[quote]Alpha F wrote:
Sifu wrote:
In some cases they are not even allowed to admit there is a problem because they can get arrested.
Is that true?! But on what grounds??
[/quote]
In Britain one has to be careful of running afoul of the incitement to hatred laws. If this forum was on a British server there are quite a few people on this board who would have been rounded up by the authorities and put in jail.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
In Britain one has to be careful of running afoul of the incitement to hatred laws. If this forum was on a British server there are quite a few people on this board who would have been rounded up by the authorities and put in jail. [/quote]
I wouldn’t go that far. You would have to get someone to mount legal action against the board first. But yes it is possible that people could be arrested over their comments on this board if it was located in the UK.
I know a couple of posters have questioned the 6 million Jews figure. Quick way to land yourself in prison in Germany. The lack of freedom is astounding.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
What makes you think I have never had a gun pulled on me? Obviously with you the result was to turn you into some sort of conspiracy believing shadow jumping wreck. For me, it shit me up for a few days, then I got on with my life. Had there been a gun behind the bar, me reaching for it would most likely have got me shot.[/quote]
Actually it would explain a lot if you had had a gun pulled on you.
Even though gun control didn’t stop people using a gun against you; and even though there is no evidence gun control works you still support it. That is called being irrational.
However it appears you have a deep seated need to believe the police can protect you. You need to believe that to feel safe. It is a typical psychological response. I’ve seen the same thing with rape victims.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
So again you equate guns with freedom, proving my point.
[/quote]
The ability to defend yourself is the backbone of freedom.
I was arguing with a german bloke the other day and he said the same thing about freedom of speech.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Whereas the US army is controlled by a government that fully represents the will of the people.
[/quote]
Hahaha see you don’t even disagree. The people in the UK have no protection against the army. The people in the US do.
[quote]phaethon wrote:
Sifu wrote:
In Britain one has to be careful of running afoul of the incitement to hatred laws. If this forum was on a British server there are quite a few people on this board who would have been rounded up by the authorities and put in jail.
I wouldn’t go that far. You would have to get someone to mount legal action against the board first. But yes it is possible that people could be arrested over their comments on this board if it was located in the UK.
I know a couple of posters have questioned the 6 million Jews figure. Quick way to land yourself in prison in Germany. The lack of freedom is astounding.[/quote]
I don’t agree with holocaust denial, but it is not good that a government can dictate history and arrest people who disagree with it.
Tony Bliar by the way wanted to make holocaust denial a crime in Britain when he was prime minister. When I watched him say that on prime ministers questions people didn’t voice disapproval of the idea.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu I just decided to respond in kind. Every time you post a wall of text cut and pasted claiming that isolated incidents that make the news exactly because they are rare and shocking somehow back up your argument, I will do exactly the same.[/quote]
Do you have any evidence at all that refutes his position.
His point is that police cannot protect you a lot of the time. In my experience this is true. I have been attacked and threatened a number of times and the police were never their to help me. I can’t carry around a cop in my pocket.
[quote]phaethon wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
So again you equate guns with freedom, proving my point.
The ability to defend yourself is the backbone of freedom.
I was arguing with a german bloke the other day and he said the same thing about freedom of speech.
Cockney Blue wrote:
Whereas the US army is controlled by a government that fully represents the will of the people.
Hahaha see you don’t even disagree. The people in the UK have no protection against the army. The people in the US do.[/quote]
Plus the American army does not have a brutal history of murdering it’s citizens like the British army does.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
A girlfriend is not family. So what was offered up as his familial relationship is he and his girlfriend had a cat together. Which is damn ridiculous.
[/quote]
He was granted the right to stay due to the fact that he had set up home with his long term unmarried partner. This is standard practice for cohabiting relationships of greater than two years. The couple had been together for four years. For you to decide that this doesn’t constitute a family just because it doesn’t fit in with your religious world view is kind of short sighted. The cat was just something that was mentioned in their application process.
You made a clear implication in your post by bringing up violent gang members. This was clearly irrelevant so don’t start backpedaling by posting reams of cut and paste again.
[quote]
Incidentally it is a European Ruling that leads to this. The situation is the same in all European member states but when did you ever let the facts get in the way of a good hysterical story?
The Human Rights Act is UK law that was NuLabour’s fuck up.
The EU is more stupidity that the British government has signed onto, without ever asking the people for permission. In other European countries they are not as stupid as the British and they don’t apply the EU laws in such a bad way as the British do. [/quote]
The European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights are nothing to do with the EU. The European Convention was more than 40 years before the EU came into being. I really should start billing you for the history lessons.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
I don’t agree with holocaust denial, but it is not good that a government can dictate history and arrest people who disagree with it.
[/quote]
I don’t agree with it either. However researchers in Germany have been thrown into prison for questioning the figures.
So if you are a scholar and you believe that only 3 million Jews were killed you can go to prison.
Since when did intellectual questioning become off-limits? It reminds me of how back in the day philosophers could argue about the existence of god only if their conclusion was that he existed. It is simply anti-intellectual.
You don’t have freedom of speech unless you have the freedom to disagree.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu I just decided to respond in kind. Every time you post a wall of text cut and pasted claiming that isolated incidents that make the news exactly because they are rare and shocking somehow back up your argument, I will do exactly the same.
That is not the first incident of a young woman who has filed a police complaint and not been protected from being murdered. The police do not protect everyone who needs protecting because that is an impossible task and sometimes they are just lazy and don’t feel like it. In Britain a woman or man who finds themself in that position is fucked because with no right to own a gun for self defense the police is all there is.
You repeatedly have insisted that total reliance upon the police is the only way to go. Yet when I have come up with multiple cases of the police not protecting people you come up with excuses. You are a weak. [/quote]
A weak what? Come on, don’t leave people in suspense. There are people following this thread.
BTW, please point to any post where I have stated that total reliance on the police is the only way to go. Lies and obfuscation yet again.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Again you are misrepresenting me. I’ve never stated that Britain is much worse than anywhere else. My position is Britain is much worse than many Brits will admit to. In some cases they are not even allowed to admit there is a problem because they can get arrested.
If someone has a problem but they refuse to admit they have a problem there is no way they can ever resolve that problem. The big problem with Britain is the British take their freedoms for granted and place way too much trust in the political class. The British do not have a healthy distrust of government. [/quote]
Back peddling again? You have repeatedly jumped on any thread mentioning Britain and screamed from the rooftops that it is because British people are all sheep and how that would never happen in the US. The majority of your posts recently have been denigrating Britain.
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
Sifu wrote:
The British do not have a healthy distrust of government.
I like the way you put this.
And I agree.
It is a vigilance - their vigilance is lost.
A healthy and sharp awareness which perceives imminent danger.
All sense of self preservation is lost when slumber enters the picture.
[/quote]
Unfotunately though (like most of what Sifu writes) it is just not true
http://blog.taragana.com/n/britons-trust-in-politicians-hits-the-floor-180025/
The survey by Ipsos MORI found that only 13 percent of people believe politicians tell the truth, down from 21 percent last year, while 82 percent think they lie, an increase of nearly 10 percent over last yearâ??s figures.
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
Sifu wrote:
In some cases they are not even allowed to admit there is a problem because they can get arrested.
Is that true?! But on what grounds??
[/quote]
For the most part, no, this is not true. There are certain hate speach laws in the UK (which I don’t agree with) but this is also true of the US (this came up a few pages back actually)
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
A girlfriend is not family. So what was offered up as his familial relationship is he and his girlfriend had a cat together. Which is damn ridiculous.
He was granted the right to stay due to the fact that he had set up home with his long term unmarried partner. This is standard practice for cohabiting relationships of greater than two years. The couple had been together for four years. For you to decide that this doesn’t constitute a family just because it doesn’t fit in with your religious world view is kind of short sighted. The cat was just something that was mentioned in their application process.[/quote]
This has nothing to do with religion. A girlfriend is not family. If they were married and she was his wife then they would be family. But they are not married so she is not family.
[quote]
So this guy was a violent gang member was he? Where did you get that from given that all information about him was blanked out from the court reports.
Maybe I should have worded that better to compensate for your lack of reading comprehension. The right to a home and family life has prevented the British government from deporting dangerous criminals even ones who have committed murder. ie Learco Chindamo.
You made a clear implication in your post by bringing up violent gang members. This was clearly irrelevant so don’t start backpedaling by posting reams of cut and paste again. [/quote]
No I didn’t. Obviously though I should have made allowances for your poor reading comprehension which I admitted. There have any number of cases where dangerous foreigners been allowed to remain in Britain because it would violate their human rights to kick them out.
[quote]
Incidentally it is a European Ruling that leads to this. The situation is the same in all European member states but when did you ever let the facts get in the way of a good hysterical story?
The Human Rights Act is UK law that was NuLabour’s fuck up.
The EU is more stupidity that the British government has signed onto, without ever asking the people for permission. In other European countries they are not as stupid as the British and they don’t apply the EU laws in such a bad way as the British do.
The European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights are nothing to do with the EU. The European Convention was more than 40 years before the EU came into being. I really should start billing you for the history lessons. [/quote]
The human rights act incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law in 1998 by nulabour.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu I just decided to respond in kind. Every time you post a wall of text cut and pasted claiming that isolated incidents that make the news exactly because they are rare and shocking somehow back up your argument, I will do exactly the same.
That is not the first incident of a young woman who has filed a police complaint and not been protected from being murdered. The police do not protect everyone who needs protecting because that is an impossible task and sometimes they are just lazy and don’t feel like it. In Britain a woman or man who finds themself in that position is fucked because with no right to own a gun for self defense the police is all there is.
You repeatedly have insisted that total reliance upon the police is the only way to go. Yet when I have come up with multiple cases of the police not protecting people you come up with excuses. You are a weak.
A weak what? Come on, don’t leave people in suspense. There are people following this thread.
BTW, please point to any post where I have stated that total reliance on the police is the only way to go. Lies and obfuscation yet again.[/quote]
So now you are checking my spelling errors. What are you going to do about it? Pin a note to my Mum on my jacket and send me home perhaps?
While you may not have stated that you want people to be completely dependent upon the police for their protection, it is implied by your support for gun control. Because without guns how can people defend themselves?
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Again you are misrepresenting me. I’ve never stated that Britain is much worse than anywhere else. My position is Britain is much worse than many Brits will admit to. In some cases they are not even allowed to admit there is a problem because they can get arrested.
If someone has a problem but they refuse to admit they have a problem there is no way they can ever resolve that problem. The big problem with Britain is the British take their freedoms for granted and place way too much trust in the political class. The British do not have a healthy distrust of government.
Back peddling again? You have repeatedly jumped on any thread mentioning Britain and screamed from the rooftops that it is because British people are all sheep and how that would never happen in the US. The majority of your posts recently have been denigrating Britain.[/quote]
I am not back pedaling. Britain is heading in a bad direction I am merely pointing that out. It sounds like you are getting frustrated because you are not doing a good job of proving me wrong.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
So again you equate guns with freedom, proving my point.
No that is not what I wrote. It is not a matter of equating anything. It is a matter of historical perspective. You are trying so use the suggestion that we equate guns with freedom as a way to denegrate our understanding of history. You are not going to get away with that here.
What you are suggesting would be just like equating the British army and their guns with tyranny. ie The British government used soldiers armed with guns to impose British tyranny on us. Therefore we equate the British army and it’s guns with tyranny. When really it isn’t the British army or British guns that equals tyranny it is the unrepresentative British government.
[/quote]
I really cannot follow your argument here at all. You have repeatedly stated that the British People do not have liberty because they do not have guns. Are you backtracking on that now?
No you make a statement about the British Army implying that it is somehow different from other armies. I ask you whether the same is not true of the American army. How is that a tangent?
[quote]
The truth probably lies somewhere between the two positions (doesn’t it always.)
The truth is you are a cluless idiot who has never been on the wrong end of a gun wishing the law would have allowed you to have one of your own, arguing with someone who has been in that predicament.
What makes you think I have never had a gun pulled on me? Obviously with you the result was to turn you into some sort of conspiracy believing shadow jumping wreck. For me, it shit me up for a few days, then I got on with my life. Had there been a gun behind the bar, me reaching for it would most likely have got me shot.
What makes me think you have never been in that position is your adamant insistance that gun control laws prevent things like that from happening. My overwhelming impression at that moment was gun control has failed me because this man has a gun and I don’t. After that you will never be able to convince me of the infallibility of gun control. That is why I think you are full of shit.
Had you been in that position you would know fully well that criminals don’t obey laws, that is why we call them criminals. The best way to discourage a criminal from pulling a gun on someone is to allow their would be victims to be armed. When criminals think they could get shot they become risk adverse and less willing to pull guns or knives on people.
All gun control does is guarantee criminals they will have the upper hand if they use a gun to commit a crime. If you were unarmed because of gun control and had someone pull a gun on you, you would understand gun control’s biggest flaw and I wouldn’t have to repeatedly explain it to you. [/quote]
The guy who pulled a gun on me was drunk and mentally unstable. He wasn’t carefully weighing up the odds before he pulled the gun.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Alpha F wrote:
Sifu wrote:
The British do not have a healthy distrust of government.
I like the way you put this.
And I agree.
It is a vigilance - their vigilance is lost.
A healthy and sharp awareness which perceives imminent danger.
All sense of self preservation is lost when slumber enters the picture.
Unfotunately though (like most of what Sifu writes) it is just not true
http://blog.taragana.com/n/britons-trust-in-politicians-hits-the-floor-180025/
The survey by Ipsos MORI found that only 13 percent of people believe politicians tell the truth, down from 21 percent last year, while 82 percent think they lie, an increase of nearly 10 percent over last yearâ??s figures.[/quote]
They think the politicians are liars but they trust them with control of the army and the police. In fact the british people trust these lying politicians so much that they don’t think they should have a means to control the army and police like the Americans do.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Alpha F wrote:
Sifu wrote:
In Britain if you do study islam and it’s history then come to a conclusion that differs from the government’s official view and speak out you can be arrested.
On what grounds, Sifu? I am just curious.
What they use are incitement to hatred and public order laws which they interpret rather broadly. That is how the couple in the B&B got arrested for saying that mohammad was a warlord and the burqa is a form of bondage. Right before the 7/7 bombings the Labour government was going to update the blasphemy laws so that criticising islam would be a crime.
The way the law was rewritten merely quoting passages from the koran that contradicted the government dictat that islam is a religion of peace and saying this is what the koran says form your own opinion would have been illegal.
Islam is not a race, it is an ideology. In a free country ideas should be open to debate and criticism. The fact that Labour was going to reinstate ancient blasphemy laws in order to placate the muslim population shows how mass immigration of muslims into the UK is dragging the society backwards. People should be able to openly discuss that without having to be a nut on a box in speakers corner.
[/quote]
Sorry to let facts get in the way of your arguments yet again but there are no such thing as Blasphemy laws in the UK.
The most recent succesful prosecution under blasphemy law was 1977 and the most recent inprisonment was 1921.
The law was abolished in May 2008.
Several states in the US have Blasphemy laws though.
[quote]
The reason why you are transfixed by this thread is because in America we have the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. That is why you are fascinated because you are seeing real freedom, something which does not exist in Britain.
I can’t go back the four pages, maybe later. This page really delivered.
Freedom is one of my favorite themes, along with free will and self possession.
I think the British have forgotten all three, what is entails to achieve them and sustain them.
States of independence, power ( knowing how to exercise one’s free will is the ultimate exercise in power, in my opinion ) and autonomy are to me, the only real ‘state’ of a people. To be in a state of liberation implies awareness and exercise of these qualities.
Any nation that has resigned these qualities that bring vitality to one’s existence is a Zombie nation ( same goes for individuals - hence, one by one, “we” become neutralized ).
I don’t think that you are saying that Britain is worse than other places but I hear what you are saying. When the core is weak, the house stands on hollow ground.
Britain has been hollowed out. The mass emigration out of Britain is depriving it of many of it’s most motivated indiginous people. They are being replaced with economic migrants from countries that have not had a long tradition of democracy or even any democracy. Much of the EU which Britain is surrendering it’s sovereignty to is countries that have not had much democracy and are riddled with corruption.
It remains to be seen what would bring some vitality into the core of this nation.
The future looks very bleak. [/quote]
Emigration is healthy and natural. People are leaving the country because they are spotting opportunities in emerging markets (or because they are fed up with the weather.) Bear in mind that a lot of the emigrants are retirees moving to southern spain to enjoy the sunshine.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Alpha F wrote:
Sifu wrote:
In some cases they are not even allowed to admit there is a problem because they can get arrested.
Is that true?! But on what grounds??
For the most part, no, this is not true. There are certain hate speach laws in the UK (which I don’t agree with) but this is also true of the US (this came up a few pages back actually)[/quote]
But in the US there are much stricter guidlines with those laws and their scope is much more narrowly defined and limited. For the most part they are aggravating factors when other laws are broken.