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On the other hand, the UK is IIRC the last European country and one of the few globally to not have a formal identity card. Partly due to some dedicated campaigners and partly due to history. The mostly unarmed police are another historical accident to be defended.

The UK certainly does look too readily across the Atlantic for bad ideas. But most of the home grown ones come out of a sort of domestic colonialism and shrinking empire. British police and (para)military forces were quite capable of street violence in Kenya in the 50s & Northern Ireland in the 70s & 80s. The frontier shrinks slowly; Scottish independence comes slowly closer, seemingly with almost no violence. Newspapers dispatch foreign correspondents from London to cover Manchester and Birmingham. People in the coastal towns complain of distant government that's only an hour away by train. It's more inattentional blindness that's the problem than physical distance.

The Met's antiterrorist role has let it take on the hard edge. But there is also a public demand for aggression against those percieved as "bad". People demand that "something must be done" while being vague about what that involves and who might suffer.

If we're talking about ideas crossing over, Malaya and Kenya definitely inspired much of today's US focus on counter-insurgency, and Kitson's book on the subject [1] is still popular reading across the pond. He did talk about the necessity for the law to become occasionally "malleable"...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Low-Intensity-Operations-Subversion-Pe...

> People demand that "something must be done" while being vague about what that involves and who might suffer.

Yeah, excellent point. The British need for someone, anyone, to blame and be punished for everything ever is worthy of several dissertations.

That's just the Daily Mail; and it's not "someone, anyone", it's immigrants.

It's not "just the Daily Mail", and it's not just immigrants. Much as it would be nice to know that such attitudes are an extreme fringe viewpoint, the reality is a lot of people in Britain hold them.

Sure, I was being flippant. That said, I think it's closer to the mark to put this on a minority than to paint it as being some characteristic element of the British psyche, as if there's even such a thing as the British psyche.

> People demand that "something must be done"

Yes, Prime Minister nailed this one:

Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.

Do you break speed limits a lot then?

Uh...

No sir, not me, not these days.

When I was younger, and in the US, and frequently traveling between states I did manage to rack up a significant number of speeding tickets. There were all, to use a UK term, a fair cop: I was speeding and I was caught by an officer of the law patrolling the roads who stopped me and gave me a ticket in person.

Getting them in the mail several days after the fact, without ever knowing you were speeding in the first place is a) confusing, b) not great for immediate enforcement and safety concerns.

But let's be fair, traffic tickets are rarely about safety.

Disagree. The one UK speeding ticket I have was for being over 30mph in a 30 zone. The limit is set to 30 in those zones because of Science™ about braking distance and impact with human bodies that appear suddenly.

If I'm being careless and/or distracted in one of those zones, I want to know about it immediately, not up to 14 days later after I've already plowed through a bunch of schoolchildren.

Speeding tickets on freeways are rarely about safety. One should never speed in a school zone or neighborhood street.

I got a ticket for not making a full stop before turning at a red light (this was in Long Island). The mail came with URL to a video of my infraction. It was fun giving to other people to watch..

Well here they all are: http://www.longislandredlightcameras.com/

In my experience driving in the U.K, most of the major roads (motorways/dual carraigeways)have average speed cameras liberally placed on the road. I don't know what the threshold for a ticket is on the road, but I would guess you're more likely to be noticed doing 75MPH over a 5 mile stretch of road than by a cop in a bush with a speed camera.

The threshold is generally accepted as 10% over, so 77mph on a motorway. However, I only know that from hearsay, so take it with a pinch of salt.

My understanding was that the 10% margin is to defend a fine or prosecution bearing in mind the error bars of the camera and the vehicle speedometer.

Again, no credible source.

Dad, if you read this I didn't mean it, you are very credible.

That's what I'm lead to believe too, although I have no facts to back it up.

I think it's 10% + 2mph? So on a motorway or dual carriageway the limit is really 79.

It used to be generally accepted that you were safe doing 80 mph but with the proliferation of average speed cameras people are a bit more conservative.

10 years ago it wasn't unusual to see people doing 90 - 100 on a motorway - now it's rare.

> So on a motorway or dual carriageway the limit is really 79.

Nope. The limit is really 70, however to take into account possible inaccuracy in your speedometer or the traffic camera, there's some leeway in place. If you start assuming the limit is 79 then if nothing else, you no longer have the benefit of that leeway. How sure are you that both your speedometer and the camera are 100% accurate?

Facts: My friend just gone done for 48 in a 40. They told him the law in that county was 10% + 3 which would have come to 47. Off to a speeding course he goes.

Made up: I thought the 10% came from the rules the speedometer is calibrated against which are +10% -0% i.e. Your speed will be 30mph but you could be doing 27. You will never be doing 31.

I guess the plus number is whatever the council have chosen to enforce. Another person from the country thinks it's 10%+2

edit: Here you go, it's a more nuanced than above. Europe's law. Read Page 8 - http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/...

Displayed (V1 ) and the true speed (V2)

0 ≤ (V1 - V2) ≤ 0.1 V2 + 4 km/h

> In my experience driving in the U.K, most of the major roads (motorways/dual carriageways)have average speed cameras liberally placed on the road.

Most major roads definitely do _not_ have average speed cameras placed liberally along them. The only average speed cameras I can recall encountering are at roadworks sites (a move I 100% support) and along a couple of more scenic A-roads that are particularly enjoyable to drive along at high speed.

There are plans to introduce more average speed cameras on the new managed motorways, but I feel it is incorrect to claim they are liberally placed along most major roads.

I'm in Scotland, and drove from South of Glasgow up as far as Fort William, across to Aviemore, and back down to Edinburgh about 3 weeks ago. Almost all of the A roads (exception of Stirling back to Edinburgh) had average speed cameras

I really don't think that's true - the Highland council apparently doesn't have any fixed cameras let alone average speed ones, with the exception of the A9:

http://www.nscp.co.uk/faq#68

I'd be pretty surprised if there were any average speed cameras along the A86 along Lagganside!

That doesn't match my experience. Perhaps the cameras are very new because I can only remember encountering average speed cameras once or twice ever in the 15 years I've driven in Scotland.

> I feel it is incorrect to claim they are liberally placed along most major roads.

You may feel this. However, it does not match with my driving experience. I would suggest that as (in my experience) variable speed camera zones tend to come-and-go we may just have different experiences due to driving different roads or even driving the same roads on different dates.

If most motorway/a-road network have "average speed cameras liberally placed" along them as you and maccard claim, then presumably us driving different roads on different days would make no difference? Of course we might just have very different definitions of liberally!

I think that we just have different experiences because (to quote myself) > variable speed camera zones tend to come-and-go

I drove from Stoke-on-Trent to South Wales a couple of weeks back and there are still average speed cameras plotted through from the M6 down to Birmingham, the M5 and the M4 - essentially all the way.

I'm all for them if there are roadworks, but the problem is, is that for 90% of it, there is no damned reason for them!

On top of that, it's hard to stay aware of what speed you should be doing when it goes through: 70, 50, 30, 40, 70, 60, 50, 30, 50 (no lies) every few miles. It's a bloody farce.

> I'm all for them if there are roadworks, but the problem is, is that for 90% of it, there is no damned reason for them!

From my observations (which are limited and unsystematic) some of these 'roadworks' are not roadworks but an excuse to put out an average speed check.

> On top of that, it's hard to stay aware of what speed you should be doing when it goes through: 70, 50, 30, 40, 70, 60, 50, 30, 50 (no lies) every few miles. It's a bloody farce.

This could easily be technologically solved. Why can't the highways agency publish these speedlimits in real time (with a sensible API) and allow our GPS devices (or even our cruise control) to tell us the speed limit.

There are already big clear signs that the attentive meatbag driving module is trained to use to adjust its driving speed appropriately.

Which is fine and dandy until you go through 10 speed limits in 5 minutes.

Actually this "attentive meatbag driving module" would rather focus on actually important stuff like other cars and potentially whatever else (debris, people, animals etc) rather than checking the speedo and remembering what the last arbitrary speed limit sign said at all times.

I'm not saying speed limits aren't important. I basically never speed. However, there are things one could better use one's attention on whilst driving.

> in the US it is rather normal for people in authority to kill someone when the target is running away or convicted of a crime

Oh shove off.

Let them believe what they want. Europeans come to the US and are worried they will be carjacked. Seriously.

It seems to be quite a common perception of the US here in the UK. It's a shock seeing police with guns in the US and there's lots of articles like

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-p...

"England/Wales: 55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years" "US: 59 fatal police shootings in the first 24 days of 2015"

I've commented about this before[0] but figured I'd add: it's not the fact that police carry guns, it's the way that they use them. To paraphrase my other comment, Australian police also carry guns and yet the number of people shot dead by police is 0.25/million people/year compared to 1.25/million people/year in the USA.

Perhaps this is driven by the large amount of gun ownership and gun crime in the US, but I suspect it also comes down to cultural differences between police in the two countries.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8890386

How do most US citizens look upon the death penalty, then?

It's split like many social policies.[1] Many Americans are not in favor and nineteen states as well as all of the territories and possessions do not even have a death penalty as part of their statutory regime. Many other states have executed 1 person each since 1976 so they are almost non-executing states.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unite...

> Oh shove off.

Perhaps not "rather normal" but normal enough that Police are rarely prosecuted when it happens and judging by comments here and in other places, people seem divided about whether they even should be.

"Yet in the US it is rather normal for people in authority to kill someone when the target is running away or convicted of a crime."

330 million people; ~1,000 people die by cop shooting per year (~750,000 police officers in the US), a fraction of those are likely running away or similar. So no, it's not normal by any stretch of mathematical imagination.

This is a comparative statement. The US has an order of magnitude more of this activity than other countries (of similar wealth and government type).

When adjusting for population, the ratio of police shootings in America to those in Britain is about 70:1. (55 shootings in 24 years in a country w/ ~57 million people vs. 59 shootings in 24 days (Jan. 2015) in a country with ~318 million people).

So yes, Americans are vastly more tolerant of police violence (to say nothing of stratospheric incarceration levels) than the British - mainly because black people are so disproportionally targeted in this country.

Indeed, among America's more reactionary elements, the unrestrained use-of-force and incarceration policies behind these figures are vehemently defended, as they provide an effective way to enforce a racially-determined class structure, even in the absence of the Jim Crow laws that performed this role until the late 1960s.

However, none of this would be acceptable if the police were equally harsh with everyone. Indiscriminate oppression is much harder sustain in the U.S. In that regard, we're quite different from the UK, where the "if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide" attitude is far more prevalent (it's a fixture in comment sections of British news sites, whereas American sites see it crop up far less frequently).

The fact that mass surveillance doesn't easily square with the more "acceptable" (read: racist) forms of police abuse in America is why Americans are far more unified in their opposition to it.

Thank you for the insightful comment.

I found your thesis about the racist nature of police abuse interesting, especially how you tie it to mass surveillance.

I think you are probably right that this plays a large role in which communities and majorities will support or excuse this behavior.

I don't want to draw it too far, though. We should recognize that Muslim Americans get far more surveillance - more targeted surveillance - for merely being Muslim or having Muslim community respect. It's also true that people can and are fooled into believing and supporting principles, spurred by things like nationalism or political party identity, that actively harm or target their own minority groups.

This caveat I don't think invalidates your misgivings, which I think are good. If mass incarcernation and police abuse were as widely practiced on the wealthy or the majority there would be far more outcry.

That's a good point about Muslim Americans. And the American authorities were savvy enough to know that if they wanted to install a system of mass surveillance, the could limit push-back by selling the effort in racially coded terms that would appeal to the reactionary right. In the ensuing "debate" about surveillance, the government could spin clear violations of the 4th Amendment into "a compromise that balances liberty and security."

A note to foreign readers of HN: In America, "terrorism" is an ethnically coded term. Mass shootings by white people - a depressingly frequent occurrence - are almost always described in other terms. In the rare cases where this dodge becomes impossible to pull off (e.g., the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh), the attack will be described as an act of "domestic" terrorism, thereby preserving the clear ethnic subtext that is carried by the unmodified term.

The notable exception to this rule is made for environmental activists, who are branded "eco-terrorists", or left-leaning people protesting economic injustices (e.g., Occupy Wall Street). In these cases, the deliberate use of a term with a strongly xenophobic component is a thinly veiled accusation of treason, which is a line of attack long-favored by the more belligerent critics of the American left (e.g., Joseph McCarthy, who provides the canonical example).

Another really nice contribution. Well phrased.

In the McVeigh case the FBI pronounced (and media reverberated) that the OK City bombings were a Muslim terrorist attack until it was shown, in fact, to be definitively not the case.

The language used to describe McVeigh's crimes and intentions was then continually watered down.

Yeah, the mask really doesn't have very far to slip.

I remember that, do you remember that OKC was only a couple years after Osama bin Laden tried to bomb the World Trade Center and was during a time which Al Qaeda was attacking US-affiliates overseas on a regular basis?

I didn't. I looked it up and found that it was indeed close to the first WTC bombing (though also close to other bombings like the Unabomber campaign).

Sure, but considering we have something like 29x as many fatal shootings per capita in the US versus the UK, arguably, the police here show relative restraint -- not in the sense that the police shootings are a direct response to civilian shootings, but rather that police shootings are a comparatively small percentage over the overall shootings.

I'm not trying to say any of this is good, but my point is that it's incorrect to believe that it's "relatively common for the police to shoot a fleeing suspect".

Do you mean that the US and UK compare favoratively when measuring "fatal police shootings per generic fatal shooting per capita"?

The only thing you can determine by comparing the rates of non-police shootings between the US and the UK is that effective gun control really is effective, and that the "if guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns" argument is demonstrably bullshit.

I mean, it's true in an absolutely literal sense, in that having a gun makes you an outlaw, but it's wildly misleading in suggesting that the unarmed population will be subjected to a significant population of outlaws that has - somehow - managed to remain heavily armed.

To hear the NRA tell it, the law is simply a suggestion, meaning that people who choose to ignore it can do so with impunity. As places like England and Australia have demonstrated, this is absolutely not the case.

70x is a lot larger than 29x. If anything the real difference is police are more likely to be armed in the US are are given a free pass when they shoot someone. Generally paperwork and a token investigation is the only major issue.

PS: The safety argument falls flat as truck driving is a significantly more dangerious job in the US. And driving is also the most dangerous part of a cops job.