The Absolute State Of It - It's The UK Politics Thread!

[Mantis]

I think they just have absolutely zero self awareness. A good quality to have in general if you're going to become a right leaning political figure.

[Hatredsheart]

Honestly, I feel like I'm the one in a coke addled fever dream right now.

You and all the rest of us mate. I'm 61 and thought I'd seen it all but every week someone lowers the bar even further and limbos under it.

[arqueturus]

Honestly, I feel like I'm the one in a coke addled fever dream right now.

You and all the rest of us mate. I'm 61 and thought I'd seen it all but every week someone lowers the bar even further and limbos under it.

I'm 52 and grew up through the Thatcher years. It astounds me that I can look back at those and think "at least she was competent, if awful"

Perhaps she would have been every bit as bad or even worse if the media spotlight was as as continuous and stark as it is these days but I'm not truly convinced.

[ManBearSquid]

She absolutely nails this, though.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1tKA7_pWAYU

Nails right down the blackboard.

[Wrathbone]

This digital ID stuff is giving me data security/privacy shudders again. I can't see how it's effectively going to stop illegal immigrants from working when cash-in-hand (and modern slavery) is still a thing, which means all it's going to do is open the entire country up to identity theft. The whole thing smells of Starmer trying to appease the Reform crowd by appearing to crack down on immigrants, at the expense of everyone else.

[Mantis]

I used to be vaguely in favour of a general government ID but after seeing the technologically illiterate approach the government have taken towards the OSA and then how they've doubled down on calling any critics of it paedophile supporters, I just don't trust them in the slightest bit to execute this properly or for it to not over reach.

Starmer is an absolute authoritarian windbag. How long until they decide that you need to link your government ID card to all the services you use online to prove your age? The government will be able to track everything about you then.

[Raid]

I haven't read into this digital ID thing yet, but given they're directing blame at immigration which I can't see it affecting at all (do we seriously think not having ID is going to be a deterrent to illegal immigration?), I assume it's nothing to do with it whatsoever and is all about control - exactly the same as the online safety act.

I'm not one of those people that think this government is doing nothing right; their wins are going under the radar and their mistakes are getting blown up because the press are gunning for them, but they're utterly appalling when it comes to civil liberties.

[Wrathbone]

It's not even the civil liberties that concern me most with digital IDs, it's that the government (and all previous ones as far as I can tell) clearly couldn't give a flying crap about data security beyond what they're legally obliged to adhere to (and often fail to). If everyone is forced to have a new digital ID and, as Dave suggests, it ends up being a requirement for accessing services, what happens when there's inevitably a security breach? What happens when there's a technical failure and you need your ID to urgently get into something like your bank account?

I mean, what does it actually achieve that an NI number currently doesn't? It's just another dataset waiting to be exploited by both official bodies and malicious actors.

[Hatredsheart]

https://mrhenrymorris.substack.com/p/th ... irect=true

[eny]

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/09/25/blue ... -politics/

[Raid]

*sigh*

Imgur have decided not to bother complying with the UK's ridiculous anti-porn law and just geoblocked the entire country, as is their right. Suddenly the only decent image hosting for the last 15 years doesn't work, and I can't use a VPN on my work machine (we don't use it for anything work-related, but it was handy for quickly hosting stuff when Teams is throwing a wobbly and hosts every meme gif ever made that isn't on the Teams gif database).

UK Government, I'd like to address you directly. Children know how to Google "free vpn", they're not stupid.

[Wrathbone]

Imgur haven’t even bothered putting up a placeholder page explaining that it’s blocked, or why. All you get is:

{"data":{"error":"Content not available in your region."},"success":false,"status":400}

A proper table-flip moment from them. Can’t blame them.

[Wrathbone]

The latest puritan swipe at porn:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyk3qzq7k7o

I should preface this by emphasising that I have absolutely no interest in strangulation or choking.

What does interest me and deeply concerns me is that this bill is going to unintentionally criminalise a whole bunch of people who also have no interest in those acts in porn. Not just a slap on the wrist sort of crime, either - to quote the article:

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said the change would make choking in pornography a "priority offence" under the Online Safety Act, putting it on the same level as child sexual abuse material and terrorism content.

That's not just for possessing or distributing said material - it includes viewing it too. How many people are going to watch what they assume is regular, non-illegal porn only to find it has newly-criminalised acts in it? The government will no doubt argue that sites need to comply with the law and shouldn't make that material available, in the same way that nonce porn is restricted, but this is a very different situation becuase noncing has been illegal as long as video has existed and was never considered a legal option for online sites. Choking is, perhaps regrettably, quite prominent (or so I'm told ). How on earth is any site expected to retroactively scour all their material to ensure no such acts are shown? How are users supposed to protect themselves from the possibility of accidentally viewing material with those acts, other than abstaining from porn entirely?

You could argue that it will never be enforced outside of extreme cases, and that may well be true for the time being. But what happens when an even more puritan set of lobbyists convince a government that it SHOULD be enforced, and they find a long list of IP addresses against illegal material? I guess they can't arrest everyone, but they could certainly use that as a reason to arrest anyone they don't like.

I honestly don't know if this government is attempting to be truly dystopian in terms of civil liberties or whether it's borne out of incompetence and ignorance, but it's at the point where I may never vote for Labour again.

[Mantis]

Wow. I wasn't really giving much thought to this one outside of thinking it being another case of the usual pathetic, nanny state attempt to control people that I expect from Labour. But registering it on the same level as child sexual abuse material and terrorism content? What bloody world are they living on?

Oh well, at least I can look forward to some tax rises being announced at the end of the month. I'm sure they will fix the absolutely crippling problems that we face as a nation.