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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

> London is not like living in some police state

I lived there for 7 years and I don't share the same feelings. Sure it's not like you live in 1984 but it feels much more like a "police state" in comparison to the rest European capitals.

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I got the similar vibe even just passing though. I’ve seen the “secure beneath the watchful eyes” poster in real life: http://www.adsavvy.org/new-cctv-posters-in-uk-train-stations...

You can get tossed in prison for saying the "wrong thing", which strikes me as a pretty police state thing.

Examples:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-man-jailed-over-facebook-sta...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-face...

https://thesuffolkjournal.com/26253/opinion/detainment-of-br...

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/count-dankula-freedom-s...

In the context of London and the UK “get tossed in prison” has an alternative meaning

>On Feb. 9, The Daily Mail in the U.K. published a story detailing the harrowing detainment of 38-year-old Kate Scottow. Scottow, a resident of Hertfordshire, England, was handcuffed in front of her autistic ten-year-old daughter and breastfeeding 20-month-old son, brought into custody and held for seven hours in a single jail cell.

>What heinous action warranted such drastic measures? The crime of “misgendering,” or calling a transgender individual by their biologically determined set of pronouns instead of their preferred pronouns, precipitated Scottow’s arrest. Stephanie Hayden, a biological male who recently transitioned to identifying as female on social media, reported Scottow to the police.

If you would have tried to tell people 10 years ago that this actually happened, people would have thought you were crazy, or accuse you of promoting the slippery slope fallacy.

As a major believer in respecting pronoun usage it's ridiculous this is a crime.

The article makes it sound like she just accidentally used the wrong word, but in actually, she was repeatedly harassing the person and breaking what appears to be some sort of restraining order to do so. Whether an arrest is warranted is another question, but as always, it's a little less ridiculous with context.

Perhaps they would simply level an accusation of credulously accepting the Daily Mail's endless sewer of confected outrage fantasy.

Fair enough; here's another site that appears to be approaching it from the opposite perspective: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/02/14/kate-scottow-stephanie...

Different spin, for sure, but the facts appear to be the same. I'd have posted multiple sources if I knew this would be contended. Here's another article on it: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-stand-with-kate-scotto...

If you'd told me 10 years ago that someone would be arrested for hate speech, I'd have ... believed you?

> Examples:

> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-man-jailed-over-facebook-sta...

So a guy posted "grossly offensive" or "of an indecent, obscene or menacing character", and infuriated everyone around him to the point that he had to be arrested "for his own safety,"

> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-face...

Legislation passed to prosecute racist hate speech.

> https://thesuffolkjournal.com/26253/opinion/detainment-of-br...

A woman was arrested due to her “willfully and maliciously engages in a knowing pattern of conduct or series of acts over a period of time directed at a specific person".

> https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/count-dankula-freedom-s...

An opinion piece that just shows someone's opinion.

You should pick your examples more carefully because all you did was try to pass off people actively engaged in systematic abuse and harassment and persecution of vulnerable people as victims.

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