from england, some odd news

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In the U.S. bench decisions are often based on English Common Law, except in Louisiana which is governed under the Code Napoleon. Federal Law is statute law and overrides State laws in many cases. In any case, Stare Decisis is the dominant rule for court decisions. Judges follow prior decisions unless the facts of the particular case require a different decision.

ruveyn

Bold is mine.

Ironically enough the more people that we let carry concealed weapons here in the states, the more our crime rates go down. I won't go so far as to suggest a causal relationship, but at the very least it seems highly suggestive that guns don't cause crime by their mere availability. I find the bold part particularly humorous because I carry a gun precisely for my peace of mind, and it's very effective in that purpose.

Than where was the UK equivalent of the ACLU when 1.5 million police security cameras went up in London alone? Where was your NRA when you lost your gun rights to opportunistic exploitations of tragedies? Our Constitution is a line in the sand that our government shall not cross, that is it's purpose and is exactly what the founders of this country intended for it. That they may have borrowed some ideas from English law is irrelevant, if they were so enamored of it they would never have left England.



Indeed, that is what amendments are for, and we've had plenty of them over the years both good and bad. Adding an amendment is a long and difficult process, as is removing one, and that is how it should be. Our constitution protects us from both the government and the whims of the electorate by setting a baseline of rights and privileges that are inviolable without a massive and sustained effort, so that emotional rhetoric or a sensational event alone can't lead to the corrosion of our core rights. That I'm free to do and say things in America that would get me thrown in a British jail is all the criticizing I need to do, since it's pretty clear who's system better protects the rights of it's citizens.



Transporting pets is one thing, but simply owning them is virtually regulation free. I beg to differ about the ridiculousness of our respective laws, any US lawmaker that proposed toy gun clubs, rounding off kitchen knives, teaching kids to narc on their neighbors, forcing homeowners to remove barbed wire that may harm burglars, or placing children on a hate watch list for playground incidents would be laughed out of office if not worse. What continues to mystify me is that the average British citizen not only tolerates this, but seems to actively desire this level of authoritarianism on the part of their government. I hate to think that all the creative free spirits fled the foggy island for less repressive locales, but I'm not seeing any evidence to the contrary.



True, and in the case of England that fact is regularly exploited to frighten the citizens to agree to ever increasing levels of government regulation and control. That tactic has been tried here as well, but it generally takes a pretty major catalyst (9/11) to get us to jump into inviting the government into our lives.

It's because you haven't yet said anything which indicates actual knowledge about Britain or the "Britishers" who live there. Or indeed of Canada and the Canadishers, Australia and the Australishers, New Zealand and the Newzealandishers, India and the Indishers, or any of the other English-speaking Third World (which I do not think means what you think it means - look it up) countries you appear to dislike so much.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to some quaking in fear and signing over my manhood(TM) to the scarily totalitarian Gordon Brown.

(And about the right to bear arms. As a defence against tyranny it became obsolete in 1916. If it's to be anything more than an outdated fantasy, you need the right to bear very expensive top-down antitank missiles and MANPADS (private ownership of neither of which is legal in the US AFAIK) if you want to take on the State.)

So you're saying that in England you don't have to register with the government to own a BB gun, that your police didn't just warn a lady broadcaster thatusing her chef's knife to scare off prowlers was illegal, London isn't blanketed in police CCTV cameras, and local government isn't bribing citizens to spy on each other? I only work with what you give me, and the UK and it's former colonies give me plenty to work with. If you want to be taken seriously as a nation, act like a serious country and not some Orwellian backwater.



Firstly: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Britishers

Britisher
n (not used by the British)
1. a native or inhabitant of Great Britain
2. any British subject

I only applied the suffix "er" where it was appropriate, it's you who's misapplied it in an ill fated attempt to mock me, and exposed the shallowness of your position in the attempt. I also did not refer to the UK or any of the other countries you mentioned as third world (even though India actually is), I merely agreed with another poster that England and Australia are governed in a heavy handed manner similar to many third world countries. Perhaps a more accurate description would have been to refer to the average UK or Australian citizen as akin to sheep, they seem to desire a firm hand and swear allegiance to a monarch who is always accompanied by a cadre of herding dogs... But I jest.

I don't have a problem with any of the world's people on an individual level, what I have a problem with is overbearing government, and the UK and it's former possessions seem to be leading proponents of such amongst the developed countries. I find it surprising that more people aren't aware of just how restrictive and controlling many of these governments really are, so I make a point of drawing attention to it whenever possible, some Americans are preoccupied with freeing Tibet, I'm preoccupied with freeing England. My great grandparents emigrated from there after all, so I hate to see the place turning into a sort of European Singapore (without Singapore's economy and weather, I might add).



The right to bear arms is only partially about being able to beat back a tyrannical government, and as an Englishman I'm sure there are some gentlemen in Northern Ireland who'd be quite happy to educate you as to how effective a few men with small arms can be in the face of a modern military. The former USSR learned the same lesson in Afghanistan, and the US itself seems to have forgotten the lessons of Vietnam and are in the process of remedial studies in Iraq as we speak. I'm not going to turn this into a full fledged examination of asymmetrical warfare, but suffice it to say that all the fancy hardware of a modern army is not designed to defeat a determined foe engaging in guerrilla warfare. Just remember that it wasn't all that long ago that the British army could not move through certain sections of Ireland without armored convoys, and that's a local populace without the gun culture of a country like mine.

The right to bear arms is really the right to not be oppressed when you get right down to it, and is in fact a central technology that allows for the advancement of civilization. Effective and available arms mean that ordinary people don't have to be professional warriors just to get by, and that frees up people to excel in other areas. A good example of the opposite effect can be seen in accounts of the Japanese Samurai, perhaps the greatest warrior class in history were reviled in times of peace because they weren't good for anything save fighting and thus were a destabilizing influence and a drain on national resources. Because the US army is efficient, people are free to pursue other careers without jeopardizing the security of the country, and because we civilians have access to efficient arms we can be secure in our homes without having to rely on a massive police force. I'm not even getting into the sporting and other legitimate uses of firearms and other weapons, but they are factors as well. The UK Olympic shooting teams aren't even allowed to practice with their own equipment on British soil, does that sound reasonable to you?

Time for another Gunpowder Plot?

Remember, remember, the 5th of November....

I hope the Brits startle Parliament. If they can do it, maybe we can show Congress our mettle as well.

ruveyn

No you don't:

http://www.met.police.uk/firearms_licen ... apons.html



No they didn't:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8451369.stm



The police do not install or operate CCTV cameras, the Local Authorities do. So no, London isn't blanketed in police CCTV cameras.

Interestingly enough though The City of London (ie the financial district) operates 619 cameras whereas the financial district of New York has 1306.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... ing-you.do
http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/surveillance_ ... 121306.pdf



Ahhh, The Daily Mail, cornerstone of impartial reporting. Council's the world over do really stupid things all the time. The press report it, they look stupid and the people vote them out at the next election. And Daily Mail readers traditionally write strongly worded letters of outrage to the editor that everyone else laugh's at. Newspapers (especially The Daily Mail) love reports like this that get people's blood boiling. Is it a reality? Well I spent 30 years living in England and never managed to find a council that would pay me to grass on my neighbours. Which is a bit of shame as there were one or two I would have happily thrown to to dogs.

As for this dog insurance malarky, British democracy at it's best as far as I can see. An idiot politician comes up with a moronic idea. The public ridicule him and make a right dog's dinner out of his ideas. The proposal is thrown out and he is in the dog house with his tail between his legs.

Well I would like to know why Dox47 thinks that a license is required for a BB gun in England. In England, Scotland and Wales no license is needed for an air pistol as long as the kinetic energy of the projectile is no greater than six foot pounds.

I also worry about the way that the media report what goes on in the UK, for those who do not know the Daily Mail is a rightwing newspaper which is in favour of "small goverment". Small goverment is where the goverment do not interfere or interact much with the citizen. The telegraph is a more upmarket right wing newspaper which is aimed at the the more high brow right wingers in the UK, while the sun is another right wing newspaper in the UK.

Rather than chooseing a secondary information source such as a newspaper, please could you cite some facts from primary information sources. In the UK the content of almost all criminal sourt cases is in the public domain, also could you cite a press release from a local goverment which suggests that they are offering a reward (bribe) to spy on your fellow citizen as he or she does some fly tipping.

The problem I see with news is that the vast majority of 'news' is made by the media company rather than simply being collected. The creation of most news is not a passive observation process, the media will actively seek out the "news" and may during this process distort the events.

I do like George Orwell, and I think his books "animal farm" and 1984 are great but just becuase he set 1984 in London does not mean it has come true. In the same way Dan Brown's "Angles and Demons" was set in Rome but it does not mean that the events have occured in real life.

Interesting what you say about second hand sources. I've just read that Daily Mail article again. It's so very 'Daily Mail'. You cannot fail to be alarmed at what is being reported. But read it again and see if you can pull out of it a single, verifiable fact.

So you're allowed to own weak BB guns, and face 5-10 years in prison if your guns uses a CO2 cartridge... Yeah, that's really reasonable, a regular bastion of freedom.



Oh, so when the police contradict other witnesses you automatically believe them? All your link seems to indicate is that either the police or Ms. Klass are lying. Given the state of British laws on self defense, I have no problem at all believing that such a warning was in fact given, and that the local police are now engaged in backing away from an unpopular policy.



Nitpicking, you are being spied upon by your government and it doesn't amount to much difference whether it's directly by the police or by the local government, it comes down to the same thing and it's still a startlingly easy sell to the British electorate. Notice that the very article you linked about surveillance is NYC is a call to curtail such activities before they go any further, contrast this with the attitude in England when the cameras started to go up. You also don't have an effective constitution to protect you, large scale government surveillance may run afoul of the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, though I am unaware of any case law where that has been tested.



So I'm supposed to take your own bias regarding reliable news sources at face value? Sorry, I don't take political advice from people who salivate at the chance to narc out their neighbors for money.



Except that the moronic ideas make their way into the law with an alarming frequency. This particular stupid idea may have been shot down, but it's only a matter of time before an equally idiotic variant fares better on it's way to becoming enforceable.

I have not seen anything here that contradicts my operating thesis that England is governed in a startlingly repressive manner, and that it's subjects seem to prefer it that way. Quite the opposite in fact.

I should have been a little more clear there, I should have said Airsoft gun instead of BB gun, I think of the two fairly interchangeably since they're roughly equivalent under the law here. What I found so shocking is that in order to purchase an airsoft gun you have to belong to a "skirmishing" club and jump through a whole serious of legal hoops in order to qualify. Not to mention that the law on BB guns actually considers any mechanism that uses a contained gas source, e.g. a CO2 cartridge to be a firearm and subject to at least 5 years imprisonment, when over here we're talking a strictly over the counter item. I even know how this came about, it was progressive restrictions following the 1997 handgun ban as people were using these airguns to commit crimes, and the UK government applied it's customary solution of restrictive legislation, which leads directly to the now moot OP article concerning dogs.



"Small government that doesn't interfere much with the citizen", why would anyone be opposed to that?

I back-check my information gleaned from foreign papers, and when I find the same story being reported in several papers I tend to give it some credibility. As I told the other poster, I form my own opinions about the bias of a news source, rather than taking other people's words that this one is right wing, left wing, etc.



Are you suggesting that the British press is less than honest? See, I was under the impression that the UK had very strict laws about printing things that aren't true, and quite regularly see stories about various people suing your tabloids for damages and winning, a very rare occurrence here in the US. I've seen this story reported in several UK papers, if they were making it up why haven't they been sued? If I was writing a newspaper column or in some other professional capacity I might be inclined to dig through UK government papers for the absolute proof, but as I'm merely expressing my own opinion on a message board, I have to take the word of the British press. If you have information that contradicts me, by all means post it, I'm all ears.



I'm by no means suggesting a causal link between 1984 and present day London, my description of it as "Orwellian" has nothing to do with the actual plot of the book and everything to do with the idea of oppressive government contained therein. I've also described WP's terms of service, among other things, as Orwellian, and use that word strictly as a "shortcut" for describing an authoritarian system with a catch-22 element added in.

A reminder that the British (or 'Britishers') and Britain are two different things, and the terms shouldn't be used interchangeably. One refers to a nation-state, the other to the population thereof.


M.

Post removed - forget it - I should have learned my lesson by now.

It should be kept in mind that in Scotland and Wales the far-left have a much stronger hold in local government and that the situation there is often worse, although (especially with Wales) they are still subject to most of the laws that people in England are, and to be honest most people who drive from england to Wales or Scotland aren't conscious of going to a different country. Even Scottish nationalists are extremely left wing and whilst they rail against English control, they insist on destroying their land through immigration from the third world just like the English do.

You need to keep in mind, too, that most of the UK people on this site are died-in-the-wool leftists who like nothing more than the state mapping-out the minutiae of their existence. I don't wish to offend by this, but I expect this is because the nature of this site means a large proportion of people on state benefit are members. Of the people I come into contact with on a weekly basis (engineering/technical types) there is a general feeling of unease at where the left are taking this country. These are often the people who have their freedom directly affected by unnecessary legislation, whether that's use of firearms, or the requirement that employers act as surrogate parents for their employees. If you're unfortunate enough to live in a council flat on benefits in a city most restrictive legislation has no direct impact on you, and that which does most are oblivious to as the state regularly issues propaganda via the BBC to muddy the waters.

Here's something from a nice little article I found this morning:



For source click here.

^
@Ambivalent

Too bad smileys don't count as actual thought, otherwise I might have cause for concern. I'd refute your points if you'd bothered to make any, an attack on me personally based on a linguistic peccadillo and your assurance that you know better being an Englishman and all don't count as a credible argument, but don't stop patting yourself on the back on my account.

I base my opinions on the UK on what I read in the news originating from there, as the US press doesn't often concern itself with the place, so if you have a problem with how I see your country you ought to take it up with your press and politicians. The bottom line is that I have much less government interference in my life than the average citizen of the UK, if you think otherwise I'd be happy to hear in what ways.