> In London, a barrister who held up a blank piece of paper in Parliament Square was asked for his details by Metropolitan Police officers, and told that he would be arrested under the Public Order Act if he wrote "Not My King" on the paper.
Nothing actually happened to the guy with the blank sheet of paper (or at least, if it did, that’s not reported in the article).
Certainly you can find examples of the British police overpolicing protests, and that’s something that people rightly get angry about. It’s just that there’s a huge distance between that kind of thing (which happens pretty much everywhere from time to time - do US police forces have an exemplary record of policing protests?) and the kind of wild claims you can see in this discussion that the UK has become an Orwellian police state.
Perhaps, but I am not comparing it to American forces. I'm Swedish and while I have some things to do with America, mostly indirectly, it's not my centre of reference.
It feels like the UK is in many ways leading the charge, though. The only other country that would be a contender is Australia. It was the UK for example that introduced that barbarian law that conceivably allows imprisoning people that genuinely forget the passwords to their encrypted volumes, and that was I think over a decade ago.
Lots of things are troubling. I am complaining about wild exaggerations, not saying that there is nothing to worry about or that the UK is perfect.
Unfortunately a lot of people are getting their news from Twitter, from accounts that are obsessed with painting a particular picture of the UK. Have you spent any time in the UK yourself? The impression of it that you’d get from reading HN is unrecognizable to anyone who lives here.
I don't disagree that there are wild exaggerations being made, my point was just that the UK seems further along the path than its peers.
> Have you spent any time in the UK yourself? The impression of it that you’d get from reading HN is unrecognizable to anyone who lives here.
I lived in Scotland for a while and have been to London often enough. It's it's mostly just a normal country, but things can change slowly until all of a sudden it's unavoidable. The cops showing up to peoples houses for opinions tweets is certainly frequent and concerning.
You say that but I’ve shared several examples of the same things happening in other countries like America too.
So I don’t think the UK is any further along in that regard.
There are other areas where the UK is further along though. Such as CCTV surveillance in London. There are also areas where the UK is far less Orwellian, for example our open-mindedness about abortion and gender identity.
The UK’s legal system isn’t just defined by what Musk tweets about. ;)
> You say that but I’ve shared several examples of the same things happening in other countries like America too.
You've shown some protestors getting arrested, but I don't believe you can show any equivalent of cops acting as thought police for tweets.
> for example our open-mindedness about abortion and gender identity.
Funny you say that, because there isn't so much open-mindedness as a forced viewpoint. I'm trans, FWIW, but I don't at all agree with sending cops to peoples houses because a ciswoman has doubts about accepting a transwoman completely as a woman.
I'd also say it's other western countries being compared to here, and I don't think the UK is particularly further ahead than other first world nations, aside from the US where it is very much a red/blue state issue.
> You've shown some protestors getting arrested, but I don't believe you can show any equivalent of cops acting as thought police for tweets
I have elsewhere.
> Funny you say that, because there isn't so much open-mindedness as a forced viewpoint. I'm trans, FWIW, but I don't at all agree with sending cops to peoples houses because a ciswoman has doubts about accepting a transwoman completely as a woman.
I wouldn’t say it’s a forced viewpoint here either.
Quite the opposite in fact, there’s a lot of really vocal people in the UK who publicly denounce transgender people.
> Could you relink them? I don't see anything, and I don't think you could show it is to the same extent as in the UK.
No. I’ve said my piece and I’m done.
And it isn’t even happening to extent you keep claiming. There’s been lots of evidence posted to prove that point.
> Then why do cops keep showing up for wrongthink?
They don’t.
And I know you’ll follow up with some unverifiable linked to highly disreputable sources which are several years out of date.
So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK nor reading either up-to-date nor reputable sources.
And this is precisely why this meme of the UK policing thought persists: because people form an opinion based off silly headlines and then are too singleminded to listen to the full facts.
I honestly can’t be bothered any longer on this. I’ve been actively involved in politics around precisely these kinds of issues, but of course you know better than me because it fits your own narrative about how your own country can’t also be going down the shitter.
You said this, but then continued to go out of your way to reply to another unrelated comment. Copying and pasting some links would have been less effort.
> And it isn’t even happening to extent you keep claiming. There’s been lots of evidence posted to prove that point.
Actually my llast reply showed quite the opposite. The scale is much larger, about 2,500 incidents.
> They don’t.
They do, at least 2500 times. See a recent reply for sources.
> And I know you’ll follow up with some unverifiable linked to highly disreputable sources which are several years out of date.
> So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK nor reading either up-to-date nor reputable sources.
It's a shame here to see you assuming bad faith. This reeks of tribalism, not objective argument.
The source I found was from the UK government, so I think that you preemptively dismiss that really shows who is being rational and objective and who is not.
> So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK
You keep looking for reasons to dismiss my argument fro reasons other than merit of the argument. This is telling.
I lived in the UK for years, actually, and the evidence speaks for itself, no personal experience is necessary.
> I honestly can’t be bothered any longer on this.
Maybe. You say and wrote this, yet you have a second reply you posted after this that I am about to respond to.
I won't be surprised if I end up responding yet again.
> It's a shame here to see you assuming bad faith. This reeks of tribalism, not objective argument.
Because your comments are bad faith.
And I’ve addressed all your other nonsense already.
What you’re not grasping is the cultural differences between our two police forces.
In America, the police go relatively unchecked. They buy ex-military hardware, lie in interrogations, literally kill their own innocent citizens because of their skin colour, and at no point face any repercussions. So laws in the US need to be water tight to prevent abuse — and even then, they still get flouted by those who should be upholding them.
Whereas Europe have a hell of a lot more checks and balances for our police forces. Bad cops get struck off. Good cops cannot place charges without approval from a whole other department, and thus not emotionally connected to the case. If police lie or exaggerate in those reports then they’re up for a plethora of serious charges themselves. So UK law often feels more ripe for abuse but that’s because we have stronger processes in place to protect against abuse.
Coming back to your original point, you don’t know the seriousness of the comments shared. We’ve already given examples about how online comments can have real and damaging physical consequences. Such as organising riots. People in the US have been charged for doing just the same thing. In the UK the law is called “hate speech” but that’s doesn’t mean that people are being investigated just for saying “I hate x”. Just like how there are multiple different names for different types of reasons and severity of killing someone, “hate speech” is just a term that covers a wide plethora of circumstances. And if — and when — those “hate speech” laws are abused, the police are raked over the coals for overreach.
So when you claim “whataboutism” what’s actually happening is I’m demonstrating the cultural differences that you seem oblivious too.
When you claim “thought crimes” you’re completely missing the nuance in these cases.
And when you’re claiming the police are abusing their powers you’re being, at best, deeply ironic. At worst, deeply ignorant.
In fact this whole argument and your single mindedness can be entirely summed up as “deeply ignorant”.
So why do UK citizens defend this claim against “thought police”? Because it literally isn’t happening. It’s just some bullshit concocted by right wing media (the same people who talk about rigged elections, “out of control immigration” and other made up bullshit) and Americans who want to feel better about their own shitty police force.
No, they are not. I thought you were done? Why are you still replying just to insult?
I'm sorry my view offends you, but unlike you I'm not trying to offend you, it's my honest view and I thin the evidence supports it.
If you think I'm an idiot, fine, but could you maybe just stop replying at this point instead of violating HN guidelines just to let me know? I'm down to have a civil discussion, but that clearly isn't happening at this point, and it isn't because of me.
> And I’ve addressed all your other nonsense already.
It's not nonsense, and you haven't addressed the desire not to handshake being reported, nor the 2500 or so incorrectly reported NCHIs.
---
You edited your comment to add a lot after I replied, so I'll address it here.
> What you’re not grasping is the cultural differences
between our two police forces.
You forget I lived in the UK for a fairly long time. Also, while I live in the US, I'm not from the US.
> In America, the police go relatively unchecked. They buy ex-military hardware, lie in interrogations, literally kill their own innocent citizens because of their skin colour, and at no point face any repercussions. So laws in the US need to be water tight to prevent abuse — and even then, they still get flouted by those who should be upholding them.
You're generalizing a country far more than diverse than the UK here in terms of differences in smaller government reigons and their police forces. What you've said here is not universally true for the US by any means, just for certain states.
> So UK law often feels more ripe for abuse but that’s because we have stronger processes in place to protect against abuse.
In this case, clearly not. The problem is not police abuse, it's police showing up at all because someone didn't want to shake hands or expressed a non-hateful thought on Twitter.
> Coming back to your original point, you don’t know the seriousness of the comments shared.
We do, because the people that get harassed by the cops report them.
> We’ve already given examples about how online comments can have real and damaging physical consequences.
Yes, they can, but that tends to be mobs or cyber bulling, outright insults. The cases that have been reported are not anything like that. If anything, it's UK cops being used, manipulated and unwittingly used as weapons, which isn't a much better look than if they are being malicious.
> Such as organising riots. People in the US have been charged for doing just the same thing.
That doesn't come under hate speech, but some other laws. Plenty of riots have nothing to do with hate speech, and the issue isn't the same. There may be crossover sometimes, but not necessarily.
Therefore, people being arrested in the US for organizing riots is entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing.
> In the UK the law is called “hate speech” but that’s doesn’t mean that people are being investigated just for saying “I hate x”.
Yes, it does, and that's exactly the problem! There was literally an article in the Telegraph of that exact thing happening, twice!
How is this not blatant denial on your part?
> So when you claim “whataboutism” what’s actually happening is I’m demonstrating the cultural differences that you seem oblivious too.
How incredibly disingenuous.
You mention cops killing black people, which has nothing to do with cultural differences unless you consider racism and lack of training in rural areas in red states cultural differences.
No, cultural differences is in no way a justification for your blatant whataboutism. A cop killing an unarmed black man in the US has NOTHING to do with cops showing up at peoples doors in the UK for sharing non hate thoughts online, holding up a blank piece of paper or refusing to shake hands. Honestly it's a really crappy thing to try and reduce the killing of an innocent black man to any of those things just to try and save your crummy argument.
> When you claim “thought crimes” you’re completely missing the nuance in these cases.
No, what's happening here is you are giving the benefit of doubt to your government even when there are blatant examples that don't warrant it. What is the nuance for the examples in the Telegraph article that would defend against the notion they were thought crimes?
> And when you’re claiming the police are abusing their powers you’re being, at best, deeply ironic. At worst, deeply ignorant.
More insults. No, I'm being honest and objective, while you're bending over backwards to be tribalistic like the worst examples of Americans, and then because you can't actually support your point and I'm not conceding, resorting to insults and personal attacks.
You have no argument, and your attempts to defend your point trying to justify Orwellian actions in the UK by accusing me of cultural misunderstandings (which is funny since I bet I've spent more time in the UK than you've spent in the US) and and likening the UK incidents to the unarmed shooting of a black man are desperate and easily dismissed.
> In fact this whole argument and your single mindedness can be entirely summed up as “deeply ignorant”.
NO, you're simply being deeply arrogant and disingenuous. Your examples you've provided don't map to the UK incidents, and when pressed you outwardly make excused to not provide them when asked, despite writing an essay to make the ridiculous argument you did above.
You keep accusing me of being ignorant, yet I've lived in the UK for about 5 years, how long did you spend in the US? And except the evidence supports my claims, while you need to reply on interpretations, speculation and bs claims of cultural misunderstandings.
> So why do UK citizens defend this claim against “thought police”? Because it literally isn’t happening.
Some do, the patriots, others understand the issue and are out protesting against it fighting to keep or regain freedoms. That clearly isn't you though. Why fight for an issue when you can deny it and whatbaoutism any attempt to point it out?
You keep using that word but I don’t think you understand what it means.
In this conversation I’m making comparisons. Comparisons are important ways to gauge the effectiveness of policies.
What you’re doing is saying comparisons don’t matter because your argument only works if you look at it from a shallow view point.
And then you have the audacity to say everyone else is acting in bad faith apart from yourself.
> That doesn't come under hate speech, but some other laws. Plenty of riots have nothing to do with hate speech, and the issue isn't the same. There may be crossover sometimes, but not necessarily.
Exactly. US police has the same powers and arrests people for the same things but those laws are named differently.
So what you’re banging on about is a misconception based purely on the naming of things.
> You keep using that word but I don’t think you understand what it means.
I understand exactly what it means. You might not given how strenuous and unsuccessfully you've been trying to defend yourself against the accusation.
From Wikipedia: "Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about ...?") is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense against the original accusation. "
An example would be a British patriot attempting to defend the UK against claims of government overreach and potential thought crime policing by bringing up US cops shooting unarmed black men.
> What you’re doing is saying comparisons don’t matter because your argument only works if you look at it from a shallow view point.
No, I'm saying you should defend against the claims made instead of deflecting.
> And then you have the audacity to say everyone else is acting in bad faith apart from yourself.
Only the people I think are engaging in bad faith, although I don't really think that about the other user, and think that far more intensely of you at the moment.
> Exactly. US police has the same powers and arrests people for the same things but those laws are named differently.
This has to be a deliberation misinterpretation, no other explanation.
The laws are not named differently in the US, they are named differently in the UK as well. Laws about organizing riots are not hate speech laws in the UK or the US. Your comparison was nonsense.
> So what you’re banging on about is a misconception based purely on the naming of things.
Not at all. You've completely lost track of what you're talking about and don't appear to understand the differences between the US and UK whatsoever, you're reaching and thus your bizarre attempt to justify a whataboutism by claiming cultural differences to someone who has a better cultural overview of both countries than you do is failing in a rather embarrassing fashion.
I'll remind you you said you were done several posts ago and refused to provide sources when asked because you were 'done' and/or it was too much work, yet you continue to put in more effort in your replies. It brings the credibility of your position into question for any objective readers.
You said you were done. Just be done. Walk away. Get on with your day, go enjoy a nice cup of tea. Let's just agree to disagree, eh?
Are you not wildly exaggerating when you suggest that the ‘cops’ frequently show up at people’s houses based on things that they’ve tweeted? There aren’t even enough police officers in the UK for this to be feasible if they wanted to do it.
I didn't mean to imply that it's happening any time anyone tweet something, but there have been an alarming number of cases of cops showing up at peoples houses for tweets they've made. A far greater number than anything happening in other western countries, which doesn't even have anything close to compare it to.
Just to be clear, even 20 times is significant here, I think the actual number is much higher, but even a low number as 20 is concerning when the tweets don't promote violence, terrorism, CSASM or anything illegal.
What exactly is it that you are saying has happened 20 times? Described in objective terms, not using vague and emotive language like “thought police”, etc etc.
It’s still not clear where you’re getting the number 20 from or which incidents you’re talking about. But it sounds like these are cases of people being questioned by police and then…not getting arrested because they weren’t committing a crime. I’m not sure what is supposed to be concerning about that in the abstract. Maybe there’s something concerning about the specific incidents, but you don’t seem inclined to give any details about them.
There have been some instances of people being inappropriately contacted by the police over things they wrote online. I think that this has largely stopped following the court judgment that I mention downthread. I think there's broad agreement here on what the police should and shouldn't be doing. The issue is whether it's actually accurate to paint a picture of the UK as a country where the police regularly harass people about their online postings. If people in the UK strike you as unduly unconcerned, consider the possibility that it's because this isn't actually happening to anything like the extent that some people on Twitter would like you to believe that it does.
By the way, you seem to be using 'the government' in a very broad 90s internet libertarian sense. The police in the UK are operationally independent of the government of the day. As Wikipedia explains:
> Police officers [in the UK] hold office and are not employees. Each officer is an independent legal official and not an "agent of the police force, police authority or government". This allows the police their unique status and notionally provides the citizens of the UK a protection from any government that might wish unlawfully to use the police as an instrument against them.
> But it sounds like these are cases of people being questioned by police and then…not getting arrested because they weren’t committing a crime.
The problem is cops showing up at all for people sharing an opinion. The tweets were visible at cop HQ. Sending cops out reads like intimidation which is something cops do in authoritarian societies.
Were you not aware of the subsequent court judgment in favor of the guy in the 2019 article? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-59727118.... No country can prevent all police officers from doing stupid things at all times, but it’s painting a very one-sided picture to leave out this important context.
Incidentally, the Daily Mail is not a news source.
> Were you not aware of the subsequent court judgment in favor of the guy in the 2019 article?
It. Doesn't. matter. The article linked is but one incident. There's been plenty others, some involving public figures. Cops are literally acting like thought police and no, that isn't hyperbole.
The problem that this occurs in the UK far more widespread than it does. I get you want to defend your country but I think you're taking it a bit far here. Denying the issues out of a sense of patriotism is how they worsen.
> Incidentally, the Daily Mail is not a news source.
As I said, the fact that it was a DM article is irrelevant here.
Erm, it matters because the police were required to change their approach in light of that court judgment, as explained in the article that I linked. How can it possibly not matter that the checks and balances provided by the court of appeal succeeded in preventing future police action infringing on free speech? It’s because of this court decision that your Google search turned up a Daily Mail article from 2019 and not something more recent!
You’ll have to remind me of the Chapter of 1984 in which the actions of the Thought Police are reined in by a system of legal checks and balances…
> Denying the issues out of a sense of patriotism is how they worsen.
You’re way off base here. Complaining about the UK is the UK’s national sport. I’m still bitter about Brexit and could write an essay about everything that’s wrong with this silly country. But it’s not a sinister Orwellian police state. If you want something genuinely sinister, look to
the motivations of the people posting nonsense about the UK on Twitter.
> Erm, it matters because the police were required to change their approach in light of that court judgment, as explained in the article that I linked.
It's a UK wide problem seemingly and has happened numerous times since the DM article incident, so clearly not. Maybe one little police dept did, but it's a systemic problem or seems to be.
> It’s because of this court decision that your Google search turned up a Daily Mail article from 2019 and not something more recent!
I pasted the first result I found. I'm not interested in finding every. single. incident so you can dispute it one by one to keep trying to defend the UK. You either acknowledge there is an issue or you don't, for me, the numerous incidents of this happening are a problem, not just isolated incidents being blown out of proportion. You clearly disagree.
> You’ll have to remind me of the Chapter of 1984 in which the actions of the Thought Police are reined in by a system of legal checks and balances…
Heh. There were building blocks before Big Brother was introduced, and it was no accident the story was set in the UK either.
> But it’s not a sinister Orwellian police state.
I never said it was. My claim was that it's closer to being so than any other first world country. Downplaying cops acting as literal thought police (in that they are literally policing thoughts) is a problem and despite your assertion that your willing to be critical of the UK (which I don't doubt but don't tae as absolute), reads to me like being patriotic to the point of denying the issues being discussed.
Indeed, it is probably not a coincidence that George Orwell set his novel in the country that he's from. I think you might be onto something there!
> I'm not interested in finding every. single. incident so you can dispute it one by one to keep trying to defend the UK
When I Google, pretty much every instance of the police interviewing people about transphobic tweets (that aren't actually hate speech) occurred before the court judgment I linked to. What you're saying in effect is that you want to go with the vibes about the UK you get from Twitter but don't want to look into the specifics and check their basis in fact.
If you think there are numerous instances of this happening following the court judgment, and that these instances are easy to find by Googling, then it should be easy to provide sources. I am willing to change my mind if you do that, but if you continue to just assert that this is happening frequently without providing evidence, then I won't respond further. I personally was able to find exactly one incident by Googling (which I would not entirely trust the Telegraph to report accurately): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/police-drop-hate...
> It is probably not a coincidence that George Orwell set his novel in the country that he's from. I think you might be onto something there!
Not so much that it just happened to be where he was from but more that he saw issues in the government of the day, some of which still persist since they seem to be cultural.
> When I Google, pretty much every instance of the police interviewing people about transphobic tweets (that aren't actually hate speech) occurred before the court judgment I linked to. What you're saying in effect is that you want to go with the vibes about the UK you get from Twitter but don't want to look into the specifics and check their basis in fact.
I'm aware of several incidents happening after the DM article linked which was six years ago. I'm not particularly motivated to find incidents and link them here because I think you're in a mode to dismiss anything found to try and defend against the notion the UK is less free than it's peers. I apologize for not being able to take you at your word that that isn't the case.
> then I won't respond further.
I appreciate that, and think that's for the best for both of us. Cheers.
That’s not really the same as what’s being discussed though it’s still troubling.
Thankfully common sense prevailed and those people weren’t convicted. meanwhile in other “less Orwellian” counties people are getting charged for similar actions:
> That’s not really the same as what’s being discussed though it’s still troubling.
GP mentioned anti-royalist protester arrests and threats of arrest, you asked for a citation, I provided a link to a BBC article discussing those. How is it not "what's being discussed"? (At least in the context of this subthread.)
Fair point. But as I said, there was more to that story. And under relatively similar circumstances people are charged for protesting under similar laws in other countries too. Including ones that have freedom of speech written directly into their constitution.
So while I don’t agree with the UK arrests, it doesn’t prove that the UK is any more Orwellian than any other country.
> Thankfully common sense prevailed and those people weren’t convicted. meanwhile in other “less Orwellian” counties people are getting charged for similar actions:
