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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

I always feel more controlled in Britain than Germany or Switzerland, with the amount of "You should do this, You should not do that" messages all over the place, and thanks to CCTV, in the places I regularly visit I seldom see any car badly parked.

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Although it's worth remembering the UK is still a popular place is "disappear" since it's doesn't have an overarching ID system like most Western countries, and the UK doesn't track people anywhere near as much as it's neighbours.

You'd have to try pretty hard to do that, because you won't be able to work, have a bank account, rent, or purchase a house.

We don't have an ID system but we have a lot of ID requirements.

My experience being controlled as foreigner for various kinds of reasons kind of differs.

How does the tax authority keep track of who's dodging taxes? The fact you don't have the concept of ID cards is irrelevant if the tax authority still has an incentive to keep tabs on people (which it does in order to detect tax evasion).

You don't have to declare for tax purposes unless you go over certain amounts. If you do without declaring you may get away with if for a few years but they often catch people if someone gets investigated and they see bank payments going to someone undeclared. Then you get a bit of a bill for back taxes.

It's quite laid back compared to some countries though. They usually only come after your assets. Very few people go to jail.

This still requires them to keep tabs on people and know they exist. So even though you may not have an ID card, HMRC still knows you exist and about your payment habits to be able to tell if something fishy is going on?

I'm not totally up to date but once you are in the system they keep tabs a bit and you have a tax ID number and such like. But for people not in the system, say come in from abroad or young and not involved yet they didn't in the past. I don't know if that will change and they'll make a database of everyone with a bank account and the like.

Some years ago I moved abroad for a while and then they'd kind of drop your records after three years out of the country. Now I'm not so sure.

When I arrived in the UK the first thing I needed to do before being able to work is to make an appointment at some government office to get issued a national insurance number (which is like a tax ID) which every employer requires.

So while people don’t carry ID cards, everyone of working age definitely has this ID unless they exclusively work undeclared, off-the-books jobs. So I’m not convinced that the lack of ID cards is some meaningful privacy protection.

It was really striking when I came back (to the UK) from a short trip to Switzerland. In Switzerland, or at least the touristy parts of Geneva, orderliness, respect, and civility were assumed - and, at least as far as I can tell, followed. While I couldn't read everything (merely the psuedocomprehensibility you get with related languages), I only saw a single "behave yourselves" message. We discussed it at the time and our French speaker said that he had also only seen that one. In Britain there were multiple giant billboards about not harassing various people (mostly staff) before you even got to customs.

I'm skeptical of their effectiveness, and while I hesitate to make broad statements based on just a few days in a country it seems to me to be indicative of a major cultural difference.

Britain feels simultaneously strict and lawless. It's strange, but it's hard to imagine things turning out any other way in this country.

The US and other places can be like that too. Strict if you have something to lose, but not enough to protect yourself. Lawless if you have nothing to lose, or enough to protect yourself.

So bottom 20% and top ~5% to 10% are golden, middle 20% to 60% are hoping (dreaming?) to make it up a few deciles, and 60% to 90% are hoping to make it to top 10%. And until they make it there, they have to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

I never understood the reason behind these messages, is it because they think everyone is dumb ? In continental europe messages are meant to forbid stuff, it is rare to see a "mind the gap" message.

"Mind the gap" used to be played only at some 19th-century stations built on tight curves, where the gap between the carriage and the platform could be 20 or even 30cm. (The widest is 37.5cm.) That's a safety hazard, especially for blind people, so the announcements have existed for decades.

It's more recent that the pointless announcement has been made at many stations.

http://www.metadyne.co.uk/mind_the_gap.htm

We can still wash our cars on a Sunday though?

I deeply hate the "Welcome to the UK border" signs at airports. More than most countries, it's a first impression of petty authoritarianism.

Nowadays those signs are supplemented with "Please don't assault our staff". What a nice country.

It's a left over from good old imperialism. And it's still immensely preferable to the rule of none currently spreading in the shape of civil war.

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