The state of the UK

[Scot Dutchy]

Liberties under attack?

Brexit and Covid have created the perfect moment for the politics of crackdown

We feel besieged and imperilled, and the Johnson government is seizing the chance to weaken our most fundamental liberties

If you were wondering when the widely predicted post-Brexit dystopia might move beyond the imaginings of TV scriptwriters and into the real world, we suddenly seem to be a lot of the way there. Supermarket shelves are either understocked or completely empty. The populist loudmouths who now try to make the political weather have been taking aim in the past week at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and its supposedly “woke” lifesavers.

Meanwhile, the Johnson government’s descent into whip-crack law enforcement continues apace. Last week’s announcement of a new “crime reduction plan” was centred around the permanent relaxation of restrictions on “suspicionless” (in other words, often arbitrary) stop and search, which had a clear performative aspect: ministers blithely batting away the fact that black people are a staggering 18 times more likely to be searched than white people under these specific powers, presumably to demonstrate a wretched kind of toughness. Johnson also launched plans for chain gangs dressed in hi-vis jackets.

The proposals were grim but not that much of a surprise. It is, after all, an iron rule of British politics that when governments sense a slide in popularity and start to lose direction, these are the kind of announcements they reach for.

In 2008, the rudderless government led by Gordon Brown oversaw the introduction of high-visibility “community payback jackets”, and developed a fondness for endless promises to take action against “yobs”, while seeking to extend the state’s powers to detain people without trial.

Eight years earlier, Tony Blair had floated the harebrained idea of marching miscreants to cash machines and summarily fining them – before his authoritarian instincts roared into the foreground thanks to the so-called war on terror. In the Thatcher and Major years, the doctrinaire economic liberalism the former brought to Conservative thinking was always accompanied by a repressive iron fist that tended to land on people already experiencing prejudice and insecurity. It all embodied the very British dissonance of an establishment that rhapsodises about its love of freedom while habitually doing whatever it can to curtail it.


If you want a vivid illustration of flailing authoritarianism and its acceptance, take a look at Australia. There, the government’s lamentable record on vaccination has fused with an emphasis on insanely harsh restrictions. In Sydney, for instance, it was confirmed last week that soldiers will be involved in imposing new lockdowns, as the country pursues the impossible goal of “zero Covid”.


Who will oppose those in power? In the UK, belief in the sanctity of the rule of law and civil liberties runs across some of the Conservative right, parts of the Labour left and elements of the Lib Dems and Greens; but the supposed mainstream tends to either scoff at such ideas or meekly look the other way. As a result, many of us now have a familiar sensation: feeling scattered and lonely; and in such surreal, doom-laden times, wondering what on earth will happen next.

[laklak]

Chain gangs. It's a plum position if you're in County, gets you out of the stink. It's not a punishment, it's a reward. They're not chained, and there aren't fat officers on horses with shotguns. Well around town, anyway, I've seen horses and shotguns out on country roads.

[aufbahrung]

Crime is high on sink-hole estates. Don't buy into the noble downtrodden savage thing. Poor Chinese and Indians study to get out of their circumstance, but some ethnicities have a culture of crime and corruption. If a multiplier is high as 18 how much is that down to prejudiced policing and how much down to cultural norms of the neighbourhood? Not saying there isn't any prejudice, obviously people are not perfect anywhere, but the lyrical content of rap music is all about gangsters, drugs, homophobia, violence against women, and it is the music of the black community these days. Ship can be turned around with a hard line on crime being taken by authorities removing it as the glamour profession for the poor. I say we need to crack down hard on crime and hate crimes especially. Ignoring inconvenient truths and writing a sob story as lefties often do to garner support for their hideous inhumane ideology - ends with the same 'gulags' but no discrimination on who ends up in them.

[Scot Dutchy]

Cracking down on crime does not work. You need a vast social approach and there is no short term fix. Needs to start with education on all sides but the trouble is the UK has gone down a similar path to the US. Which countries are closing prisons due to the lack of in-mates and why? The right wing attitude of giving ridiculous punishments for minor crimes does not work and only fills the prisons.

[aufbahrung]

Cracking down on crime does not work. You need a vast social approach and there is no short term fix. Needs to start with education on all sides but the trouble is the UK has gone down a similar path to the US. Which countries are closing prisons due to the lack of in-mates and why? The right wing attitude of giving ridiculous punishments for minor crimes does not work and only fills the prisons.

Crime should fit the punishment. Zero tolerance, short sharp shock fails because it seldom goes far enough. Point is to instill real fear of lawbreaking in the community. That can only happen when the governing authorities have absolute judgment on who should live and who should die, regardless of the level of crime. Cut a mans hand of for stealing and other men will think twice. Give him a holiday in a rent free prison with color TV, might not have the same result...fear is the key to good behaviour with social scum.

[pErvinalia]

Crime is high on sink-hole estates. Don't buy into the noble downtrodden savage thing. Poor Chinese and Indians study to get out of their circumstance, but some ethnicities have a culture of crime and corruption. If a multiplier is high as 18 how much is that down to prejudiced policing and how much down to cultural norms of the neighbourhood? Not saying there isn't any prejudice, obviously people are not perfect anywhere, but the lyrical content of rap music is all about gangsters, drugs, homophobia, violence against women, and it is the music of the black community these days. Ship can be turned around with a hard line on crime being taken by authorities removing it as the glamour profession for the poor. I say we need to crack down hard on crime and hate crimes especially. Ignoring inconvenient truths and writing a sob story as lefties often do to garner support for their hideous inhumane ideology - ends with the same 'gulags' but no discrimination on who ends up in them.

On behalf of Rum, fuck off.

[Scot Dutchy]

Cracking down on crime does not work. You need a vast social approach and there is no short term fix. Needs to start with education on all sides but the trouble is the UK has gone down a similar path to the US. Which countries are closing prisons due to the lack of in-mates and why? The right wing attitude of giving ridiculous punishments for minor crimes does not work and only fills the prisons.

Crime should fit the punishment. Zero tolerance, short sharp shock fails because it seldom goes far enough. Point is to instill real fear of lawbreaking in the community. That can only happen when the governing authorities have absolute judgment on who should live and who should die, regardless of the level of crime. Cut a mans hand of for stealing and other men will think twice. Give him a holiday in a rent free prison with color TV, might not have the same result...fear is the key to good behaviour with social scum.

Going to open up concentration camps? Sorry but that is the pits. Go and live in Sharia state if you want to use those primitive punishments. You have no idea and have you really thought about it? No prison is a holiday but that is what right wing nutters think. Fear does not achieve anything only more fear.
According to you there would black shirts walking the streets executing people and lobbing of limbs for minor crimes. Never mind law and order. Round them up and shoot them. That is a very sick society and one thank fuck I dont have to live in.

Incarceration rate in selected European Countries in 2020

[aufbahrung]

The British invented internment camps. The Germans stole the idea and took it all a bit too far. Bad ones at the top, have no perspective. The bad ones at the top of the scale could be sent to Mars in decades to come. Social scum exists at all levels of society. The UK was building colonies on Mars before the new frontier was even dreamt up. A clear example that harsh punishments turn a ship mostly around in penal transportation. Albeit like terraforming it is a multi-generation long now project.

[Hermit]

Crumple, 19th century prejudice is a poor alternative to knowledge of what happens in the real world. At least in more enlightened parts of it. Do yourself a favour and read this short article about what happened when governments decided to do the opposite of what you propose. Since Norway began to turn their prisons from places criminals were meant to fear to humane institutions of rehabilitation 20 years ago, recidivism has plummeted. 60% of Norwegian prisons have been closed down because now there are not enough criminals to fill them.

Here is a closer look at what Norwegian prisons are like today.

[aufbahrung]

I grew up with 19th century folk. It is in the blood to see the world in simple straightforward and awkward ways. You know what is wrong today? The amplification of filigree that is taken for serious thought. That appeals to emotion are considered a replacement theology for reasoned argument. And obviously the death penalty for serious bad people.

[Hermit]

You know what is wrong today? The amplification of filigree that is taken for serious thought. That appeals to emotion are considered a replacement theology for reasoned argument. And obviously the death penalty for serious bad people.

No. What is wrong today is people hanging on to 19th century attitudes that have been factually proven to be wrong.

You have not bothered following up on the two links I provided, have you?

[Scot Dutchy]

Why are there so few prisoners in the Netherlands?

The Dutch justice system is cutting jail populations by offering specialist rehabilitation to people with mental illnesses

When Stefan Koning, who has a history of psychosis, was found guilty of threatening a stranger with a knife, a long custodial sentence might have felt like the only answer.

In fact, after a short spell in jail, he is back at his home in Amsterdam.

“Bob is a character from Twin Peaks, a murderer who creeps into the skin of innocent people and makes them do terrible things like murder,” says Koning. “There’s a Bob in me who says ‘kill this person’, that sort of thing. If I take my medicines, Bob is quiet.”

Koning is a beneficiary of a growing tendency in the Netherlands to avoid jailing people unless it is necessary. One key aspect of this is a prodigious programme of care in the community for people with psychiatric problems.

“We work on two aims: number one, preventing another crime, and then on psychiatric suffering and the social problems that come with it,” says Hommo Folkerts, a forensic psychologist and outreach worker who helps Koning.

“We don’t treat people with just depression – it’s people with psychotic vulnerability, autism, severe learning difficulties, often in combination with severe personality disorders, addictions, financial problems, no good home or links with family, and often they are traumatised.

“Nobody would approve of the crimes or violence they have committed, but there is a very sad world behind them. If you want to mend all this, it will take a long time.”

In 1988, the UK criminologist David Downes contrasted a relatively humane Dutch prison system favourably against those in England and Wales. Today plummeting prison sentences have left the Netherlands with an unusual problem: it doesn’t have enough inmates to fill its prisons, even after renting out places to Norway and Belgium.

Crumple does not approve of course. A Dutch prison is a holiday camp.

[aufbahrung]

Bob's your uncle with a small population where everyone can keep a eye on everyone.

[Brian Peacock]

There's more people to keep an eye on each other in a densely populated nation like Britain, and the UK has more CCTV than anywhere else in the world. Your theorum has been falsified.

[Scot Dutchy]

It failed from the start. 19th. Century methods did not work then or now.