I don't understand people who want to defend Apple in this case. UK is a functioning democracy, and why would you want to put a (foreign) company above that? If you want change, you know the route ...
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What I am worried about really is Google, Meta etc did not speak up against it and likely have had the same requests. So I am worried about some foreign companies complying with my government. And very surprised that one particular foreign company gives more of a shit about me as an end user than my own government.
There are always decisions or information which is kept secret/illegal to publish.
If the UK represented the British natives then a lot of things would be happening that would get me banned from this website :)
Hint: All within the last 100 years.
> The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim.
white males end up as defendants in CSE cases more often than any other ethnic group
https://www.logicallyfacts.com/en/fact-check/no-pakistani-me...
> while white men make up 83 percent of the population, they accounted for 88 percent of the defendants in child sexual abuse cases.
see page 38 https://www.csacentre.org.uk/app/uploads/2024/02/Trends-in-O...
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oh you edited your post to add more anti-muslim rhetoric.
let’s dive into the detail a little
> A pre-sentence report will normally be considered necessary if the offender belongs to one (or more) of the following cohorts:
> at risk of first custodial sentence and/or at risk of a custodial sentence of 2 years or less (after taking into account any reduction for guilty plea)
> a young adult (typically 18-25 years)
> female
> from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community
> pregnant or post-natal
> sole or primary carer for dependent relatives
> Or if the court considers that one or more of the following may apply to the offender:
> has disclosed they are transgender
> has or may have any addiction issues
> has or may have a serious chronic medical condition or physical disability, or mental ill health, learning disabilities (including developmental disorders and neurodiverse conditions) or brain injury/damage
> the court considers that the offender is, or there is a risk that they may have been, a victim of:
> domestic abuse, physical or sexual abuse, violent or threatening behaviour, coercive or controlling behaviour, economic, psychological, emotional or any other abuse
> modern slavery or trafficking, or coercion, grooming, intimidation or exploitation.
> This is a non-exhaustive list and a PSR can still be necessary if the individual does not fall into one of these cohorts.
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/overarching-guides/magi...
1) i dont see the word “muslim” mentioned anywhere
2) i see about 10 other societal groups listed that have nothing to do with religion
but sure, let’s keep blaming the muslims for everything, that sounds like a healthy approach to life.
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second edit because fuck it.
i grew up in an affluent part of the country, a quiet and mostly white countryside town. went to posh schools. most of my first 20 years i didnt spend much time around people of other ethnicities.
i get it man. i get that you might be afraid of losing your “identity”. or maybe you’re afraid of the big scary bogeymen on the news.
but you don’t have to be afraid. you dont have to be afraid of the bogeymen. the bogeymen are mostly made up stories. you don’t have to be afraid of change. life becomes a hell of a lot more fulfilling without fear.
It is trying to keep the existence of the Stasi a secret.
None of that sounds like democracy to me.
There are several ministers from the House of Lords, who aren't elected by the people.
I haven't checked for this Parliament, but for the previous one that included people who had LOST their election to be an MP, but got nominated to the Lords anyway.
we vote for a local MP to represent our constituency in the house of commons. first one past the threshold wins and represents our area in the house of commons.
each MP gets one vote. one vote in the house of commons for each constituency.
so yes. this is possible. because it’s not about total votes — it’s about representing the individual local areas and the people within those areas.
labour won a landslide of “areas”. that’s how our system works.
just because it doesn’t match what you think democracy should look like doesn’t mean it isn’t democratic. it’s just different.
plenty of criticisms exist about our system (esp house of lords). we even tried to have a referendum on first past the post about two decades ago. i voted for AV. but oh well.
I don't consider FPTP to be democratic, because it disenfranches large swathes of the population and means that you can rule the country with a massive majority despite only getting 34% of the vote.
The first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major parties, perhaps just two, a principle known in political science as Duverger's Law. Smaller parties are trampled in first-past-the-post elections.
>let alone government
The idea that everyone is entitled to have his preferred local candidate become a minister of the Crown is truly absurd.
>artificial consensus ... Managed democracy ... arbitrary
I don't know what this means.
There is nothing non-representative about FPP. It has nothing to do with parties. It is a non-party-based system. There is no a priori reason why it is "more democratic" for the proportions of seats in Parliament when split by parti to correspond to the proportions of votes for candidates from those parties. You can declare that you define "democraticness" to be a measure of the extent to which that is true, but there is no logical reason for them to correspond and no good argument that they should.
It is assumed as axiomatically good and you work backwards from there. Party-proportionality is democracy, therefore list-based proportional representation is more democratic. Well only if you redefine "democratic" first to mean "proportional", which isn't what anyone understood it to mean in the past and isn't the way the term is commonly used in any other context.
FPTP has more flaws than other systems and almost inevitably leads to less representation in democracies by promoting two party blocs that barely differ over successive election iterations. It's a political form of Hotelling's Law coupled with discrete dynamics.
As has happened to the USofA despite a strong opposition to party politics by the founders and crafters of the current system who failed a few centuries back to understand the dynamics of a scheme that didn't scale well.
FPP prioritises local representation and majoritarian results: if constituencies are arranged properly, then swings in voter sentiment are amplified. Relatively small changes in voter satisfaction can produce hundred seat majorities at Westminster. That is on purpose. It is part of why governments are accountable.
If you compare it to Germany, where there is enormous dissatisfaction with the government, they held an election, and mostly the same parties will be in government again, because of coalition politics.
The alternative to Germany is the situation here in New Zealand. Culturally still two main parties, but instead of voter sentiment deciding which of them wins, instead it is the choice of a minor kingmaker party that can pick a winner based on who gives it the most concessions. That is arguably better, but still not a good situation compared to a simple majoritarian system. We had one of those. The country was better-run under FPP than under MMP.
Westminster proves quite wrong the common claim that the system encourages two parties, by the way. The main parties have a lesser percentage of votes between them than they have ever had. It is just not true that two parties inevitably dominate.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/09/whatsapp-...