Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
He wasn't admitting that the whole thing was a lie.Why wasn't he? He's been told it's a lie. The police in the town have quite loudly stated there are no credible reports of this happening.
Nice opinion.Of course it's an opinion. You literally just finished pointing out that the US Presidential Debate doesn't have an objective winner.
it actually doesn't look like that. at all.To be fair, Tom has quoted a highly reliable source for his claim. The source being the bloke who clearly lost the debate
In the books 1985Is that the sequel to 1984? Is it any good?
Ah yes, that's why it constantly appears in your major news outletsIt doesn't.
You can't say rude things about people online without getting arrested for it in the UKYes you can.
Woah, the word "dystopian" and "authoritarian"The words I used were hyperbole, so were yours.
I don't see how "not okay" translated to "dystopian authoritarian nightmare".
your government is a chaotic cacophony of nonsense that involves sending people to jail for tweets.
Once again, unsurprisingly, a foreigner cannot comprehend the idea of a right enshrined by the government, because they don't have any rights! Your government doesn't trust you to tweet your own thoughts or to own a weapon. You don't even trust each other to own them, either! A true nightmare of a civilization.
It isn't even that hard to find these. Surely if this was so rare, the UK wouldn't constantly have news articles about it?If it was that common it wouldn't be newsworthy, it would just be how things are.
Culturally, this erupts as an entire police force that punishes people for speech crimes.No.
Apparently, you can't even give the simple opinion that the Monarchy should be abolished, and you would face life imprisonment for such an opinion.And in the US you can't even cross the road until the little man tells you. Except when I mentioned that earlier in this thread I was (correctly) informed that in practice that is almost never enforced. So sure, the UK has some silly and outdated laws. So does the US - I posted a link above of a silly laws, one for each State. But in practice in both countries these are rarely or never enforced. I know plenty of people who loudly say we shouldn't have a monarchy. None of them have been dragged off to the salt mines.
This looming threat shows that the UK is an authoritarian state which does not grant its people freedom of belief. Anyone who wants to express this belief that it is time for the Monarchy to go away would be in fear of their freedom should they do so.No they wouldn't.
Since I have more rights than you do, I am free to express that my system of government should be abolished and re-done without worry of prosecution. This something you are not allowed to express about your Constitutional Monarchy.Yes it is (I mean in practice - even if in theory you are correct, in practice you are not).
there is a difference between words and actions.Right. So the words of the law may say one thing but in reality there is no action for some of the things you claim we should be afraid of stating an opinion about. Now you're getting it.
Parents teach their children not to hit people in response to words.And how does that often go? Words can lead to actions.
The difference is, of course, when you get banned on this website there are no legal consequences.A banning on this site is analogous to a jailing in real life. I was making the comparison to explain that any society in real life or online is governed by rules which limit what we can say or do.
No one is going to jail like the UK has sent people on social media to jailExamples have been posted in this thread where that exact thing has happened in the US.
The rule you live under is a total joke.If you say so. Lucky you don't live under it then.
Britons overwhelmingly believe that Britain is a free country. In fact, they consider it the freest in the world. The US only finishes 5th
I didn't claim that 1989 was 2024. I posted it to describe that the UK doesn't have freedom of speech and that just because they weren't censor-heavy in 1989, it doesn't mean that they would continue down that path.Well fair enough. But as I said, that is true of any government including the US. All the Republicans hysterically screaming that The Democrats want to remove people's second amendment rights - that's an implicit acknowledgement that it can happen. Amendments and laws are not set in stone, they can be changed. I personally don't think either the US or UK will end up with authoritarian governments, but it's theoretically possible in both countries.
Today there is criticism that they are censoring speech.There is. Some of it probably warranted. In any society where the government cares about the freedom of its citizens, individual freedoms have to be balanced with the fact we live in a society because our words and actions can affect other people. I guess it's like this place. You don't have freedom of speech on here - you can't call me certain things on here, definitely not in the uppers. Your right to free speech is limited by the rules of this society because the things you say affect others. I have some concerns about the UK's 'malicious communications' laws because one of the things which is mentioned there is "offensive" messages. Well what does that mean? Offence is subjective. So there is some legitimate concern there. But, overall, I think common sense is mostly shown. I don't think a vegan could go in to a police station and whine they were offended about adverts for sausages. I mean, they could go in but they're not going to get very far. The fact that the occasional silly instances gets into the news is because these instances are rare.
Correct. The article said it was from 1989 and I did as well.Yes. But you posted it to make a point, you claimed that it said "In summary, there is no protection of free speech in the UK."
Sure, around that time stamp they were talking about his heinous policy of reducing winter heating money to pensionersI don't know what I think about that. It's certainly unpopular, although has been misrepresented by some people with a certain agenda. They're not talking about scrapping this benefit, they're just talking about stopping the payment for pensioners who are above a certain threshold in terms of income. I don't think in principle that's a bad policy - if you're a millionaire pensioner then you don't need any more handouts. Exactly where the line should be is more debatable.
there is existing controversy over his unpopular censorship policies.The Telegraph is a highly Conservative-biased paper. It's literally nicknamed the "Tory-graph" in the UK (Tory being a common name for the Conservative party).
It was your article, dude.the United Kingdom, without one, does not suffer significantly less rights of free speech than the United States.I'm glad we cleared that up.
That was 1989.
This is todayAnd what's he talking about here? What's the context and how does that feed in to this conversation about freedoms?
the United Kingdom, without one, does not suffer significantly less rights of free speech than the United States.I'm glad we cleared that up.
Honestly, I'm not sure. My feeling is in general no-one would bother prosecuting even if it is technically illegal. But the context is important here - people's lives actually were being put in danger and the online disinformation and inflammatory Tweets were contributing to that.Do you regard that as a good thing?
Alright, as an example, let's say instead of immigrants, I say "the homes of fascists should be burned down." Is that illegal to say in the UK? Would I go to jail for tweeting it?
Do you have any evidence that tweeting a general call for violence actually results in violence? Are violent actions some kind of thought-virus that only occur if you read about them on popular social media platforms?Again, I think in general it probably doesn't result in violence and in general I don't think anyone would bother prosecuting someone for those sorts of Tweets. But the context of the unrest is key here. I do think the nature of social media changes the nature of free speech - when anyone has the ability to broadcast bile across the internet to a large audience I think there needs to be some thought about what people can use that for.
It would be entirely legal for me to call for hotels housing immigrants to be burned down in America.Do you regard that as a good thing? I'm don't think I do - and particularly not in the recent context where some stabbings led to disinformation about it being "one of them immigrants" who did it which led to hotels hosting families of asylum seekers to be set on fire, endangering the people inside. People Tweeting stuff encouraging that sort of action directly contributes to people's lives being put in danger.