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Well, this about protecting the state from people that threaten it or its policies. I don't think it ever was about making us live in a safer city.

Snatched your phone? Sorry mate. But some old lady better not be walking around with a tshirt that says "I support Palestine Action".

It's strange to me that in your bubble you think the police in the UK are mainly there to hassle the "Palestine" protestors and interrupt their peaceful "From the river to the sea" chants.

I would say it's a lot more serious that they did nothing to stop the organized Pakistani child-rape gangs, out of fear it might offend people to even acknowledge it.

Either way I can agree with you that it doesn't seem like the police in the UK are using their great power to do much good.

Just think about it a bit more. You’ll get there.

Specifically, think about the reaction you are having based on 1/ your perceived outcomes and 2/ their explanations for it. They seem pretty aligned to me, based on where you are directing your anger. So job well done on their part.

> out of fear it might offend people to even acknowledge it.

this didnt happen btw

the grooming gangs have largely had white perpetrators and all investigations into the police found that they simply do not listen to women, specially those of working class.

Rotherdam where the big asian men case was found, it lasted 17 years and the police had been investigated twice and failed catastrophically both times. With severe reforms recommended and never implemented. And the fear of being racist had never come up.

The case of the grooming gangs gained attention in 2011. And in 2016 the ex chief of police AFTER being investigated and fired due to gross errors then said that he didnt do more because he was afraid of being called racist.

The subsequent report in 2020 from the conservative goverment had that line too, although it also had copy pasted lines from american far right think tanks.

It seems like a convinient excuse to the fact that the police have shown 0 interest in helping poor people in the country for decades, and have shown misogynistic and racist behaviour in every internal investigation ever done (including the 750 page one done after a cop ra ped and murdered Sarah Everrat)

But I guess decades of internal reviews, consistent problems highlighted and demands for police reform can all be ignored due to the convinient excuse of a fired imbecile who allowed hundreds of girls to be hurt under his watch. There was video evidence, he saw and was brought to a judge and ignored because he thought all girls from council states are basically whores. But I am sure he didnt stop it because the people doing it in his case were pakistani. The grooming gang in scotland that were all white must have been because the cops thought the gang might also be foreign? The school grooming gang in Nottingham which was a catholic school and the priests were just moved, those cops also feared that jesus was pakistani?

The grooming gangs weren't prosecuted because the police were part of the grooming gangs. Basically an Epstein situation. Nothing to do with race.

I think it's even worse than that. If at some remote possibility that a criminal does get caught and charged with a crime, the prisons are full (37% foreign criminals [0]) so they won't do any prison time, and therefore no justice is served. In fact our prisons are so full, violent criminals are being let out after serving only their half term [1].

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

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyrkz9ryr5o

> 37% foreign criminals

Why is this statistic relevant?

How is it not relevant in a discussion about crime?

It's isolated and out of context, at the very least it needs an indication of the proportion of foreign born people in London, a major city with a large international population.

At one extreme, if the population of London happened to be almost entirely foreign born then it would seem that UK citizens are working overtime at London crime.

Only about a third of London population is White British.

It's incorrect at a minimum. Reading the source provided:

>76,869 British nationals were recorded in the prison population at the end of the first quarter of 2024. The remainder of the population was made up of 10,422 foreign nationals, making up 11.9% of the total population, with an additional 578 having no nationality recorded.

It seems the 37% figure may have come from an entry in the table breaking down those non-British nationalities by country:

>All other nationalities 3,899 37.4%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_prison_populati...

It sounds very believable too since here in Belgium it's 44% foreign nationals.

> Why is this statistic relevant?

More people, low wages, no taxes, no infrastructure for said people.

So very relevant, no?

More incorrect than relevant - I suspect you parsed the wrong line.

I'm seeing:

   At the end of the first quarter of 2024, there were 87,869 prisoners in England and Wales.

and:

  76,869 British nationals were recorded in the prison population at the end of the first quarter of 2024. The remainder of the population was made up of 10,422 foreign nationals, making up 11.9% of the total population

The math checks out: 10,422 / 87,869 x 100 = 11.86%

> violent criminals are being let out after serving only their half term

G20 country prison systems that I'm aware of have early release programs, it's almost a requirement to optimise what space there is for those that most deserve prison.

What's at issue with [1] is where, in actual fact, do a couple of teenagers who nicked a quad bike and likely very unintentionally also'd a manslaughter fall on the "violent criminal" spectrum.

> those that most deserve prison

You mean those that are the biggest danger to the government as opposed to the biggest danger to regular citizens.

It's called anarchy-tyranny, where the government fails to enforce basic laws and keep people safe from real criminals (anarchy), but instead uses its power to tightly control, tax, and punish ordinary, law-abiding citizens (tyranny). There are various conspiratorial theories for why this happens but I think the simplest explanation is that an ineffective government cannot deal with criminals and goes after the easier and more compliant targets instead.

Why anarchy = criminal?

"Anarchy" in that phrase is fucking wrong. Unsophisticated people assume that anarchy means "no rules", which is false. It means no rulers, not no rules. (More precisely, it means no non-rulers.)

A better term would be "warlordism", if you want to emphasise the lawlessness of the financial class, or maybe "feudalism" to emphasise that the financial class and the political class are congruent.

Criminal organizations also have rules.

Anarchy means "without government" or "without rulers". Seems fine to emphasize the government isn't acting like one.

That's a calumny. Anarchy is not what you end up with when government becomes febrile and vapid - that would be warlordism.

I'll give you a gold star for deconstructing the word roots, but "anarchy" is a term of art.

The salient distinction is that society hasn't abolished rulers - it has merely replaced political rulers with corporate rulers.

Actual anarchy is hard fucking work. It's sustainable in small communities, but you have to sit through meetings where idiots ramble about some stupid shit that is important only to them. It is a prosocial form of government predicated on empowered consensus - which is to say, predicated on bickering. This requires far more from participants than warlordism, where all you have to do is obey the one with the biggest stick.

Anarchy devolves into shittier systems if the community fails to maintain it. It's a high-energy state. Warlordism doesn't devolve; it's the lowest-energy state. Government by primate dominance.

Letting Google and Facebook run your society is not anarchy, it's techno-warlordism. "Techno-feudalism" is less accurate, but broadly understood.

Anarchy has multiple definitions, on of which is lawless and violence and chaos.

Anarchy is from Greek term an archos, which means without ruler.

We live on society where having rulers is obvious and assumes that we are unable organize ourselves.

If you say anarchy means chaos, then democracy means lack of personal responsibility.

Why don't we all become criminals then? Seems easier. I'll start: here's a VPN you can connect to to access porn sites.

Yes. Anacho-tyranny sounds very conspiratorial, but if you think from the police perspective, it is 1000X times easier to enforce fines and codes on the middle class and shopkeepers then it is to arrest criminals. Having an effective police force means cracking that motivation problem, and it's a sign of a well-aligned and well-functioning society. We aren't one.

> And the thing that absolutely fucks me off about all of this, is that we don't even get a lawful society in exchange for all of this.

I just wrote a comment saying something along these same lines (though talking about how the state functions). I absolutely agree with your comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283826

You can probably thank Thatcher and the cabal of idiots dumber than lettuce that is the Tory party. Squeeze the poor, squeeze the state budget that even the police force is under-resourced, give the money to their buddies.

E.g. with North Sea oil: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/214768/economics/norway-u...

Norway is rich and socialist. I was there a while ago and their billboards had ads from their national refugee council asking for donations... on the Friday evening there was a march for Palestine in downtown Oslo. Imagine how well that would go down in the UK "society".

Neither Norway, nor any other Scandinavian country is socialist. We're just taxed up the arse.

Which may be worse upon reflection: use capitalism to produce the goods, then taxation to redistribute them

The problem with the UK is that the rulers are far more criminal than the people.

They set out to rob the nation's wealth in the late 70s, and they largely succeeded.

I mean, violent crime and homicide is essentially at all time lows (or at least since we all started living in dense cities after the war) in the UK.

That has been the trend for decades in lots of other developed countries as well. It doesn't have to be in any way because of increased means of surveillance.

Exactly. Turns out most people don't get violent when they are content.

Correct. It's another thing that's hard to come to terms with - I know that statistically robberies, theft and violent crimes are going down. But I also know several people who had their garages broken into and their bikes and cars stolen. And in every one of these cases, the police won't even show up to look at the damage, take fingerprints, literally nothing - it's just "here's a case number, contact your insurer, we'll call you back if we ever find anything". In fact I know one guy in Manchester who had his Range Rover stolen, then found it in a supermarket car park 2 days later. Rang the police and they were literally like "well, if you have the keys then just....take it back". And he was like "wait, you don't want to come over, check it for fingerprints, drugs, any trace of anything that would help you find the criminals?". And they basically said no, they have no officers available, so just take the car and tell your insurer the case is closed and you got the car back, that's it.

I know the anecdotes don't help - they are just anecdotes. But man, it really doesn't fill me with confidence that I'd be given much help if this happened to me.

It’s illegal to wear a balaclava in Britain while driving an electric motorcycle?

It's this story, I think: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyrwnnqnw0o

They seem to be attacking non-electric cyclists, for fun. Shades of mods and rockers.

It's not the balaclava part I have an issue with, if you couldn't guess.

Oh. Are you one of those people that think that electric vehicles are stupid and that we should stick to gasoline engines like God intended?

Are you one of those people who think riding an electric motorcycle across our parks and on cycling paths is completely fine and just kids messing about? Or did you just miss that part of my comment?

Dude monitoring if your neighbor has paid their car taxes is some real Stasi shit.

....are you ok? That's an insane comparison to be making in this situation. Unless I don't know, you're from a country that doesn't value social cohesion?

> Or in another anecdote

No, man, anecdotes are more often than not pure misinformation. You live in a country where car theft has absolutely plummeted in the last 30 years. Look it up, I guarantee it. 100 %. I'm almost certain it's the same for bike theft too.