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Comment by moystard | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy how much this country has changed since I moved in the UK in 2010. I originally moved here because London was a city encouraging tolerance, freedom and respect for each other. Technology wise, this city was also the heart of Europe with a great pool of companies and engineers to achieve big things and counterbalance the hegemony of the Silicon Valley and the US.

Every new proposal these days from the UK government is pushing an authoritarian government, and the Brexit has given them an excuse for more populism and isolationism.

As a French man, I moved here because of all these reasons. I had a job in France, a good situation, but I wanted to discover, meet new people, enlarge my horizon. Today, I am not sure that London and the UK are the right places for that.

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Yes, looks like terrorists are winning... They made everyone's life to be worse, that was basically their goal. In the name of fight against terrorism power-hungry politicians propose mind-boggling useless and awful measures, and people don't stop them, because "how can you be against fight on terrorism?" So sad.

and people don't stop them, because "how can you be against fight on terrorism?"

I would bet that if they tried, they might be considered terrorists too. It reminds me of this old Thomas Jefferson quote:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Terrorism is probably the best ally western governments have found to advance their authoritarian agenda. The sad thing is people are actually falling for it. You just have to look at the way the UK Government complained that they didn't have a backdoor to whatsapp's infrastructure because the "terrorist" was able to plan his attack using their service. What is it going to be next ? "London Horrified after Uber Driver blows up his car in Leicester Square. Theresa May to force Uber to share user's personal data with the government". I hate to sound Alex Jones-y but you've got to admit that there's a pattern here.

In an interview during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Hermann Goering, the founder of the Nazi Gestapo, was discussing whether normal people ever want to go to war. He answered that obviously they do not, but that the leaders make the decisions and can drag the people along with them. When the interviewer suggested that in democracies the people have a say through their elected representatives, Goering countered that "The people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are in danger of being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Sadly, it appears that little has changed in the intervening 70 or so years.

I think this works because of how the human mind works in its very basics.

Exactly for a lot of wealthy people they live in terror of the regular people they are gradually starving to death. As we enter a post human economy we will see more and more mass internment more and more concentration camps. As machines eliminate more and more work the totalitarian state will simply eliminate the surplus humans.

Astute point. Terrorists, at least the foot soldiers, are just the riffraff of the globe. To wealthy people, all the plebes look the same.

To poor people apparently all the wealthy people look the same as well...

"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Milton Friedman

Well, terrorists are winning. But the goal of terrorists is not to make "everyone's life to be worse", it is to force political changes.

In the case of the Islamic terrorism, their goal is to spread the authority of Islam.

So, for example, since the Charlie Hebdo attack, nobody will publish any image of Mohammed. We are now all following that part of Islamic blasphemy law, because we're afraid of their enforcement squads. So in that spot they succeeded.

The terrorists were invented to justify this shit.

The name of the game is putting the whole population into a juice-press. Always was, always will be.

No, there are actual terrorists and have been for ages, though they used to be called anarchists. Attacks on targets by Northern Irish terrorists were a Real Thing. It's the scale and scope of the response that are disproportionate, not to mention the moral vacuity of same.

Calling them anarchists makes them less invented? Calling them Northern Irish terrorists makes them less invented? No.

It works like this. You are a rich fucker who wants to mug a country. To do that you need an army. So first you locate some traumatized people. Feed them money and motivational ideology. Point them at your target. Profit.

Voila, you have invented a band of terrorists.

The Tories are winning. Their agenda has been authoritarian and nationalist for a long time. Terrorism is only a convenient excuse.

To be fair, I don't think this is a partisan thing. The Labour government were getting pretty authoritarian towards the end of their tenure too. Remember the ID cards debacle?

I'm also French, and moved to the US with similar aspirations right when Obama got elected. These days, I am starting to have the same disillusions as you; I feel like these tendencies have been present throughout the western world at large over the past few years.

I am wondering where in the world I could move to and have good public services (healthcare, education, transportation, etc), a government that seems to be truly serving the interests of the people at large, and a rich culture open to differences & innovation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

From my side, you are very welcome to move to Spain, e.g. pick Barcelona for nice weather, good services, and many tech companies. You can work with just English in most mid/large companies. Salaries are lower than the US and the UK, but que quality of life is quite nice :-)

As a spaniard, I agree that it is an overall nice place to be IF you have a decent job (hundreds of thousands of youngsters had to migrate for lack of it) and IF you are not bothered by politics and "mild" corruption. The grandparent stated:

> a government that seems to be truly serving the interests of the people at large And I don't think Spain is good in that regard.

English in large companies is not common, though, in my experience.

But my wife is french and I have a lot of french friends on Madrid, and they are very happy to be there and with no plans of coming back! So, gp, definitely consider Spain!

Sure, Madrid is a lovely place, too. Regarding working in English in Madrid and Barcelona, definitely it is possible, specially in companies oriented to the international market. Also, people will do their best to make people comfortable, from my experience :-)

Hahaha I wasn't rooting specifically for Madrid over Barcelona - it's just my experience is from there. I actually believe the english aspect might be a little bit better over there...

I think Germany is doing pretty well lately.

Americans and the French have been brothers in liberty since the very beginning of this country, long before the idea of a large centralized federal government providing all the services you mentioned. My maternal side hails from the Guyenne province of France.

The role of government in society will always evolve and be debated, but it is important not to forget our shared heritage and centuries of friendship, and never to let temporary trends or problems ruin that. Don't leave the country, stay and help to improve it for the next generations. Glad you are here!

That's an odd version of history.

It was the monarchs of France that helped the US during the revolutionary war.

Then France had their own "revolution" and beheaded a lot of people. It was more Pol Pot than Thomas Jefferson.

Then Napoleon took power and made himeself emperor and tried to take over all of Europe.

Then we fought the quasi war.

I suppose after that we had some better times, maybe the last 100 year.

Regardless of who ultimately financed it, it was the common French soldier fighting under de Lafayette and others who helped the American cause. There were also many French immigrants to America during the time of the revolution (I am aware of the Alien and Sedition Acts; I never claimed there haven't been regrettable mistakes along the way).

My point was that there is a brotherhood among Americans and Frenchmen which transcends temporary political turbulence, that is all.

It seems to me that France fits the description quite well, doesn't it?

I don't think there's much better out there, these days. Seems like Canada, continental Western Europe and Scandinavia are the best modern countries. Maybe I'll also return to France these days, or try Quebec.

Yeah, except for

> and a rich culture open to differences & innovation.

Maybe Canada is the only one checking all of it?

Rather than move to such a place and reap the benefits with no effort on your part, maybe consider helping to change where you are living now.

Norway.

Canada

The UK has always felt it proper to invade individuals' privacy. TV detector vans date from 1952: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van and they've recently entered the digital age: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05/bbc-to-deploy-det...

This type of casual invasion of privacy at least (nominally) requires a warrant in the US.

I'm constantly amazed that so many British people believe the fiction that BBC detector vans are able to detect license violations.

I'm not British, and even if they're fake (why do you believe that?), they've still been purporting to invade privacy for over half a century.

I'd recommend you to vote with your feet (if you don't have too many family connections with the UK) and leave the British Isles for now.

I lived in the UK for some time, but general atmosphere, even before EU referendum became unbearable for me.

I moved back to continental EU. There are as many opportunities here as in London, even more.

The UK is regressing and it's going to get worse. If you have a chance, don't get stuck there.

I've had the impression that the UK has always been more pubically survelience happy than the Usa. I remember over 10 years ago everyone talking about CCTVs were everywhere and the law let the police use them way more than the usa ever could.

Why do you consider secularism bad?

I actually don't, it was a mistake on my side, I meant isolationism.

I hear you. I moved to the UK ten years ago, because I fell in love with this beautiful, mature, tolerant country. It hurts to see what the populists are trying to do. It's neither good for the people of Britain, the economy, nor the rest of Europe. Shame on you, Theresa May. Shame on you. I say it while I still can.

I left the UK nearly 25 years ago because (among many other reasons) I was starting to find the omnipresent security culture oppressive. Sadly the US has gone down the same road and it's no longer the country it used to be. Some things have changed for the better but the fact that both countries currently have such authoritarian leaders is a Dangerously Bad Thing.

The UK is a setting of quite a few prominent dystopias (e.g. 1984, Brave New World) and that imprinted in my susceptible young mind that while the UK seems to have always been on the "free" side of the societal spectrum, it's not guaranteed to continue in the future.

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