Oh Christ get me out of the UK!

[Minus]

... at least your prime minister campaign season lasted about 6 weeks or so.....

Wow, really? We have had senate races that started advertising over a year in advance. Worse yet most of the money is spent trying to convince you what a scum bag the opponent is. Obviously libel laws must not apply to political campaigns because no lie is considered to be too low.

The money too is a concern. It seems awful close to buying the office. As you mention, that leaves a lot of debts to the rich donors.

 

[cumulus.james]

MIn both the US and UK the wealth control the vote. This allows corporations, banks and the 1% in general to control the vote. Murdoch owns most of the media in the UK and a good deal in the US, hence most of our media outlets are right wing propagandists as is your Fox news. You still have some freedom of speech which allows for even crazy conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones but we have almost none at the media level and now what they are saying is we have none at the personal level either.

My conversations can be recorded on this phone by GCHQ, nothing is private, if you want to organize a demonstration against climate change or inequality your now an "extremist". The corporations are in our schools which are now nothing more than a prison where children are taught to be subordinates whos sole function is to consume. Our universities are useless - we would never get anyone like Noam Chomsky or Lawrence Lessig here, the professors here are all too scared.

We do have the activist professor David Graeber but only because you guys kicked him out the US. But under these new laws he might find himself kicked out the UK.

 

[HoodedMonk]

Bernie Sanders 2016!! He wants to topple Citizens United and voted against going to war in Iraq/Afghanistan and the Patriot Act that spawned the NSA spying!

He has my vote!

\o/

Ok, is he the fellow from Vermont?? He is the only candidate that I've taken seriously so far. The rest can stuff it!

-Teresa

Yep, that's him!

 

[constant stranger]

I feel a bit less lonely after reading this thread.

I see that I'm not the only person living in a formerly democratic society who's afraid of the power structure's apparatus of state security.

Try to keep a low profile; don't draw attention to yourself; be really careful about which friends and neighbors you trust; when in doubt, be silent.

And of course that applies to internet activity too: use enough of the wrong words and the monitoring software will give your name to a human state security agent. Do it enough and they'll come knocking on your door.

On the positive side, we could maybe find a few friends in the gulag.

 

[cumulus.james]

This is not how things should be.

 

[cumulus.james]

It's just been announced that they plan to censor tv shows now.

UK is going to be like Stalinist Russia by the time they've finished.

I hope the next crash comes sooner rather than later so we can get these fuckers out.

 

[2ndchance]

i know that many people want to leave the dreary dark uk . australia is expensive but worth it . im from the us but , id love to move to sunny aus .

 

[cumulus.james]

Australia is right wing like the US and UK. If anyone wants to escape this they need to go to liberal progressive countries.

Just, there must be a nation where people are nice and care about each other and the planet, not all nations are selfish and evil surely?

 

[mickey]

There is a difference between authoritarian and totalitarian. Authoritarian means that people who threaten the interests of those in power are subject to reprisals, but those who don't are not bothered. Totalitarian means that even people who lead quiet lives and never say boo to a goose could randomly suffer abuse for no reason at all. So are people saying that the new government in the UK is authoritarian or totalitarian? The difference is important to me because, for a few years now, I've made a practice of lying low and letting sleeping dogs lie when it comes to political things, so I'd like to know whether someone like me would be safe in your country.

The other side of it is that I'm on disability and, if social services were abolished here, would very likely have no source of income at all and be depentent entirely on the charity of relatives. But that's a separate issue. I don't see myself as having a right to other people's money, and am actually grateful that they are progressive enough to let me have some kind of income.

 

[cumulus.james]

You in the UK? I'm on disability and frankly I hate it and I can't hardly feed myself. The idea over here is that I'm just lazy but nothing is more humiliating than being on disability and if I could find a way off it I would.

 

[mickey]

You in the UK? I'm on disability and frankly I hate it and I can't hardly feed myself. The idea over here is that I'm just lazy but nothing is more humiliating than being on disability and if I could find a way off it I would.

I'm in Canada. Here, people on disability get a separate amount to cover rent from the amount we get for everything else, and some people even have the disability office issue their rent checks directly to the landlord. In the US there is just one disability amount and people are responsible for figuring out on their own how to cover rent and food out of that one amount. In the UK disability is comparatively generous, when compared to what it is in Canada and the US. People on disability in Canada and the US can afford only shared accommodation because the amount paid isn't enough for a private apartment. People in the UK usually get their own flat, and sometimes their own house, paid for by the government. Also, the non-shelter component of disability payments in the UK is about three times larger than what it is in Canada, and is paid weekly rather than monthly as it is here. I think it's about four times larger than what people get in the US.

 

[Punisher]

The UK is full of immigrants, gay marriage is legal, abortions are legal, free housing and benefits for everyone who needs it, yet liberals are still not happy. Apart from drugs, prostitution and pedophilia, liberals have everything they want.

 

[Sometimes]

Australia is right wing like the US and UK. If anyone wants to escape this they need to go to liberal progressive countries.

Just, there must be a nation where people are nice and care about each other and the planet, not all nations are selfish and evil surely?

I really feel for you. However, I'm getting a great education on what's going on in the UK. I look up everything you report that's going on.

Everyone is scared. There's so much fear. I think the answer is to find a nation that isn't pumped full of fear, and I think that would be a nation that isn't threatened, and/or doesn't feel threatened, and/or doesn't manipulate its population into feeling threatened. A small place without strategic resources, or strategic location, so no one is interested in it. But a place like that would be poor.

 

[cumulus.james]

Disability benefits in the UK are not what they were, they have been cut quite dramatically and we have had many instances of disabled people killing themselves. For the most severely disabled we used to have a thing called the independent living fund, which as the name suggests allowed people to live an independent life, this has been scrapped. It will now be the task of family members to look after the severely disabled for free or that person will have to go into an institution. It's also no longer the case that a disabled person will get a government subsidised home automatically, this has to be fought for.

I did get a fairly decent flat with a housing association, please don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for that and in my 30's I have been living independently for almost 4 years now. But the welfare benefits were indirectly cut, we have a local tax called council tax, a disabled person was not expected to pay this before, now you have to. The new gov plans on adding a government tax to disability.

The work situation has not gone where it should. Theoretically I should be able to find an employer who would accommodate my disability. I can't. I'm a smart guy, the internet promised that we'd all be working from home didn't it? I can't see any signs this is possible in the UK. The idea being promoted by the med butis that people like me are lazy. Trust me, I would rather be fully employed and have some control over my life than sit bored on welfare.

My big interest is activism, particularly climate change activism and political reform. I had been planning an online campaign to do with this, but I now have to worry that anything I say against the government will get be labelled an extremist or terrorist or something and thrown in the gulag.

Our prison service has been cut and is going to be cut more. So prisons will literally be hell. Following the US lead, poor life is increasingly criminalized.

 

[Raven22]

That is terrible! Cutting funding to the prison service and making it like Hell! Surely that is what prisons should be like for criminals, rapists, murdereres and child molesters and robbers and not some cozy place where they can enjoy themselves!

 

[TheRealCallie]

If you don't like how you are living and feel you deserve more, why don't you get a job? Don't start the whole "I'm disabled and can't work" thing because that's not true. Clearly you can use a computer, so why not find something to do at home? There are plenty of work at home jobs out there, you could most likely get something that would give you some extra income.

 

[mickey]

I understand the stigma you're facing. There's a lot of ignorance and outright bigotry about disability. For the most part people with cushy and well-paid lives think "I have a job so everyone else can have one too if they really want to." It's self-serving thinking and it's prevalent among those to whom the politicians listen because they pay the most taxes.

But where we part company is on the activism. It would be nice if people were free to be a nuisance to those in power and not face reprisals, but that's not how the real world has ever worked. The way North American activists got around it was to become institutionalized and acquire a lot of collective power themselves, but that merely made them oppressors who just _say_ they're oppressed. And because of my North American experience I have trouble being sympathetic to someone who wants to do activism. Sorry.

 

[cumulus.james]

That is terrible! Cutting funding to the prison service and making it like Hell! Surely that is what prisons should be like for criminals, rapists, murdereres and child molesters and robbers and not some cozy place where they can enjoy themselves!

This is a horrendous right wing view. It is no coincidence "criminals" also happen to be poor and mostly from abuse/dysfunctional childhoods. For the most part the person being punished is being so for the end result of his childhood damage. When it comes to so called child molesters very little of it is for molesting children but rather consensual sex with teenagers. Robbers do so out of poverty and usually because of drugs, if you care to take some time to listen to Gabor Mate or read the book Chasing The Scream you will realize that capitalism is the cause of drug problems, and drug problems disproportionately affect blacks and the poor. In both the US and UK your chances of being raped in prison is quite high, especially the younger and smaller you are.

Most "criminals" have high levels of mental illness. Your ignorant view is to psychologically torment them further.

We then have the appalling business of every woman under pressure to define everything as rape to cleanse her own guilt from opening her legs. Real rape is of course horrific, but when you define everything as rape you cheapen real rape. We also don't know how many allegations are false. The young guy accused of rape in prison is likely to very quickly find out what forced sex is like.

An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.

And my perspective on these things is different because as mentioned elsewhere, I was an underage prostitute and involved in the sexual underworld when I was 13.

 

[Raven22]

So what you are saying is your view is right and nobody else can have an opinion if it different to yours.
And that all Women deserve to be raped?

 

[TheRealCallie]

If someone says no, and I don't care what they have between their legs, it is RAPE. I don't give a **** about the circumstances or anything else. If they say no and do not want to have sex, it IS rape. Stop trying to justify it.