UK government quietly rewrites hacking laws to give GCHQ immunity

The rUK has swung decisively to the right (e.g. UKIP 12%), the Conservatives have a majority on their own without the moderating influence of the Lib Dems - which is fine as we are a democracy but the people of Scotland clearly have wildly different views (SNP 50%, UKIP 1.6%).

Then of course there is the prospect of BoJo as PM - which I think would pretty much guarantee a rapid dissolution of the UK.

>He is not advocating for an overbearing state as a social model in and of itself.

What makes you so sure?

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/27/twitter-joke-tria...

WTF? This statement doesn't have a modicum of sense in it. Seeking to kidnap or murder in the context of terrorism[1] is an inchoate offence[0] that is definitely against the law in UK.

I am at total loss why would you defend Cameron on that. I am not from UK and I've been able to find relevant statutes and laws in 5 minutes. I am really interested, can you elaborate?

Relevant precedent[1]:

R v Barot [2008] 1 Cr. App. R. (S.) 31. Conspiracy to murder. Appellant trained as a terrorist and proposed terrorist attacks in America and Britain. One attack contemplated in Britain was to fill three limousines with gas cylinders and explosives and detonate them in an underground car park with the expectation of causing hundreds of casualties. Guilty plea. A life sentence with a minimum term of 40 years should, save in quite exceptional circumstances, represent the maximum for a terrorist who set out to achieve mass murder but caused no physical harm. Minimum term reduced to 30 years.

[0]http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/inchoate_offences/#a01 [1] http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/solicit...

These are crimes, and therefore they have broken the law. Conspiring or inciting others to commit crimes is illegal in the UK.

(In particular, I think this is about using intercept material to target people without letting it anywhere near a court.)

A less tolerant government has never historically lead to a more tolerant populace other than in the very short term.

The biggest problem we face in Western society is the proliferation of extremist conservative agendas in the halls of power. The only way to solve all the issues we face with extremism whether it be in the guise of Western conservatism, Islamism, Neo-Liberalism or anything other toxic ideology is to focus on tolerance and education. Western foreign policy (colonialism) over the past centuries has created the situation we find ourselves in. When you create the conditions for cancer to prosper then you have to deal with the consequences. Instead of altering our policies we double up on them and then wonder why people hate us. We create conditions where people have nothing to lose (for example Iraq/Syria) and their only options are to fall back into impulsive/conformist organizational structures because that gives them some sort of security and purpose. Too many people have been ostracized by the contemporary world and we do nothing to help them, instead our political policy is to kick them while they are down.

In my mind what David Cameron represents is as toxic as what ISIS represent however since it affects me much more in my daily life I would say it is a far greater danger to my way of life than ISIS will ever be.

But most of the marketing is already done and widely perceived, even if it doesn't match reality. The expectation of many voters is that you vote left for more government or right for less. It's unfortunate that the reality is you'll get more government either way, and it'll just be used for different things.

The situation is pretty similar in countries with real multi-party systems, with big parties courting the center.

There are exceptions in exceptional circumstances (eg. Syriza).

It was also the last peak for the left. The trend since then has an acceleration rightwards.

Don't forget the UK came close to removing a democratically elected prime minister in a right-wing coup - not just once, but twice.

The last genuinely left-wing prime minister resigned not long after the second alleged plot - and by a divinely-ordained coincidence his replacement was so utterly useless the electorate found themselves voting for the kind of right wing government the plotters had been working towards.

Bernie Sanders and Warren are the closet thing we have to a "left" in the US. They aren't presidents have little more than a bully pulpit.

Not a perfect solution by far, but this is not a perfect World and until you get a society in which people do not lock doors as no need etc, is when security becomes oppression.

That's not how proportional systems work. The parties choose themselves what alternative they want to negotiate. You will often find "natural" coalition partners shying away from each other to look towards the centre because the risk of indulging fringe parties in a coalition is that you get eaten alive at the next election as your more centrist voters decide "anything but" next time to prevent the same next time.

While Tory/UKIP might have happened, first of all we don't know how proportional systems would have altered who people would have voted for, secondly a Tory/UKIP coalition would require the right wing of the Tory party to be firmly in control, and little indicates they are, and secondly would require the Tory party to be willing to risk exactly that kind of implosion. A Tory/Labour coalition would also be very much possible, as would a minority government with a supply agreement with one or more parties (e.g. you'd find Labour and SNP and pretty much everyone else would be willing to stretch far to appease a Tory minority government to avoid a coalition that included UKIP)

> and frankly I am quite happy to accept the downsides of FPTP if it keeps UKIP out of government.

I'm tempted to say the same, but as horrendous as such a government might be, it would still be more representative of the will of the people. It would also have the bonus of tearing the Tory party to shreds next election.

Following your assumption, though:

2. The Tories would have to choose coalition with UKIP (and vice versa).

3. Even if they managed to do that, they would not strictly have a majority at 49.5%. Tories currently have 50.9% of MPs alone.

So a much less stable government that would threaten to split off and destroy the Tory left. It's not even likely that Cameron or Johnson could agree to those terms.

But, if they were able to agree, I'd far rather have that government than the one we have now.

I am concerned by this attitude in general. Although I don't agree a lick with UKIP, they should have fair representation.

What you are suggesting is literally authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism I'd personally rather have a democratic UKIP government than that.

That seems unlikely.

For one thing, as a matter of fact the Conservatives and UKIP did not achieve a majority of the popular vote between them at the general election. Under a fully proportional system, the result on the day would not have given them a working majority to form a government alone. Some sort of minority Conservative government would have been a more likely outcome.

For another thing, you're assuming that people would have voted the same way under another system, which is far from a safe assumption. This was probably the most negative campaign we've had in generations, and a lot of the arguments in the final weeks were about how to vote tactically to block one outcome or another. Knowing that every vote counted could easily have significantly changed voting patterns.

frankly I am quite happy to accept the downsides of FPTP if it keeps UKIP out of government.

That is a very dangerous, short-termist position.

Whether you like it or not, millions of people did vote for UKIP at the election, as is their right in a party-based representative democratic system. Those people have effectively been disenfranchised.

For that matter, so have millions who supported the Lib Dems or the Greens. Along with UKIP, these three parties between them attracted popular support on a similar scale to Labour and the Conservatives (roughly 24%, against 30% for Labour and 37% for the Conservatives) yet have only 10 seats between them in Parliament compared to Labour's 232 and the Conservatives' 331.

National parties are also heavily over-represented now. The DUP (0.6% of the popular vote) has the same 8 MPs as the Lib Dems (7.9%). The SNP (4.7%) has 56 MPs, while UKIP (12.6%) has only a single MP.

There are pros and cons to having a "clear winner" and first past the post does provide that, but the idea that the system has generated a government that is anything close to representing what the people as a whole want this time is even less credible than it was five years ago.

The problem with extrapolating how the result of a proportional vote would have gone from the results of a first past the post election is that people would vote differently. e.g. someone might vote tactically for lib-dem to get a conservative out under first past the post whereas they might vote labour under proportional representation.

Edit: I'm in favour of proportional representation.

FPTP is demonstrably unfair but as I said turkeys voting for Christmas.

It is very difficult in the British system to clearly determine what is, while theoretically a personal prerogative of the monarch, practically impossible from those personal prerogatives that have simply not been exercised recently, perhaps in part because the possibility of them being invoked constrains the government to work with the monarch in a way which will not result in them being used.

Can not or does not?

If not, how would democracy make them any less willing to wage wars?