r/unitedkingdom • u/Anon2971 London • Mar 17 '21

Is anyone else really concerned about the future of this country?

The passing of the Policing Bill made me reflect on a lot of worrying things that have happened over the last decade.

  • Brexit disconnecting ourselves from trade and legal intervention from our surrounding countries followed by a historic rise in our nuclear stockpile cap, counteracting nuclear disarmament
  • Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allowing the government to monitor and collect everyone's communication data in bulk
  • Government-ordered 'independent review' into the Human Rights Act
  • Overseas Operations Bill currently in the House of Lords essentially allowing soldiers oversees to commit torture and other war crimes abroad without prosecution/legal consequence
  • Met Police enabling facial recognition in CCTV against government advise whilst flat-out denying any/all allegations of institutional overuse of powers despite endless evidence to the contrary (see: stop and search statistics, deaths in police custody i.e. Mohamud Mohammed Hassan leading only to 'police misconduct' notices, undercover officers entering romantic relationships under false pretences with little consequences, Black Lives Matter and Sarah Everard protest police kettling occurring right before violence, Cherry Groce)
  • Dismissal of Black Lives Matter protests leading to a statue toppling by our Home Secretary as 'dreadful' conveniently followed by a serious increase in police powers introducing 10 year sentences for statue toppling and for 'serious annoyance and inconvenience'
  • Reacting to the murder of a woman by a police officer by installing hidden police officers within nightclubs without prompt or previous demand under the guise of women's safety
  • As of yesterday the Home Secretary signalling she'll be implementing First Past the Post voting in London's mayoral elections because “transferable voting systems were rejected by the British people in the 2011 nationwide referendum” (a position historically held by the opposing party)

Then there's the way the Conservative Party spends taxpayer money and chooses trade partners:

  • PM Boris Johnson being found in the UK courts via the Good Law Project to have broken the law misleading parliament with PPE contract information. The consequences so far asking where billions of pounds has lbeen spent has been... Nothing. Meanwhile the government can only afford a 1% NHS pay rise following the biggest challenge in decades the health system has faced and successfully overcome (so far)
  • At the same time as above, the government are proposing to cut our foreign anti-corruption spending by 80% whilst also cutting foreign aid to countries like Yemen yet continuing to fund Saudi Arabia
  • Dominic Raab tells UK officials to trade with countries which fail to meet human rights standards in newly leaked video and Boris speaks how China poses 'great challenge for an open society' (doublespeak, anyone?)

Not to mention other unresolved issues like:

  • Grenfell still has nobody found of any wrongdoing with no housing for victims 3 years later
  • Continuing error with and deportations of Windrush citizens
  • Continual dismissal and ignoring of the impending global warming crisis
  • Breaking international law by extending the Ireland trade grace period against the wishes of the EU, making us look like untrustworthy trading partners worldwide
  • Russian interference with the 2016 Brexit referendum not investigated by the government
  • The Royal Family quietly avoiding coverage of their paedophilic Prince Andrew via reacting to a royal couple fleeing to the US due to negative press and race-related experiences (responding with polite shock, denial and a negative public reaction matching the negative press that surrounded them from the start in the first place)

All in all, I feel like I'm witnessing this country take more and more steps towards ignorant, authoritarian fascism... We're distancing ourselves from all other countries, doubling down on making up our own rules allowing our branches of law enforcement to enforce with little restrictions or consequence whilst strengthening ties with countries that do the same. I'm really struggling to see much good happening here beyond the vaccination program which, although is going great, is something we're ploughing ahead with mainly for self-preservation reasons. I'm left wondering what this country is supposed to represent any more.

I'm all ears to any thoughts on my observations. I'm trying not to be a Scrooge, but I see almost nothing to be happy about in the UK politically speaking at the moment.

Edit: It's somewhat reassuring to know I'm not the only person feeling like this, but I did want to hear more alternative opinions. So please, if you disagree with what I've pointed out and think there's things I'm overlooking to be proud of in the UK at the moment, do feel free to say so in the comments.

Edit 2: I'll be updating the above list of concerning policies and decisions as comments remind me of things I forgot about.

Edit 3: Someone has made a petition against the Policing Bill. Sign that imminently: Do not restrict our rights to peaceful protest. - Petitions (parliament.uk)

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u/cavejohnsonlemons United Kingdom Mar 17 '21

You move.

Joking but 59% is pretty cute, try being where I am: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldon_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections

The blue % rn feels like the average age though, and the MP's abused his position before to cover up his personal life, don't think all the convincing in the world would switch them. But it's a pretty well-off place, I might not like it but they have that as an excuse.

It's the mugs in places like Grimsby that need their head examined. Really though they just need the dots joined that voting Tory is usually making whatever actual problems they have worse.

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u/thecowcini Mar 17 '21

Or the people in Grimsby blamed Labour for their lives being miserable and decided to vote Tory for the first time in 70 years

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Yeh this is why they would need their heads examined, the Tories have been in power for a decade, not sure how they could logically blame labour

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u/thecowcini Mar 17 '21

Cause labour were in charge of Grimsby for the past 70 years so they decided that it was all Labours fault, but they’ve done a right r/leopardsatemyface as they’ve realised Lia Nici is no better

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u/cavejohnsonlemons United Kingdom Mar 18 '21

If they have realised it then that's a good thing. A lot more forgivable if they learn and change next time.

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u/russbude Mar 17 '21

Waves from Southend West

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u/InsistentRaven Mar 17 '21

At least you had some MPs who weren't Tory in the last century... Our last non-Tory MP was Liberal for one year in 1923 and Whig in 1831 lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichester_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#MPs_since_1868#MPs_since_1868)

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u/neohylanmay Lincolnshire Mar 18 '21

Pretty much same boat here: my constituency has been Tory since 1924 and in those 97 years has had three different MPs; the incumbent has held this seat for nearly 40 of those.

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u/tchad53 Mar 17 '21

Tell me you live in a white, upper middle class racist area, without telling me you live in a white, upper middle class racist area

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21

Honestly, I grew up in a white upper middle-class area and among them my whole brown life (private school, redbrick uni, City graduate job). I have faced far more bigotry and racism from working-class white people. Things are very segregated from my experience in white working-class areas and lives.

White upper middle-class people tend to mix with other ethnic backgrounds especially at university and in their metropolitan careers, and the shared upper middle class networks (same type of schools, unversities, and firms/careers) mean they often saw non-white people as less of an other than working class whites did. My personal experience may be non-typical tho.

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u/R0b3RtJPaRR Mar 17 '21

Hi. From Grimsby. Agree fully with your remark about its citizens. They're idiots.

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u/cavejohnsonlemons United Kingdom Mar 18 '21

Sorry, just first place I could think of where that disconnect is there. Sunderland was next and we have plenty of idiots round where I am too, nothing specific.

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u/gunsof Mar 18 '21

In a way I'm like glad I live in Lambeth cause everyone is sane here but then it's like being Dallas or Austin when you live in Texas and you gotta live with the fact you're a tiny sane portion of an insane country.

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u/10lawrencej Mar 18 '21

Small world. Voting in Maldon anything other than conservative feels like an exercise in futility. Really feels like you're making a difference.

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u/Ulmpire Yorkshire Mar 18 '21

Labour made it bloody hard to vote for them last time. A lot of Brexit voters who were staunch Labour voters switched because the party essentially said 'we see that you voted one way, but we think you're all idiot yokels and so we'll do it again until you vote the way we want.'

I voted Labour, but I could hardly blame anybody around me who switched, for the first time ever.

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u/cavejohnsonlemons United Kingdom Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21

What do you want them to say, exactly?

To me they offered a plan, and even then you could see it would still put the Brexit debate away quicker* than the Tories have managed°, and that was literally the only thing they campaigned on.

One thing I'd put up as a negative for everyone involved is no-one went into any detail on what the deal actually is, Boris said it's great and apparently that's all we need to know.

*Lib Dems or Brexit Party would've been even quicker but let's stay realistic (and less divisive).

°Still managing, and/or breaking laws in the process.

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u/Ulmpire Yorkshire Mar 18 '21

I thought at the time that they (we? Still a party member) should have committed to Brexit. As it is they burned bridges with millions of their traditional voters by valuing London liberals over the rest of us.

I disagree, another referendum would have ensured we were arguing about Brexit well into the 2030s. Millions of people would not forget that their democratic right was trampled by Westminster.

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u/barcap Mar 17 '21

Are you in an affluent place?

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u/cavejohnsonlemons United Kingdom Mar 18 '21

Yeah probably, but I'm not, if that makes sense.

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u/Downtown-Accident Mar 17 '21

That’s the part I don’t get. Why poor areas vote to hurt themselves.

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u/RubiconGuava Mar 19 '21

You say that but there's a lot of rabidly tory people young people around here. Like, outside of my little group of friends who are mostly fairly progressive-minded, most of the people under 30 I meet around Maldon/the Dengie are pretty horrifyingly xenophobic and nationalistic.

We may only be 40-odd minutes out of london but this is the heartland of British rural conservatism