Hacker News Reader

> RE: the Rolex watch crime — I walk through East London with a Patek Philippe on my arm and have zero concerns, I’m not scared, nor do I live in fear.

Which route do you take? Just asking for, er, a friend…

:D Dalston high-street mostly. It’s insured anyway, have it: I’d never argue/fight with a mugger! Which seems to be what happened to Rolex guy: no watch is worth fighting for, just hand it over.

> RE: the Rolex watch crime — I walk through East London with a Patek Philippe on my arm and have zero concerns, I’m not scared, nor do I live in fear.

If anything, having spent quite a bit of time walking through the only areas of East London recently that slightly unnerved me when I first moved to the UK in 2000, they're now mostly solidly gentrified...

I moved to London in 1996 and even Notting Hill wasn’t fully gentrified then! I used to walk home from nightclubs and have no issues (early morning, empty streets, dark alleys, etc). I actually did it recently (for old time’s sake), walked back from Fabric to Dalston. Again, no issues, no concerns, no hassle. If anything it seems safer now because of all the police cctv cameras.

In a city of 10 million people crime is bound to happen, but I’ve never felt unsafe in London. No more than any other major city I’ve been to. And the same with the UK as a whole.

I've never felt seriously unsafe either even back then, but there were parts that seemed creepier to me. I think in general people are really bad at assessing real risk, and which flawed risk indicators and stereotypes people build into their assessment will make it hard to convince them of what the risks actually are...

Violent crime is way up

https://www.statista.com/statistics/288256/violent-crimes-in...

Not sure what statista.com is, but it’s not the Office for National Statistics, here’s violent crime:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...

There’s a note: “Trends in police recorded violence with and without injury should be interpreted with caution, as improvements to recording practices have had a substantial impact on the recording of violent crime over the last 10 years. For further information, see Section 19: Data sources and quality”

So, if your stats are a mirror of the ONS then they’re not telling a complete story.

The ONS states: “Crime against individuals and households has generally decreased over the last 10 years with some notable exceptions, such as sexual assault”

But it also states: “Trends in police recorded sexual offences should be interpreted with caution as improvements in recording practices and increased reporting by victims have contributed to increases in recent years. For further information, see Section 19: Data sources and quality.”

There’s no way the OP’s original statement holds up: “Both criminality and religious extremism are rising at a more than alarming rate”

I notice he’s now edited to “criminality and rapes” — he has an agenda. It’s utterly tiresome hearing people outside the UK trying to tell us how scared we are, when it’s complete bullshit.

The Statista graph is based on this ONS data, table A5a in the spreadsheet: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...

Fair enough, then this caveat should still apply: “Trends in police recorded violence with and without injury should be interpreted with caution, as improvements to recording practices have had a substantial impact on the recording of violent crime over the last 10 years. For further information, see Section 19: Data sources and quality”

The ONS states that crime is generally down. That’s all I claimed. The OP has been editing away to make his point seem less racist are more pertinent to these follow up replies, which is utterly tedious.

This whole forum seems to have had a lurch into extremism over the past year or so. Either that or these people have been lurking in threads I wasn’t looking at before. I find it crazy that people are downvoting my response which cited facts and pushed back against blatant misinformation and veiled racism. We live in a crazy world where people think this rhetoric is reasonable and ok.

> extremism is only really growing due to white supremacy groups.

Nonsense.

We literally had riots in the UK last year due to white supremacists. It is writ large all over social media, especially because of Elon Musk, who I assume you lionise based on your handle. Its hateful rhetoric and actual violence is on show in the UK more than any other form of extremism.

What other forms of extremism do you believe is growing? Compared to, say, 2007? Where we had hate preachers at Finsbury Park mosque that led to 7/7 and the ‘shoe bomber’

> Elon Musk, who I assume you lionise based on your handle

It's a portmanteau of ECHELON [0] and Elon Musk. I've never cared for him, and especially not now that he is advancing fascist ideology.

To counter your point, it would depend on how you define extremism. If you want to define extremism as acts of violence then I can understand.

However there are plenty of fundamentalist/extremist views within the UK which exist regardless of what the right wing does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

> it would depend on how you define extremism

I don't need to, the government already has widened the definition to include white supremacists and has a list of proscribed groups. This allows Prevent (the de-radicalisation programme that was originally set-up for Islamist terrorists and potential terrorists) to work on de-radicalising white supremacists too and for MI5 to focus some of its energy on preventing extremism and violence in the UK.

> However there are plenty of fundamentalist/extremist views within the UK which exist regardless of what the right wing does.

I am certainly not saying "right wing bad". I'm saying "far-right white supremacy bad". And probably "far-right bad" in general, just like I'd say "far-left bad". Extremism, in general, requires you to move away from compromise. Whether it's far-left or far-right, in my judgement it will always lead to conflict.

Are you talking about the Southport mass stabbing that killed three children and wounded 10? The perpetrator was a second-generation African migrant found with an Al-Qaeda training manual and ricin, who had been repeatedly referred to Prevent. The UK government initially refused to release information about the perpetrator, which caused speculation and confusion about the attack.

It's a bit odd to focus on the anti-government protests and call them terrorists, when they were out protesting because the government failed to adequately protect them from an actual terrorist.

> The perpetrator was a second-generation African migrant

He isn't a migrant. He was born in Wales. He's British. 100%. This is exactly the kind of language that starts the wheel of hatred rolling.

Nobody knew anything about him when the riots were fomented by the white supremacist lunatics. They just made it up because it fit their narrative and allowed them to go after brown people. They invented a muslim sounding name and claimed he was an asylum seeker. None of which was true.

> The UK government initially refused to release information about the perpetrator

They didn't "refuse". It's normal practice for the police to not release the details of an alleged perpetrator.

> which caused speculation and confusion about the attack.

Speculation is not a good enough reason to try burning down a hotel with refugees in in. I'm sorry, but there is no defence for the violence and hatred that was stirred and fomented by the white supremacist lunatics (and by Musk et al).

What happened with those children is tragic. Truly. But that doesn't give a free hand to white supremacist lynch mobs.

> It's a bit odd to focus on the anti-government protests and call them terrorists, when they were out protesting because the government failed to adequately protect them from an actual terrorist.

That's a fucked up sentence. He committed a crime, not an act of terrorism. A horrific crime, yes, but what came after was not an "anti-government protest". It was a riot where people were actually trying to murder immigrants based on no information other than what they had made up themselves. I mean, a mosque was attacked the following day and the perpetrator is a Christian (or at least his family is). That's not a protest, that's pure extremist hatred.

As one of these "brown people" reading through your arguments, I'd like to politely ask; could you not?

You're not helping.