Article  Farage paints Britain as a censorship hellhole. Is he right? (UK brewing)

(Sep 3, 2025 09:47 PM)C C Wrote: Back home, a furore over the arrest of Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan

I have to admit that I'd never heard of him before this erupted.

Quote:detained by police

Not just detained by police, but detained by five armed police. (While American police are typically armed, police in Britain typically aren't, unless the occasion calls for it.) The response probably would have been more restrained had he been a terrorist instead of a depraved moral monster who "misgendered" a transvestite.

Quote:at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence with a series of social media posts about transgender people, is brewing. What happened to Linehan could “happen to any American,” Farage told the U.S. lawmakers.

Yes.

Linehan isn't a UK citizen, he's an Irish citizen. The social media posts in question weren't made in the UK, Linehan was in the US at the time he posted them. So Farage's point was that if Britain will arrest foreigners for things they said overseas if they offend the British establishment's delicate sensibilities, then Americans who excercise their Constitutional right of free-speech here in the US aren't safe either if they choose to visit Britain.

Quote:The Reform UK leader also raised the case of Lucy Connolly, a mother jailed

A 31 month sentence! While criminals convicted of violent crimes like rape do less time.

Quote:after pleading guilty to stirring up racial hatred with a social media post

Heated and intemperate to be sure, but she promply deleted it.

Quote:in the wake of a deadly knife attack on young girls in Southport, England last year. The case has similarly animated the right in the U.K.

"Animated the right" is a rather biased and dismissive way of putting it. (Of course this is a Politico writer.) "Inflamed public opinion" in the UK would be better.

Quote:Farage’s appearance will do little to calm a narrative — already being pushed by key allies of U.S. President Donald Trump — that free speech is under threat in Europe, and particularly in the U.K.

It isn't Nigel Farage creating this. It's the behavior of the British, German, French and other governments that are doing their best to destroy free speech and democracy more broadly in their own countries. Ironically, all in the name of defending democracy.

Quote:U.S. Vice President JD Vance stunned European leaders in February when he accused the continent’s governments, and what he called EU “commissars,” of being more interested in stifling free speech than in providing security for their citizens.

I was very pleased to see Vice-President Vance say those things at the Munich security conference. European leaders, including Britain's, really need to hear the truth told with the weight of the United States behind it. I'm really starting to like J.D. Vance.

Quote:Just last month, the U.S. State Department issued an unflattering assessment of the U.K.’s free speech record. But some domestic opponents believe Farage is overplaying his hand — and amping up a complex issue in a bid to earn political capital.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Starmer accused the Reform UK leader of lobbying Americans to “impose sanctions on this country to harm working people,” adding that it “cannot get more unpatriotic than that.”

Watch both Farage speaking to a US Congressional committee in measured statesman-like tones, and Starmer's slightly hysterical shouting response in Commons here:

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1963519906504478903

I'm getting the impression that Starmer is angry and perhaps increasingly desperate because he senses public opinion slipping away as Farage's Reform rises in the polls.

(Sep 5, 2025 06:55 AM)Yazata Wrote: Watch both Farage speaking to a US Congressional committee in measured statesman-like tones, and Starmer's slightly hysterical shouting response in Commons here:

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1963519906504478903

I'm getting the impression that Starmer is angry and perhaps increasingly desperate because he senses public opinion slipping away as Farage's Reform rises in the polls.

As I've mentioned before, *if* Farage was suppose to have been the PM, why wasn't it the case when he was running UKIP?, when they created Brexit through hijacking all the MEP (European Minister) positions to tank involvement in Europe and then of course when he ran off to leave the country riling at having Brexit without any plan of how to make the outcome functional. (in other words he crawled under a rock)

He was useless then and any idiot voting him in now would just prove the point in spades.

His party itself is made up of wantabes and hasbeens. The country is in problems with it's political system, the whole damn thing needs an overhaul.
Parties should be abolished.

What follows is somewhere in the realms of sarcasm and desperation.
In the UK we have a policy of high profile policing. In terms of cost effectiveness we have to consider the cost of one arrest which is noticed by 10 million people and the rather less cost effective arrests which only affect a the criminal and their victims.
The markings on police cars have been selected to ensure the cars are visible from half a mile away. Clearly there's no point in having a police force that nobody notices, unfortunately the effectiveness for crime fighting is somewhat problematic.
The police force are (to some extent) 'democratically accountable'.
My local representative..
Within days of her election, it was reported that *************** was being investigated by police.
*************** addressed these concerns during her swearing in ceremony: "I've had over 91,000 people elect me to office. I'm here for the people. I'm here to do a job – the police need support."
The Crown Prosecution Service ruled there were no grounds for a criminal charge and the case was dropped.
She courted controversy when she suggested gun owners could engage with terrorists. This idea was swiftly dismissed by the Deputy Chief Constable due to the difficulty of working out who was shooting at whom and why.

(Sep 5, 2025 11:01 AM)confused2 Wrote: In the UK we have a policy of high profile policing. In terms of cost effectiveness we have to consider the cost of one arrest which is noticed by 10 million people and the rather less cost effective arrests which only affect a the criminal and their victims.

So a deterrent effect for speech but no deterrent for violent crime.

(Sep 5, 2025 04:04 PM)Syne Wrote:

(Sep 5, 2025 11:01 AM)confused2 Wrote: In the UK we have a policy of high profile policing. In terms of cost effectiveness we have to consider the cost of one arrest which is noticed by 10 million people and the rather less cost effective arrests which only affect a the criminal and their victims.

So a deterrent effect for speech but no deterrent for violent crime.

94% detection rate for murder (about 500 a year). For Violent crime about 2 million offences per year with between 3 and 6% detection rate (depends on source). A large percentage of neighbourhoods in England and Wales have seen no burglaries solved at all in the past three years.

If, as has been said, detecting crime has no influence on the crime rate there's no point in wasting money detecting it.

You weren't talking about "detecting" crime. You were talking about "arrests." Remember?

(Sep 5, 2025 06:08 PM)Syne Wrote: You weren't talking about "detecting" crime. You were talking about "arrests." Remember?

Our 'detecting' means 'solving' as of knowing who did it to the point of being able to arrest and charge someone .. guilt or otherwise to be determined at a later stage by a court. More than just 'Hey there's been a crime here'.

So your police are only good at solving crimes where the offender outs themselves online.
Might as well be Keystone Cops.

(Sep 5, 2025 11:36 PM)Syne Wrote: So your police are only good at solving crimes where the offender outs themselves online.
Might as well be Keystone Cops.

Possibly they are doing their best with limited resources (possibly not).

Law enforcement rationed like universal healthcare.