UK Government Wants To Kill Net Neutrality In EU 287
Glyn Moody writes "Not content with snooping on all Internet activity, the UK government now wants to introduce changes to the contentious EU Telecoms Package, which will kill net neutrality in the EU: 'Amendments to the Telecoms Package circulated in Brussels by the UK government, seek to cross out users' rights to access and distribute Internet content and services. And they want to replace it with a "principle" that users can be told not only the conditions for access, but also the conditions for the use of applications and services. The amendments, if carried, would reverse the principle of end-to-end connectivity which has underpinned not only the Internet, but also European telecommunications policy, to date.' To add to the irony, an accompanying text cuts and pastes from Wikipedia, without attribution."
thank you sir, may I have another (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:thank you sir, may I have another (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians are corrupt. There is value(read: profit) in artificial scarcity. By reducing the consumer's expectations you can get them to pay more for the same service. Profit is good for the economy(in theory).
Soon, you'll pick your ISP or your rate plan based on the sites you want to see. The content producers and ISP's will share the revenue from the increased revenue. Sadly, I really think a lot of consumers will pony up the cash.
Regardless of what the laws say, ISP's can choose to allow universal access. If this new business model fails, they may eventually give up.
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"And if you order in the next 30 minutes, you can get 100 additional websites for only $19.99/mo more"
Sadly, this is the endgame they're envisioning
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Well, it kinda snuck up on them. The govt. never saw this coming really.....if they had, I'm sure things would have been planned out to be MUCH more restrictive at the onset.
Re:thank you sir, may I have another (Score:4, Insightful)
In bullshit theory, sure. In real economic theory, however, this setup is horribly inefficient, as it significantly reduces the consumer surplus. Of course, the government can't tax something quite so intangible as such a benefit to society...
Re:thank you sir, may I have another (Score:5, Insightful)
Supply siders and businessmen like to ignore things like consumer surplus- it doesn't fit into their worldview (the worldview where they deserve everything).
Re:thank you sir, may I have another (Score:4, Informative)
Politicians are corrupt. There is value(read: profit) in artificial scarcity. By reducing the consumer's expectations you can get them to pay more for the same service. Profit is good for the economy(in theory).
Yes, yes, yes, NO! Profit from artificial scarcity causes a deadweight loss [wikipedia.org], and is bad for any other industry as well as consumers and therefore the government.
I don't know why my government is doing this, as it sounds like the exact opposite of the changes Britain normally proposes, but I don't understand any of the UK government policies. I would say roll on the general election, but I'm not convinced that Cameron's Tory's will be much better.
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Dare I mention the first-past-the-post system? Here one only actually has a vote if you live in a Tory-Labour marginal. The Lib-Dems will never get enough votes to form even the coalition that might introduce real democracy.
That won't stop me voting Lib-Dem. I think Clegg/Cable are the guys I want running the country now. I just know it'll never happen.
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The U.S. seems to be going the right way on this one for a change. There's a strong push for net neutrality legislation, and our current administration has made it a platform issue.
Granted we have media lobbyists and their pet politicians, but you can be reasonably sure that no anti-net neutrality legislature is going to pass in the next four years.
It's kind of a moot point over here in any case. This country is gearing up for total economic collapse (something I find both frightening and welcome at the sa
Re:thank you sir, may I have another (Score:4, Funny)
In Australia every packet is gold plated and cost $150 per gig.
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UK Government Wants To Kill Net Neutrality In EU
Hannibal King: "Fuck me. Fuck me sideways."
I've just about written off the UK. Hate to say it, but they're going down a dark road. Now, as an American, I can honestly say that my country's various governments are making every effort to go travel that same road.
I'm bitterly disappointed in both of them.
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Shouldn't you go to the UK before writing it off, rather than doing so based on a "UK is a policestate" meme on slashdot?
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My parents and brother live in the UK and all that "police state" stuff was just in your head, mate.
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My parents and brother live in the UK and all that "police state" stuff was just in your head, mate.
I guess you'd have said the same to a Jew in Germany in 1932.
A few days ago I was reading a NASA astronaut's story about his visit to East Germany in the 80s before the Berlin Wall came down; I didn't understand why it seemed so familiar until I realised he was pretty much describing my last visit to the UK.
But yeah, total surveillance, ID cards, a DNA database and total control over Internet access are nothing to do with a police state; just go back to sleep and it will all be OK in the morning...
The funny
Re:thank you sir, may I have another (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm, what? The police state in Germany happened after the Nazis had absolute power, i.e. after the Enabling Act. The slippery state argument, i.e. that introducing ID cards - which the government have been talking about for ages but never actually managed to implement - will somehow gradually lead to a totalitarian state is silly paranoia. Germany was rather libertarian before the Nazis took over, which of course is why they were able to take over. If anything the Weimar Rebublic should have been a bit more careful keeping track of wannabe totalitarians.
And the idea that the BNP is on a course to win an election is silly too. If they had seats in parliament and their share of the vote was increasing I'd be concerned. Actually they have no seats and even if they won one they would most likely not be able to win more. Do you really think if a Nazi like party gains power they won't just implement whatever leagal measures they feel necessary?
Maybe you've been smoking too much pot and it's made you paranoid. Best not do that 'across the Atlantic' though, I hear they have much more draconian punishments for drug users. I believe the phrase is "pound me in the ass prison".
Another brick (Score:5, Insightful)
Just another brick in their wall they're building to further close them off from the rest of reality.
I've had this thought for a while now, but now's an appropriate time to say it: Will there be a day when a British tourist visits America and remarks that our cameras must be hidden really well, because they can't see them at all!
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No; they won't be that well hidden.
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Is this already a phobia?
Re:Another brick (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't have anything to hide
Wrong!
Everyone has something to hide from someone.
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Except boring people with blogs.
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Wow, people see you in crowed areas. Oh my god, humans (including some in the government), seeing you in public places. Your privacy has been violated, go hide and whine on Slashdot.
In the real world what we do affects other people more than it does on the internet; therefore behaviour in the real world must be regulated more than on the internet. You can't kill someone, or rape someone over your internet connection, but you can kill or rape someone in the real world, so the double standard is entirely ju
Re:Another brick (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to troll. Hide and whine on Slashdot? You act as if the desire for privacy is unreasonable. Far from it. Privacy and Anonymity are basic human rights. The founder fathers in the U.S had exactly that in mind when they created the 4th amendment.
Guess why?
Governments abuse their people. Always and inevitably. It's just human nature. You mention "including some in the government". Well that is exactly who we are worried about. You think I give a fuck about the pizza dude in a public place? Of course not. I care about the state official hundreds of miles away that looks at databases to predict my movement patterns. When he uses programs to analyze my relationships with other people and corporations. When there is a rating to determine whether I am a "subversive" or a threat to a current political regime. It's not like that is a paranoid or unreasonable position right? It's not like situations like this have not happened in various governments right? Hoover did not have an agenda against MLK right?
You do have a point though. If I a am good little productive unit, don't rock the boat, vote for the right party, and know my place, it's a good chance that I won't have any problems with the people that are in government.
Of course, if I am a political activist and make public statements that go against those in power I just might have to worry. If I am in the right place and right time without the required skin color, eye color, and religious affiliations, I could be in even bigger trouble.
That's the point. People in government should be denied the ability to watch and collect data on citizens. It's just not a good idea and lends itself inevitably towards abuse.
That's a logical fallacy. Just because you don't understand how "things" work on the Internet and you cannot see the people causing those affects, does not mean that the Internet has less of an effect. Both the real world and the Internet needs to be regulated within reason.
Now that's just factually incorrect. One of the greatest concerns about devices connected on the Internet is that it can be abused and have fatal affects in the world. What about municipal utilities? Water supplies? Manipulating police agencies to get SWAT called out to a house fraudulently and they kill a 90 year old grandmother? Aside from fatal situations, there is plenty of damage that can occur to people, corporations, and countries from simply manipulating the Internet.
Double standards are never justified. Not ever. A double standard means that we are not being treated equal. You are trying to make the point that they are fundamentally different and therefore different rules and considerations apply. That's a reasonable argument, but incorrect. We must approach both the Internet and the Real World with the same concerns for privacy and anonymity.
We should have complete privacy both on the Internet and in the real world. Especially from the government. Now I mean privacy by default as
Re: Another brick (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been a political activist (hell, I've been intimidated by the government for my political activities), and I can tell you first hand that anonymity is no friend to activists. The thing that gives you power in political activism is your publicity, the same thing that attracts the government's attention. Publicity is the opposite of privacy. You can't change the world without standing up and putting yourself on the line for what you believe in.
We can't set a double standard for government because it's impossible. The government will always have the same access to a you a random stranger does because the government is made up of people. On the topic of double standards, it is perfectly reasonable to hold a double standards for different types of behaviours, especially when one type of behaviour presents a greater risk to others than another type of behaviour. For example, walking verses driving drunk; driving drunk is a great way to kill someone else, while walking drunk will hurt no one but you (so a double standard is justified). Claiming there is no double standard that can ever be justified means you don't understand the use of the term in context. The term "double standard" can also mean "where the analogy fails", or "why the principles you're applying there don't work here".
Some people love the anonymity they have in crows that they find in places like New York, London, and lose in the suburbs or in rural areas. In some ways the best privacy you can have in the real world is to be one among millions, unnoticeable to anyone.
You can only commit property crimes online (and there are many measures in place to prevent you doing even that), you can't rape or murder over the internet, and those crimes are much worse than any property crime.
Re: Another brick (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really true. On the one hand, the government has the resources to wiretap your phone, for example, in a way that a random stranger cannot. On the other hand the government is constrained by various laws that restrict the information they can gather and use. For example in Europe at least data protection legislation restricts sharing of information between government departments, so even if the government as a whole knows several things about you it is unable to correlate them to reach conclusions. You can tell this data protection legislation is having a real effect because the British government wants to give itself the power to override the legislation.
Nothing to hide? Give me a disk image? (Score:2)
Honestly? I just don't have anything to hide.
Okay. Could you please run netcat -l -p 1234 < /dev/hda and post your IP address?
Left wing credentials (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous. They don't like the internet as it is as it allows people to bypass the laws they set up to police it. They don't want to stop it being used, but they want to control what people use if for, and to have something in place that is sufficiently vague that they can use for any purpose.
The worst thing is that the general population is that ignorant to what the government is doing that as long as this is spun as a measure to counter terrorism, or catching paedophiles, there will be no objection. After all, how could any sane person object to such a thing.
We currently have a government that is ruled by conceit. They know what is best for people and if we ignore what they tell us to do then its because we haven't understood rather than us having understood and rejected the advice. Their next resort is to legislate to force us to do what they want us to do, for our own good of course. HMG has forgotten that they are there to serve the people, rather than the other way around.
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This is the labour party exercising its right wing credentials.
Fixed that for you.
Re:Left wing credentials (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the labour party exercising its turd [wikipedia.org] wing credentials.
What exactly is this left-and-right BS you people keep saying? All I see is a bunch of politicians disconnected from the real world, and from the people who vote on them. Does it really matter what "side" they're on if they act stupid?
WHOOOSH (Score:2)
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This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous.
http://www.talkswindon.org/politics/speedcameras/Brown%20is%20stalin.jpg [talkswindon.org]
I apologize for the squished aspect ratio on the photo.
I first saw that photo on Top Gear, when Clarkson was comparing Brown and Stalin: that he is restricting movement by raising fuel tax, and that ID cards and curfews are to follow.
I'm an American, and the British government has made me not want to live in the U.K., which I would otherwise like to do someday.
Re:Left wing credentials (Score:4, Insightful)
As a former resident of New Hampshire, I highly recommend it as a place to live if you're sick of over-reaching government. The west side of the state is left-leaning, the east side of the state is right-leaning, but the whole state has a very libertarian attitude.
I'm in California now (I took a job out here) and I can't stand it because of how willing the residents of this state are to let government of all levels control their lives. It's given me a very intense appreciation of what I had.
People (especially Europeans) forget how large and diverse the U.S. is. California and New Hampshire have twice as much distance between them than London and Moscow, and the two states have even less in common with each other than France and Belgium, two other "states" that also share most of a language.
for the most part (Score:2)
They do retain more of that old New-England-puritan hangup about alcohol, on which California's a bit more liberal. You can only buy liquor at state-run liquor stores in NH, and even licenses for on-premises consumption of beer and wine have more regulations---in California it's not uncommon to find coffee shops selling alcohol in the evenings, because the license is easy to get and cheap; good luck finding that in NH.
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Re:Left wing credentials (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous.
And right-wing politicians don't?
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From link:
In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarianism is necessarily "right wing", with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today's Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground.
That's some good reading there Lou.
I'd say that socialism is inherently more authoritarian than right-wing economics, not least because socialism in its extreme forms removes an individuals economic liberties as well as the political ones.
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Incidentally, this point is why there's a distinction between Socialism, Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy (in order of left-to-right and increasing sanity), the last being what most people in the West now think of when they think of socialism.
Re:Left wing credentials (Score:5, Informative)
This has nothing to do with left wing or right wing, and allegations that it does are simply foolish. The English Conservative Party has a well-documented history of fascist tendencies going back at least as far as WWII. There were even quite a few Tories who thought Hitler had the right idea, and said so publicly. Sir Oswald Mosley illustrates the point well. First he was a Tory, then a Labour cabinet minister, then he abandoned both parties to found the British Union of Fascists.
You might also be unaware that in its current incarnation the Labour Party is to the right of what has traditionally been the British centre.
In any case, this situation is just another indication of a coercive government doing what it does best: get people under its thumb and squeeze out any hint of thought and activity it doesn't either monitor or control. Just try to find real differences in the position of the Tories and Labour on any issue of substance. Currently, "Right" and "Left" are simply labels of convenience to soothe the party faithful.
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The English Conservative Party has a well-documented history of liberal tendencies going back at least as far as the Great War. There were even quite a few Tories who thought David Lloyd-George had the right idea, and said so publicly. Sir Winston Churchill illustrates the point well. First he was a Liberal, then a Tory prime minister.
The Tories, like Labour, are a fairly big tent.
Re:Left wing credentials (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for the pedantry, but I've been seeing this particular malapropism a lot lately. "Populous" is an adjective, meaning "densely inhabited". The noun you're looking for is "populace", meaning a population of people. Yes, they're pronounced exactly the same, so it's a very common substitution.
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Here you go [wikipedia.org].
Yes, you can say it's not real evidence, but some right-wing governments, or any government that wasn't reliant on support from client regions, or any government that wasn't more interested in saving its own testes than doing what was right for the country* would have allowed the bank to collapse.
*You never know, it might happen. I can only think of one example at the moment, and that was Maggie's first term.
Re:And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. Governments have a tendency of giving themselves more power, whether they're left or right.
Partisan politics are the method by which the government gets us to argue amongst each other long enough so we won't notice that they're all colluding to strip us of our rights.
Vote for a more limited government, no matter what country you happen to live in.
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Mod parent up. I'd do it myself but I've already posted.
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Libertarian [wikipedia.org] NOT EQUAL TO Republican [wikipedia.org]
Just because I disagree with the Liberals, as the position has come to be understood in the American and British political discourse NOT Classical Liberalism as it was and is understood in Europe, does not mean that I automatically agree with the Republicans. If you an American and you still believe in smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom then why not join us [lp.org] and do something [campaignforliberty.com] about it?
Access Denied (Score:5, Funny)
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But I can see it, which means that... I...
Oh my God. Should I go and turn myself over to the police now, or just jump off the nearest bridge?
A helicopter outside! Too late to ponder, they are already here! I hope [NO CARRIER]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This affects us all (Score:5, Insightful)
Government propaganda likewise, I'm increasingly disgusted by the pile of steaming ad hominem and blatant misrepresentation in politics these days. I'm also disgusted by the fact that most of the populus just gulp it down through their TV straw and don't even check to see how it tastes, but that's another story...
That said, I don't think the 'net as a whole is under any long-term threat, simply because due to scalability requirements it will eventually turn into a wireless mesh system. As networks grow very large, they _must_ become increasingly decentralized and therefore increasingly resilient to attacks of the kind that net neutrality seeks to prevent.
Re:This affects us all (Score:4, Insightful)
due to scalability requirements it will eventually turn into a wireless mesh system.
I would guess that'll happen because of the threat of censorship, and the relative cheapness, more than anything else. Fiber is pretty scalable.
As networks grow very large, they _must_ become increasingly decentralized and therefore increasingly resilient to attacks of the kind that net neutrality seeks to prevent.
Keep in mind, the Internet currently is very centralized in other ways as well.
For example: How do we find anything on the Internet? Google. How does eBay allow individuals to become sellers? By routing them through the corporate hub of, well, eBay. Who decides how to allocate DNS and IP? The IANA.
And yet, when you completely decentralize it, you open yourself up to spam. That is, if everything is defined by a consensus of peers, all someone has to do is control a large number of those peers, either by infecting real peers, or by fabricating them.
I don't have a good solution, and I have no idea what a good solution would look like, unless it went entirely peer-to-peer. But then we'd have to set about building a web of trust that spans the planet, and any one entity might still not have a good path to trust another entity.
And what's worse... (Score:2)
Government propaganda likewise, I'm increasingly disgusted by the pile of steaming ad hominem and blatant misrepresentation in politics these days. I'm also disgusted by the fact that most of the populus just gulp it down through their TV straw and don't even check to see how it tastes, but that's another story...
It's not just because it's propaganda. That's not far from how politicians really are.
On Danish TV, there's a live transmission from the parliament every day the parliament meets (last I checked). It's a fun watch, in a depressing kind of way.
The politicians present their pieces of legislation and other work (let's form a task force to set down a committee to ...). Then they debate it, then they vote (sometimes).
The debate consists mostly of calling each other "Mr. Fogh" and "Ms. Thorning-Schmidt" and th
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Okay wait, where do I go with my guy fox mask and looooooooooooong cat banner again?
Pirate Radio one more time around? (Score:4, Interesting)
From the 1960s, draconian British radio broadcasting restrictions forced would-be music broadcasters to park ships in the North Sea and transmit "pirate radio" stations to the UK.
Perhaps its time for pirate radio 2.0 : unlicensed digital packet radio mesh edition.
Re:Pirate Radio one more time around? (Score:4, Funny)
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I am tired of UK being a EU member (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a proud EU citizen I am tired of the UK being an EU member. UK (both government and population) behaves like stubborn child, like the black sheep. It does not want to adopt Euro, fully implement Schengen Treaty, European Charter of Human Rights, etc.; UK doesnâ(TM)t respect the symbols of the Union (e.g. the flag). Yet they want to rip all the benefits of the common market. Eastern EU workers were good when their citizens did not want to fill in raw work positions. Same Eastern-EU workers are scapegoats now, while their own British born citizens from the former Empire population blow themselves up. And now they want to infect the rest of the Union with their Stalinist type of police state. Frankly, I want UK out of the EU, let them be spied on their island only, have all the raw jobs they hired cheap hard working foreigners they despite, ask them to have a visa to visit EU, be finger-printed, etc. Let's have them alone on their pathetic island, also known for many reason as "The Perfidious Albion". Many of their politicians still behave like 100 years ago when they were a global empire, now the empire is gone and they just pay the price of arrogance. We need the Union to evolve without the hand-brake on. Brits, keep your politicians, CCTV cameras, and KGB-style police at home! Let the European Union alone!
Re:I am tired of UK being a EU member (Score:5, Interesting)
De Gaulle, and gaullists in general, was very much against the UK joining the EU. His major objection was its overseas empire and is connection to it. A connection that would preclude any stronger connection with the continent.
These days, I think it must be said that De Gaulle was certainly correct, except that he mistook the connection. The UK is not so much linked to its former empire, as it is inextricably linked to its former colony [metro.co.uk], and now arguably its master, the United States. There is also the concept of the Anglosphere in general.
The Anglosphere is a very real cultural and economic force, if not a political one. This is what De Gaulle saw, and is why he did not want the UK forcing that worldview onto the EU. With English now being used as the dominant language in the EU, and with the UK promoting measures such as this, and all but standing in for the US in the commission, I think his objections were valid.
The UK should not have been let in.
Re:I am tired of UK being a EU member (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny that the EUropeans hold Britain's former colonies against her. All the major states of Europe had colonies, the only difference was that they all came to nothing. Mexico doesn't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, Algeria sure as hell didn't save Europe from the Germans (twice), Indonesia never managed to put men on the moon, etc. etc. Many of the British colonies were the only European colonies to achieve a 'European' level of rule of law and quality of life, and I think that makes the other European powers jealous. I think it bothers the French that no matter how many words they make up for new technology, it's still only English that's accepted as the universal language of air-traffic control (because English-speakers invented powered flight). I think it bothers the great Universities of Europe that no matter how good they are, they'll never carry the gravitas of Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarship simply because that's what Britain impressed on all her colonies and sphere of influence as the excelsior achievement. Anyway, the point is well enough made.
The transfer of global primacy from the British in the 19th century to the Americans in the 20th represents a very unique event in known history. Never has the center of the primary political and military power on earth shifted such a vast geographic distance without a similarly vast shift in language or culture. As a grand coincidence, those two English-speaking centuries oversaw the production, dissemination, and regulation (or lack thereof) of virtually every new technology that has changed human civilization, including the internet. This made the 'Anglosphere' into the primary progenitor of the coming modern monoculture. Any scion of the other major cultural powers who understands these things would be justifiably miffed, and I believe they are.
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Your argument has many flaws. USA becomes a great nation by becoming independent from the British influence. Without the revolution, we would have become another docile Canada (sorry, no pun intended to our good neighbor from the North) because of the spirit of its citizens and the genius of its founding fathers!
We had to fight against British arrogance in our American Revolution to become free. While most of the original 13 colonies were British ones, many other territories and states had a much diverse Eu
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While the French, Spanish, and Dutch had some significant holdings, they were not as well populated as the British holdings, nor as solidly held. The lands in the south such as Florida and Louisiana bounced between Spanish, French, British and American control like pinballs, and the Dutch didn't
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Re:I am tired of UK being a EU member (Score:4, Interesting)
You've got some interesting points, but I suspect that if de Gaulle were around today he'd be thoroughly in favour of keeping the UK in the EU. It really specifically was the Commonwealth that he was concerned about, and the UK has wholeheartedly and thoroughly done its best to bring the Commonwealth to an end.
Today the major powers in the EU -- France and Germany, and to a lesser extent Benelux -- very much want to keep the UK in the EU, and I suspect that's precisely because of the UK's trans-Atlantic links. The UK may have always been ambivalent about the EU -- it so happens that the yea-sayers have been winning so far -- but since the Commonwealth became moribund, the EU has been working remarkably hard to appease the UK and keep them in. Perhaps the UK's importance in the field of banking is another reason to keep the UK. If not for those two things, I would imagine that France in particular would have given up on UK-appeasing long ago.
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Show me an EU member country that is doing any different. They all act for their own benefits, none of them are selfless. All countries have negotiated these treaties and agreements, are you saying other countries were unfairly forced to sign and the UK
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If you wish to defend the British historical record as being positive for the EU, then you're welcome to do so. Perhaps your interpretation will end up deserving an "Interesting" mod, too.
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Having a widely held view does not make that opinion interesting or less provocative.
The post does not have an argument it is purely hostile. As I said before, EU treaties were all negotiated and signed by more than one party. If the original poster is unhappy with this he should ask the politicians of his country to negotiate differently a
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Keeping your head in the sand about unpleasant facts does not generally make them go away. That said, I'd argue that for many Americans on this site (possibly even the majority of slashdot users), learning about widely held opinions in Europe may certainly qualify as interesting.
Translation: Poor virtuou
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The problem isn't the British politicians. The EU is much too big for them to be threatening us with their paranoid laws.
The problem is that in the EU, you're not sure that they won't listen. There are other idiots, from other countries, who might think the same. The model of the police state might be more wide spread than you think. This is the issue. We do not know what the program of the European Government is.
That's why it's so important to vote in June 2009 for the European Parliament!!!
http://en.wikip [wikipedia.org]
If a law violates GPLD (Score:4, Interesting)
To add to the irony, an accompanying text cuts and pastes from Wikipedia, without attribution.
So, who does Gpl-violation file suit against? In fact, if a law quotes you unattributed, doesn't that mean the government is somehow liable for copyright infringement?
YAD (Score:2)
Yet another definition of Net Neutrality.
What kind of agenda is that? (Score:2)
I really still don't get it, why are the ones who are supposed to be liberals doing such things? I could understand if a douchebag like Cameron wanted to turn the UK into what the Labour party is turning it into, but why does the Labour party do that? Since when is that sort of agenda anything like the liberal agenda? Socialists in France aren't pushing for anything even vaguely similar, neither are the Social Democrats in Germany or the centre-left coalition of Italy, or anywhere else I know of where the m
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I really still don't get it, why are the ones who are supposed to be liberals doing such things?
Because, uh, liberals want to tell everyone what to do and prevent them from offending anyone with 'bad speech' or seeing bad things?
Conservatives, of course, want to do the same, only with slightly different definitions of 'bad'.
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So why don't other liberals in other countries do the same?
In what Western country are liberals _not_ trying to tell everyone else what to do at gunpoint?
'Political correctness' (aka wet Marxism) is the norm throughout the West. Though I guess Britain was responsible for Marxism in the first place.
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The Labour party isn't a liberal party, it's a populist pro-business centre right (by European standards) party. It's platform since the early 1990s has been "the third way", i.e. the pursuit of egalitarian aims such as reducing poverty and improving education coupled with traditionally right-wing concerns such as the
Why is it that... (Score:4, Insightful)
And why is this sense of forboding always correct?
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I really hope you're not English. If you are, then you're part of the problem. You're happy to sit on your arse about what's happening because we're not as bad as X yet, or Y has dome something stupid too.
Guess what? The actions of the US in no way affect the fact that the so-called Labour government are a bunch of raging totalitarians.
Everyone can see what they are trying to do... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The subjects of the UK are perfectly willing to give away rights in the name of security. What's one more going to matter?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's the case. Politicians in the UK are perfectly willing to throw away people's rights in the name of security, but that doesn't mean the population is OK with it. That's certainly the case in the US, though thankfully the trend seems to have slowed a bit when it took a back-seat to the constant economic bickering.
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Politicians in the UK are perfectly willing to throw away people's rights in the name of security, but that doesn't mean the population is OK with it.
I'd be willing to go cause some civil disobedience in London over this. Who would join me?
Nobody? Yup, this is The United Kingdom of Apathy alright.
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(that's legal here, you can be arrested for refusing to submit to a random search, as long as it's a random search for "terrorist" materials)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
The subjects of the UK are perfectly willing to give away rights in the name of security.
It's more complicated than that.
The British electoral system ensures that you only need a tiny fraction of the votes to control the country; Labour, for example, got about 22% of the votes in the last election, and they have a majority of seats in Parliament. Worse than that, they actually got less votes than the Tories in England, yet they control the country thanks to votes from Scotland and Wales.
The Tories are the only other party capable of being elected at this time, and they've merely become a wet version of Labour, without any sign of a leader with the balls of a Thatcher who could turn the country around as she did after the last Labour government.
The most likely third party to gain from lost Labour votes is the BNP, who are a bunch of raving national socialists (using that in the literal sense: far-left nationalists).
So there's precisely zero chance of improving anything through political means, and everyone of clue has been getting the hell out, with emigration reaching levels not seen since... uh, the last time the country had a Labour government.
When you combine the inability to make any real change without stringing up politicians from lamp-posts on Westminster Bridge with the exodus of millions of people of clue since WWII, you should hardly be surprised by what a disaster zone Britain has become; the people left behind are the ones least likely to get off their ass and do anything.
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Perhaps you're just an arrogant fuck?
The people leaving aren't willing to get off their lazy asses and do anything, if they were, they would fucking be leaving, they'd
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
So what your saying is that only English votes should count towards who governs the UK? Lets just ignore Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What do they know, eh?
No, the problem is that Scottish (and Welsh) MPs are able to vote on things that won't affect their constituents due to the devolved parliament and assemblies. In other words the Labour party is able to impose things on England by using Scottish and Welsh MPs but these things never get imposed on the Scots or Welsh. I'm sure you've heard of the West Lothian question [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
In the UK there is a final arbiter; and that is the Queen, who must sign off on legislation before it becomes law. Nowdays it is mostly ceremonial, I don't think she has exercised the right to not sign legislation for a long time now (if ever, for the current monarch). But it does mean that there is an additional opportunity to stop any Enabling Act type legislation before it becomes law.
In principle, the constitution in the US is a strong document, but in the end it is people who have to uphold it. Primarily, the Justice Department is responsible for giving legal advice to the executive (and, I guess, to congress too?), and if they routinely give advice to the executive that is borderline or illegal, then there is not much recourse. The courts can usually intervene, but that is a slow process - and of course that depends on the courts finding out about the illegal activities in the first place.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Could it be that she rubber stamps pretty much anything they put in front of her?
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Of course she rubber stamps everything - that is her job. But consider that her function is similar to the president in the old Weimar republic, but whereas the Weimar republic president was an explicitly political position with real power, and subject to influence (specifically, Hindenburg ended up playing into the hands of Hitler), the Monarchy in the UK is, in theory, above all that. Indeed, the Queen is not supposed to even comment publically on politics, although she certainly has a lot of influence
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British armed forces swear allegiance to the Queen. I think if you went and did a quick survey of squaddies you'd probably find most of them much more willing to stick up for the Queen than for Gordon Brown. I think that may cause some slight issues if the government really went to try something stupid...
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I've just lost quite a considerable amount of respect for her.
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However one of the supposed 'great' things we exported was Democracy, as in the 'free' world, esp. the good ole US of A, which is a kind of democracy gone wild.
That's a little revisionist, isn't it? I seem to remember the United States having to fight a certain war of independence in order to establish said "free world." It is widely accepted that the United States is the oldest modern democracy still in existence, not the UK.
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> It is widely accepted that the United States is the oldest modern democracy still in existence, not the UK.
Because the UK isn't a modern democracy, but a hardly modern parliamentary constitutional monarchy and as such has been in existence before the Declaration of Independence.
The war has been fought, because the subjects in the colonies weren't granted the same rights and protections as the subjects in Great Britain, especially no representation in the House of Commons. That's why the slogan "No taxa
Re:What's up with England? (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't vote for the other team when the government won't call an election or referendum.
The opinion polls indicated (at least, last time I heard the stats) that the ruling party, Labour would be out in the next election, after some disastrous local elections (alas these local elections don't really have a great deal of influence on national politics) so they have nothing to win by calling for an election now - they'll just keep holding off as long as they can get away with it.
Promised referendums for EU membership and adoption of EU treaties regularly don't happen, simply because the government has it's own agenda, as you can see by the original topic.
Grassroots politics and small parties have no power in government to control, and even the typical sanity check of any new legislation having to go through the House of Lords has been neutered now that any law can be passed by the house of commons using the Parliament Act.
Another problem is that a lot of the UK populace really have no interest in politics - voter apathy is high, and polling booth turnout is low compared to a lot of places (iirc). This is pathetically the opposite of any major TV 'create a star/pop band/etc' phone vote, which receive millions of votes each week. They have no real understanding of the modern issues that are being raised in Parliament, and tend to vote based on how they were brought up (as far as I've witnessed) - so a person from working class background will vote Labour, and a middle-class background will vote Tory.
The general populace also doesn't understand the insidious nature of half the laws the government is passing, and whenever they're questioned by the vocal minority, the government uses the old 'think of the children' or 'be afraid of the terrorists' line and the law is passed anyway.
It really is making me totally sick of living in this country. The last time I posted my opinion on /. an ex-armed forces guy even agreed with me about leaving the country - and this was a person in the service of the UK who would have been expected to risk their life for their country!
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Fuck off you British tossers. Keep your fucking pound and get the fuck out of the Community.
No problem. We'll take the £billions we pump into European countries with us as well. Good luck surviving without your EU subsidies which we fund. Hope you don't live in Portugal or any of the recent accession countries as we pretty much bankroll your entire country.
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Fuck off you British tossers. Keep your fucking pound and get the fuck out of the Community.
Don't insult me. First and foremost I am an English tosser, and proud of it.
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I read nothing that made me recoil in horror. At worst this would appear to be traffic management to reduce network congestion, hopefully stopping Joe Bloggs down the road causing contention by downlaoding movies and music all day, every day. I have nothing against people using the Internet for whatever purposes they wish (legally of course),