I had hoped Labour would roll back the anti-protest legislation, snooper's charter, internet censorship and voter ID laws.
After all, it was mostly left-wing climate protesters getting arrested, and young (more left-leaning) voters being prevented from voting.
Turns out no, quite the opposite - if anything, Labour thinks these laws didn't go far enough.
With hindsight, it was naive of me to think the former Director of Public Prosecutions would share my scepticism about expanding the powers of the system the Director of Public Prosecutions stands at the head of.
That's basically how the news, including the BBC, tend to report on these laws. "Some think they are good. Others think they don't go far enough. Experts say risk remains." Never ever do they interview the EFF.
The editorial team for news has always been full of Tories (including some that either have tried running as MPs, were in the young conservatives etc).
When the left complains about the BBC they mean its news and political coverage.
The right doesn't like the diversity in its comedy shows.
These are two pretty different concerns.
Quite a mistake to think politicians would act to better anyone's lives, including those who helped elect them.
Labour generally has a "paternalistic authoritarianism" to they way they govern, but this is dialed to 11.
Read this around 2007ish, shocked by what the previous labour government did, so I had zero hope this lot would be any different and it's worse than I thought possible.
Hanlon's razor applies here. The truth is most people simply don't care because they don't understand, and don't care to understand.
You can sometimes infer what's going on from looking at the before and after conditions, much like how particle physicists infer events from what particles flew out, but not seeing the event itself.
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...
> An EU Blue Card gives highly-qualified workers from outside the EU the opportunity to live and work in an EU Member State...
That‘s not my impression at all about the UK. They are known for mass CCTV surveillance since more than a decade. There’s even a wikipedia page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
> The vast majority of CCTV cameras are not operated by government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses. According to 2011 Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK.
The NYPD alone had 18k back in 2018.
https://securitytoday.com/articles/2018/10/29/new-surveillan...
That doesn't make the UK appear to be monitored heavier than other locations when a single city in the US approaches half their total number of cameras.
There is a Wikipedia page on surveillance in Austria, and the US. Not sure what your point is, it's not like most of the west isn't under surveillance or that the UK is more monitored than other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
Or are you implying that Germany doesn't have any surveillance because it doesn't have a dedicated English Wikipedia page?
There is a lot of rhetoric aimed at the UK, and I'm not saying it's great, but there is a lot of convenient omission on other countries actions.
I'm pretty cynical about both the current and previous government, but it feels like there's been a shift since Labour came into power. Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back. There was chatter but it was met with resistance. Now it feels like the discussion is being squashed and there are invisible forces at work.
If by some miracle the UK and EU agree on a new Youth Mobility Scheme I'm out of here.