties_

These would be liberties like universal healthcare? Or perhaps the right to
roam? Or what about when Britain made it a moral point to get its citizens out
of Guantamo?

How about concepts like "Police don't need to carry guns day-to-day to do
their jobs"? I've spoken here on HN about getting out of the car during a
traffic stop because I was tired of the subtle power play where the police
talk down to you while you're sitting. I had several responses, serious
responses, from Americans saying that I was crazy because I was likely to be
shot. Even after clarifying that I'm not being aggressive, just getting out of
the car and even proactively handing over my license, they were resolute that
such actions could lead to me being shot. Is this, as the author claims, the
result of a population that expects their government serves them? What a
citizen should expect, rather than a subject, to be so fundamentally afraid of
being murdered by their own police despite having done no wrong?

There are things that are 'civil liberties' that are not listed in the first
ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. 'Civil liberties' are
a grab-bag of things, and the US has nowhere near a monopoly on them, and
while the CCTV surveillance is bad in the UK, it's not the be-all and end-all
of 'civil liberties'.

Similarly, counter to the article's statement that US citizens expect their
government to serve them and UK 'subjects' expect to serve their government,
this simplistic statement is entirely undone by the attitude towards
healthcare - a fundamental part of human life, where the expectation of the
individual is the opposite of the author's statement. In healthcare, the UK
citizen expects the government to serve them, the US citizen doesn't. It's not
just healthcare - there are plenty of fields where if something is not ideal,
the UK expectation is for the government to fix it, and the US expectation is
for private enterprise to fix it. Hell, even the phenomenon of _welfare
dependence_ , rife in some areas of the UK, comes from the expectation that
the government owes the individual something.

 _They violate no Bill of Rights or written constitution because Britain has
neither._

A British lawyer put me to rights very clearly on this point: the UK does have
a constitution. It's in an arrangement of documents that all together describe
how the country is run - there just isn't a document with the title 'The
Constitution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland'. Americans
put an unusual highlight on the citizen's rights provided by the constitution
- usually a nation's constitution is mostly how the political apparatus is
arranged: there are two political houses, upper and lower; representatives are
elected this way; judicial system has these powers and is selected that way;
so on and so forth. The UK definitely has documents describing how it is run
politically.

Keep in mind also that if you worship in particular the US Bill of Rights,
you're missing out on the amendments that outlawed slavery and allowed
universal suffrage. The US Bill of Rights is _far_ from complete. Given also
that constitutions don't usually go into human rights in detail, all this kind
of criticism boils down to is sensationalism.

------
cma
The US was never attacked in WWII. The UK was. Look at how extreme September
11th made us, even 12 years later, and you can imagine what WWII did to
Britain.

~~~
gwern
> The US was never attacked in WWII.

Pearl Harbor comes to mind.

~~~
cma
You are right, though remember Hawaii wasn't a state at that time. Anyway, it
had nowhere near the psychological impact on the broader US public than the
blitz did on Britain.

~~~
27182818284
>You are right, though remember Hawaii wasn't a state at that time.

I had to interview a lot of elderly people on their thoughts about hearing
WWII for a high school exercise. Overwhelmingly they said their initial
response was "Where is Pearl Harbor?" but it didn't matter because it was _US
military attacked by the proper military of a foreign empire_ If that doesn't
say act of war to people, nothing will. The second thought reported to me most
often was one of rage. Comments like "It was a dirty rotten trick!!!" and
such.

------
rudin
I would just like to point out that many British people find the word Brit
pejorative and that you shouldn't use it unless you want to offend.

~~~
shocks
Brit here, since when do we find that offensive?

Being 'offended' is bollocks.

~~~
richardjordan
I've never heard this in my life. I don't know a single Brit who finds the
term offensive. Unless you're talking the. Brit Awarss. Now there's some
bollocks.

~~~
rudin
I understand if you are fine with it. It has lost most of its meaning with
history but I still cringe a little whenever I read it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_names_for_the_Briti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_names_for_the_British#Brit)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Brit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Brit)

~~~
shocks
I think the keyword here is _historically_ …

------
firegrind
they don't. foiling curtain twitchers is as much part of british culture as
tea.

------
stuartd
Because we're craven.

