Hacker News Reader

Comment by poplarsol | Hacker News Reader

The UK is best understood as a "managed democracy" where there are nominally elections, but the government decides who will constitute its voting population, what they are allowed to say, and now whether they will be allowed to acquit people the government decides it would prefer to punish.

View on HN

Agreed, and I am reminded that Putin once called Russia a "managed democracy." I may not always agree, but I am very glad America has the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh amendments, among others. This tactic by the British government is absurd and offensive to freedom. What I find more baffling, but perhaps I am narrowly thinking about it, is how much the British people are letting it happen. I am not political, but if anyone tried to take our rights under the Bill of Rights, or declared an emergency to cancel elections, I will be in the streets with, I hope, literally every one else.

Some things are just too critical to a free and fair nation, and jury trials are right up there.

There are functioning democracies out there without jury trials. I would not say it's "critical to a free and fair nation'.

The Us has small claims courts right?

Right. In fact, AFAIK only a handful of countries have a jury, which are mainly ex british colonies. Almost everywhere else there is constitution and so.

> There are functioning democracies out there without jury trials.

Could you name a few? I'm genuinely ignorant on how most of the world handles criminal affairs - do they just have the judge rule on the matter?

A lot of public law jurisdictions don’t have jury trials, just a judge who decides the facts based on the constitution and the case presented by the prosecutor. Finland, for example.

In South Africa there are no juries, and the democracy is deemed fairly good, albeit rotten with corruption (but that's another story). The judiciary is fairly independent so far, and criminal cases are solely tried by a professional judge.

>I am not political, but if anyone tried to take our rights under the Bill of Rights, or declared an emergency to cancel elections, I will be in the streets with, I hope, literally every one else.

I'm sorry but the last decade has shown how much the US really likes to mirror the UK. I have been burned so many times thinking the US is some unique snowflake. Its just a Anglo-Saxon colony that moved out on its own but is still part of that same soul and mindset. I know a large chunk of the majority white population is now of German descent, but it still seems like the Anglo-Saxon mindset rules the land. If you want to know what happens to the future of the US just look at the UK as they are always the OG hipsters.

The UK voted for Brexit on the premise of making Britain british again (or some hogwash of that nature). The US would never make a silly mistake of that nature right? Oh wait they did just months later. The UK has this obsession of having cameras everywhere so much so there have been famous books written about that culture. The US is doing the same just that they got away with it by hiding it under other excuses such as anti-terrorism, security, protecting the children, etc.

Now the U.S. is slow walking into erosion of free speech, erosion of rights. And have the population put up a fight? No. They're acting exactly like the U.K. population. Maybe even more cowardly. And would you even blame them? What is their recourse? People here like to cosplay about the second amendment, but you know what when push came to shove, they acted exactly as their British compatriots did.

It was also rejecting being part of the anti-democratic runaway train that is the EU with its unelected president. Britain has enough trouble with its own government - for many it seemed like a reasonable move to remove the government running our government.

Tell me you know nothing about the UK without telling me you know nothing about the UK.

Nonsense.

- voting population? What are you on about? It's everyone older than 18.

- you are not allowed to say "let's go and kill xxxyyy" or "burn hotel xxxyyy" but more or less you can say anything else. You might get sued if you say "Kier Starmer is an XXXYYY" but possibly not.

- this is using a system such as the one that operates in many countries - like France. But note: Germany ditched jury trials in 1924...

I've seen a couple of stories - like this one - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15302729/Assault-vi... - that make me think there's a very liberal interpenetration of "hate crime", as in there doesn't need to be an underlying crime but speech alone if offensive enough is criminal.

16 year olds have just been given the vote by the Labour government in an attempt to shore up their support because they’re going to lose the next election. Lowering the power of my vote as an adult taxpayer by enfranchising teenagers who get their political nous from TikTok is pretty disgusting.

- voting population? What are you on about? It's everyone older than 18.

It'll likely be 16. And I believe bringing in more population that is a lot more likely to vote for your is also part of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com