My point is that the police definitelly “can be arsed to enforce certain laws in full” if the right people tell sufficiently highly placed people in the right police force to enforce them strictly.

This is called “selective enforcement” and is definitelly the kind of shit you see in countries were Rule Of Law is weak, like Latin American dictatorships.

The system is designed with overbroad laws with lax enforcement exactly so that even though the actual law as written is draconian, common people don’t normally get hit by it so they don’t feel it is draconian, yet at the same time when the “right” people desire it they can make enforcement go from lax to strict against specific people or groups of people who thus get hit by the draconian elements of the law.

What you wrote is a great example of how those laws are de facto fine for most people most of the time because in their own life they never see the law applied to its full extent and thus many will even form a positive opinion of those laws because as long as the enforcement of those laws is lax and doesn’t include the most draconian provisions, those laws work fine (or don’t even get used, so they’re not seen as a problem)

Meanwhile the laws can be applied in a strict way and to their full extent, so people in positions of power can arbitarilly (and I emphasise “arbitrarilly” because it’s the very opposite of how Justice should be applied) order it to be used with full force against specific targets, which is exactly what Starmer is doing now with some of the crazier anti-Terror legislation in the books.

Selective enforcement turns Law Enforcement into a weapon which can be pointed at the enemies of people with sufficient power.

Proper Justice Systems try very hard to avoid selective enforcement situations because that’s are the very antithesis of “Everybody is treated the same in the eyes of the Law” (i.e.“The Law is blind”) core principle in Justice - everybody is not treated the same in the eyes of the Law when a political figure can tell the Met Commissioner and the CPS to “throw the book at these specific demonstrators” and those demonstrators are then arrested and charged using elements of certain laws which nobody else ever has applied against them.

Maybe, I lived in the UK when that stuff was changed but it’s been a while and I’m probably a bit off on the details.

At the time there was some outrage because it suspended rights which were widely believed to be fundamental over there.

I lived for over a decade in the UK and hence am quite familiar with the British system.

However the standard I compare Britain against is The Netherlands, not the United States.

In European terms the UK is de facto more authoritarian than most, though not in a goose-stepping jackboot way but more in a “laws designed for very broad interpretation” + “they’ll throw the book at you if you’re foreigner, or critical of the system itself (for example, member of a leftwing party, an ecologist or participate in demonstrations against the government)” + “massive but quiet surveillance to detect dissent early”.

Maybe the posh, velvet glove wrapping a steel fist, way of exercising power in the UK is a fucking paradise next to the “gun in your face” way of the US, but it’s not at all a free and fair system compared with most of Europe, especially Northern Europe.

The system will fuck you for being a dissenter, but they’ll do it by taking your shit, your options and possibly your freedom, not by taking your life. Then again, nowhere in Europe they’ll take your life like that - that specific form of abusive/reckless use of force in policing is very rare in Europe and an outright scandal just about everywhere in it when it happens.

What you’re describing is the way that law should be applied, not how it can be applied: it’s down to the discretion of the police officers who stopped you and the Crown Prosecution Service, whether they detain you and prosecute you or not if, for example, you have a small pocket knife when you get stopped and frisked (which in the UK, like in the US, is statistically more likely if you’re black and look poor or if you look middle eastern).

Just like this specific Anti-Terrorism Law which is now being used in a way other than how the politicians claimed it was going to be used, so the anti-knife legislation is written so that it can be abused - all of it relies on humans in positions of power being fair rather than on the laws being written as fair and I can tell you from personal experience (and even more the experience of friends of mine) that the Justice System’s “fairness” (especially at the lower levels) is a lot different if you’re a White British than if you’re a foreigner, Black, Indian or Middle-eastern looking.

Your argument boils down to “Trust the coppers and trust the Courts” which the very post we’re commenting under shows as total bollocks.

PS: That said I totally agree Britain is not at all a Police State, at least not yet. It already is a Surveillance State at about the level of Eastern Germany, and judging by things going on right now as described in the post we’re commenting under it’s going towards becoming a Police State far faster than most of Europe, but even now the abusing of the overbroad legislation put in place in the last decade or two and of policing powers is still localized - though getting broader and broader - rather than generalized.

Exactly.

The laws making carrying a knive a crime have been on the books for at least a decade and as for firearms the UK has long been like most of Europe in that it’s pretty hard to get a license for anything but a single hunting weapon.

I was an immigrant there and left the UK just before Brexit came into effect and never went back (even though I have friends over there) because I was very aware already back then of the Authoritarian shit already in place (for example, already a decade ago there was no right to have a lawyer present when detained and interrogated at an airport, and the crazy overboard anti-Terrorism legislation now being used was already on the books back then).

The tools now being used very overtly by Starmer have been in place for quite a while, alongside a lot of shit that in the old days one would only find in Authoritarian nations, used for surveillance of the civil society and suppression of free-speech and demonstrations.

That crap that has been added in the last couple of years is but a fraction of the insanely anti-democratic shit already in the books back then, since most of that shit was added in two big waves, one after 9/11 and another after the Snowden Revelations (when the government retroactivelly made legal all the unlawful civil society surveillance that had been doing) and in between and since slowly expanded in scope and layered with ever more oppressive shit, mainly targetting demonstrations and civil society groups.

That said, the Authoritarian mindset of the British elites long predates this latest wave: for example back in the 80s Ecological organisations were under surveillance and even being infiltrated by undercover police officers, and don’t get me started about Britain’ long running Press-Censorship system: D-Notices.

Except in the domain of armed police violence, Britain wasn’t better than the US, it was just much more subtle, which makes sense since at least England is very obcessed with managing impressions, especially the upper classes.

The whole think looked from the start like a scam for Israel to get the remaining hostages held by Hamas whilst only releasing a fraction of the hostages they themselves hold (there are tens of thousands of Palestinians in held by Israel on flimsy charges and thousands more held without being charged).

Also the idea that Netanyahu was going to stop playing his “stay out of jail” card was always far-fetched, plus Trump being involved was also a bit “this is all bullshit” flag.

So naturally we’re back on Israel’s timetable for executing their very own Holocaust on Palestinians (remember, polls show that outright murdering all Gazas is supported by almost half of all Israelis, whilst almost 80% support either that or expelling them all to other countries).

The only thing I’m shocked about in this is the BBC using “said” for both sides in this article when usually in the BBC Hamas “claimed” whilst the IDF “said” or “stated”.

Clearly somebody forgot to make sure that Hugo’s work “follows the Party line” before publishing this piece of his.

They’re the Resistance Française of Gaza, except the (new) NAZIs occupying their land have been there for 7 decades instead of a mere half a decade (plus this time around Britain and the US are part of the Axis alongside the NAZIs), hence their actions are more desperate.

Remembers those WWII films were the Resistance Française, when they caught them dished deadly justice to filthy French Colaborationists that had helped the evil NAZIs either by snitching others to them or even by acting as an auxiliary militia for the occupying NAZI forces? Remember cheering for the Resistance and feeling righteous justice from them dealing with the people who were so evil that they betrayed their own neighbours and even families to the NAZIs?

Morally this is exactly the same situation.

bunch of religious extremists to murder people in the streets

The IDF was involved???

Funny that when reading “covid-19 prevention” you forgot anti-maskers - which is actually a very visible “I win” statement - but instead went for not being vaccinated, which is not at all a visible thing hence nowhere as much a “I win” statement.

I did nazi that coming!

As we often get told, these are the Israeli “authorities” so of course it’s a “fee”.

It’s only a “ransom” when it’s charged by an “organization”, which what the Palestinians have.

Remember boys and girls, according to the Western Press these people were “detained” by Israel and were “prisioners”, not at all “kidnapped” in an act of piracy in the high seas and held “hostage” - only Palestinian organisations kidnap people and keep them as hostages, whilst Israeli ones only ever do “detentions” and “emprisionment”.

Also and as somebody else pointed out, if makes sense for him to try and scare European nations so that they refrain from sending as many weapons and ammo to Ukraine because of thinking they might need those to defend themselves from Russia.

So a sabble-rattling discourse and even the recent air-space intrusions by Russian military planes are cheap ways of trying to get the strategical gain of Ukraine receiving fewer weapons from the rest of Europe and even if those things fail he loses nothing from doing them (at this point, he’s hardly going to get in a worst situation than he already put himself in).

It makes absolute sense to pursue a strategy where at best you gain something and at worst you lose nothing.

Now, if the response to the Russian intrusion in European airspace had been for European nations to set up and enforce a no fly for Russia inside Ukraine, that would’ve definitelly been a loss for him (at the very least the rest of Europe would protect Western Ukraine from Russian drones and air assets, freeing Ukranian assets to be used elsewhere), but the leaderships of European nations have yet to show a willingness or capability to act decisivelly like that as a group: even the help with weapons and ammo took ages to get going properly, was riddled with “red lines” (like “no tanks”, then “no jets”, then “no long range cruise missiles” and who could forget the whole “can’t be used against Russian territory” artificial limitation) and there was a lot of feet-dragging, especially from Germany) so actual direct intervention even if only with air assets doesn’t seem likely as response to “mere” Russian air space intrusions and unconventional warfare that can be denied (cyber attacks, election interference, support for extreme political forces, cutting of undersea cables and so on).

Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.

It is especially delicious how Russia’s greatest advantage in this war - their size relative to Ukraine, hence significantly higher manpower and resources than Ukraine, as well as territorial depth that let them have important military facilities beyond the range of Ukraine, has been turned by Ukraine into one of Russia’s worst strategical weaknesses.

Anywhere in Ukraine can be hit by Russia, even with shitty shit drones like Shaheed, so Ukranians adapted, plus comparativelly to Russia their’s is a smaller country hence with fewer sites of strategical value, which means having enough AA to take down most of Russia’s missiles and long-range drones is actually possible, which is why Russia’s ever larger mass attacks of late have had so much less effect than smaller attacks did at the start of the Invasion.

Meanwhile Russia’s strategically important infrastructure is all over a large country, so they would have to deploy AA to defend every individual site and they don’t have enough of the kind of AA that can successfully deal with low-flying drones (it doesn’t matter how good their coverage with longer range systems like the S-500 is when that weapon system is not suitable to deal with Cessna-152s converted into drones flying at low altitude plus each missile costs many times more than each of those drones).

In this, Ukraine’s strategy is masterful, IMHO.

… and any who say otherwise are anti-semites.

Did Alfred Nobel leave explicit instructions in his will that the Foundation he created could create more Nobel prizes?

Because ultimatelly, it boils down to whether they were following his will or not.

It’s only “real” if your definition of “Real NOBEL Prize” doesn’t include NOBEL Prizes being set up by somebody called Alfred Nobel, which is kinda like calling a Theatre Play done by somebody working at the Shakespear Globe a “Shakespear Play”.

You will noticed that modern plays in Shakespear style are called Shakespearian Plays, not Shakespear Plays.

All this neatly illustrates how the Theatre World is actually more genuine than the Economics World.

Ah, the good old “Swedish Central Bank Prize For Economics In Honor Of Alfred Nobel”, for which they use the shortname “Nobel Prize For Economics”.

The whole thing neatly reflects the honesty of the profession.