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what do you think
too much control 93%  93%  [ 28 ]
not enough control 7%  7%  [ 2 ]
Total votes : 30

just-me
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07 Feb 2009, 11:59 am

Now they want to dictate how often you leave the country. How much farther will they go?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/trave ... urner.html

Debate away!



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07 Feb 2009, 12:00 pm

There's no poll option to maintain the status quo?


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just-me
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07 Feb 2009, 12:09 pm

Orwell wrote:
There's no poll option to maintain the status quo?


Oh, I didnt think of that option.
Sorry cant edit it now.



Orwell
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07 Feb 2009, 12:13 pm

Well, I don't live in the UK, so I can't comment on how free their culture is.


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Abu_Zarqawi
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07 Feb 2009, 1:02 pm

i doubt it. if fascism ever has a resurgence in europe, poland or italy are much more likely candidates



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07 Feb 2009, 2:14 pm

I don't know about fascist, but England is becoming more of a police state. The state is building up ever more types of information about all its citizens. There is the plan to create a super database to log every email, text message, phone call, web site visited by every individual.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere.

They want all cars to have tracking systems fitted so all cars and journeys can be recorded by government - superficially this is to replace the car tax and charge per mile travelled etc but in practice this is just more surveillance.

The latest thing I read about will effect me. I'm English but live in France. In a few months everyone entering the UK will have a 50 question form to complete with details about where you were born, your bank account numbers, credit card numbers, phone number, address, email address and lots more.

Britain has the largest DNA database of any country in the world with the highest proportion of its citizens on file.

Soon it will be impossible to fart without the government knowing.

England is becoming a very sick country. All of this is supposed to be in the interests of protection against terrorism but frankly the cure is becoming more nasty than the disease.

This is also making the public more paranoid and frightened of *everybody*. I read a few days ago of a young man who had just bought a little toy ray-gun for a kid. One of those toy guns that lights up and makes a whee-whee-whee sound.
The man pointed it at at a baby in a pram as a woman went passed and it made all those silly noises. He was trying to make the baby laugh. The mother phoned the police, the man was suddenly surrounded by 8 squad cars and armed police and arrested for possessing a replica weapon. :roll:

I used to trust the police but since witnessing three officers attack an kick the s**t out of a man innocently walking along I have a deep mistrust of them. Too many rogue cops. A new law has come into place which means police officers cannot be identified in any way. In practice this means that if you film a bad cop beating someone up on your mobile phone they can legally seize the phone and you face a fine and up to ten years in prison.

Another law recently passed is against music performance in public places. All members of the bands must be registered with the police several weeks before a concert and details of the type of music and ethnicity of the audience stated. No last minute singers are allowed and no open mic upon fear of arrest!

England is going mad.

Fascist state maybe. Police state Yes.


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gina-ghettoprincess
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07 Feb 2009, 5:02 pm

Hell yes it is, I'm moving ASAP, damnit!

I used to be patriotic, but lately I've started to really hate my country. Where will the bastards stop??! !

I'm stuck in this borderline police state until I turn 18 and can do what the hell I want, sadly, but the MINUTE I turn 18 I'm so moving, either to America or Italy.


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07 Feb 2009, 6:34 pm

From what I've read, England is becoming really really totalitarian. It's even bad compared to the United States right now. I have 2nd cousins over there still, and I can say I feel quite sorry for them. They don't even have free speech anymore across the pond. That is the most tantamount right to any free society. Without it, everything else begins to crumble (that's why our founding fathers put it first). That's probably the one thing from the Bill of Rights that hasn't been thrown away (besides the 3rd amendment, but the government hasn't had a real opportunity to violate that one).



gina-ghettoprincess
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07 Feb 2009, 6:39 pm

We don't even have a written consitution like you Americans do. Michael Moore expressed annoyance over this in the introduction to Stupid White Men. Glad to know I ain't the only one who finds that to be a pain in the ass.


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07 Feb 2009, 6:41 pm

gina-ghettoprincess wrote:
We don't even have a written consitution like you Americans do. Michael Moore expressed annoyance over this in the introduction to Stupid White Men. Glad to know I ain't the only one who finds that to be a pain in the ass.

We needed a written constitution because we were basically starting a government from scratch. Britain's government evolved over a period of centuries, and their laws are based on that foundation.


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gina-ghettoprincess
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07 Feb 2009, 6:47 pm

Orwell wrote:
gina-ghettoprincess wrote:
We don't even have a written consitution like you Americans do. Michael Moore expressed annoyance over this in the introduction to Stupid White Men. Glad to know I ain't the only one who finds that to be a pain in the ass.

We needed a written constitution because we were basically starting a government from scratch. Britain's government evolved over a period of centuries, and their laws are based on that foundation.


It makes it hard for me to defend my rights when teachers are trying to violate them (getting in trouble for self-defense in school), because we aren't covered by the US Constitution. I searched through other legislation, but haven't yet found anything watertight about self-defense.


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07 Feb 2009, 6:54 pm

If Thomas Jefferson could have seen this, he would have laughed. I don't know what they tell you guys about the American Revolution, aka the English Civil War, but even in 1770 England showed that it really didn't give a sh*t about the rights of its people. They made a series of boneheaded moves that basically pushed America into full rebellion, made the situation much worse, then they ran the war on the cheap with generals who really didn't want to be fighting in the colonies and thus didn't care, therefore it didn't matter that the English had the world's best army since they only fought a half-assed war.

What happened was that the colonies cost money, yet weren't producing anything. (The farmland that was under cultivation had previously been forest and thus yield was low, and no gold had been found, much to everyone's disappointment.) Therefore, Parliament enacted taxes. Previously, the colonies had been untaxed. They kept piling on the taxes until they nearly had a rebellion in Boston in 1770 (Boston Massacre), then repealed most of it.

But a revolutionary foothold was established, and they weren't willing to give up easily, in many ways they were the spiritual ancestors of the American militia movement. So the revolutionaries hatched a plan to throw a legit shipment of tea into Boston Harbor, tea that was competing with smuggled tea from the likes of John Hancock and other signers of the Declaration of Independence. This took place in 1773, the "Boston Tea Party".

From there the king placed America under military rule, and in one of the most stupid decisions ever made by any empire in human history, they forced American families to feed and house detachments of British soldiers in the families' own homes and at their own expense. It was a way to save money, but it infuriated the colonists, as did those soldiers competing for work alongside Americans, and employers forced to hire soldiers over civilians, another dumb move. After that, the colonists broke down the Patriot door, they couldn't sign them up fast enough.

Once England found itself in a real war, they treated the war as an inconvenience, since America wasn't very rich in resources from their perspective. The generals were third rate, they used cheap German mercenaries (Hessians) to do much of the fighting and obligatory terrorizing of the populace, they tried to recruit slaves which further angered rich plantation owners, after every victory or partial victory for the colonists mass numbers of brass would get sacked so the people running it had zero clue. England badly underestimated what Americans would tolerate, likely because English subjects tolerated worse. And they ran it all on the cheap, and tried to shove as many costs for the war onto impoverished colonists as possible.

After that, they sort of learned their lesson, because they learned not to wage war against Englishmen wanting independence. (Brown people like East Indians were another matter entirely, and the crown fought ferociously against Gandhi.) But England still tends to view controlling a deteriorating situation as a matter of force, and in the end they'll either have a revolution with the royals hanged from streetlights or everybody who can leave will and the brain drain will basically end England's viability as an independent, First World country. England will look much like the Middle East, with the estates of the few remaining nobles situated behind thick blast walls and the rest of the country handed over to marauding youth gangs and various jihadist lunatics. Failed state, anyone?



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07 Feb 2009, 6:56 pm

Some countries are less fascist than others, but they are all fascist to a degree.


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gina-ghettoprincess
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07 Feb 2009, 7:01 pm

history_of_psychiatry wrote:
Some countries are less fascist than others, but they are all fascist to a degree.


You're right. I was about to say what about communist countries, as they are the opposite of fascism, but then I thought, well, look at China. They are VERY fascist, even if that isn't the official label.


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08 Feb 2009, 7:57 am

An article today on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7877182.stm

Quote:
When your travel plans, who you are travelling with, where you are going to and when are being recorded you have to ask yourself just how free is this country?


Quote:
Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "The government seems to be building databases to track more and more of our lives.


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ruveyn
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08 Feb 2009, 8:39 am

TallyMan wrote:
An article today on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7877182.stm

Quote:
When your travel plans, who you are travelling with, where you are going to and when are being recorded you have to ask yourself just how free is this country?


Quote:
Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "The government seems to be building databases to track more and more of our lives.


You guys are going to have learn to "fly beneath the radar". I am sure it is possible, albeit inconvenient.

Look on the bright side. "V" learned how to do it. Remember, remember the fifth of November.


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