[oxfordmale]

This needs to be seen in the context of the political situation in the UK. Boris Johnson, the current PM, is currently on this 9th and last political live. During the strictest period of lockdown, when UK citizens where not able to say goodbye to loved ones dying in hospitals, several parties were organised at his residence . It is alleged he attended two of them himself and was photographed drinking beer. In attempt to rescue his political career, he has announced several "red meat" measures and this appears to be one of them.

Over the years several attempts have been made to introduce this. Just like past attempts it will face a heavy lobby from the adult content industry and social media companies. More importantly this government will likely not be around long enough to actually introduce it (the consensus is that Boris will be gone after the May local elections). It will almost certainly drop off the radar of a subsequent government as there are much bigger and more important issues to tackle after Covid.

In the unlikely event it will get introduced, it will be delayed for years. For past measures Ofcom, the media regulator, was asked to classify all adult websites to determine if they fall in a category that requires age verification, and as you can imagine, this can take a while. In addition age verification is only required for websites that allow users to upload content, not commercially sourced content. There are endless loopholes here, however, likely adult websites will just block user content from UK visitors. It is not like there is a shortage of commercial content. Of course VPN providers will do well out of this too.

[toyg]

It's good not to underestimate the situation though - few things are as dangerous as a desperate government. If they can start wars to divert attention, they can certainly force bad laws. This goes double in the UK, where the executive is effectively all-powerful in practice since the Blair reforms.

[patates]

> few things are as dangerous as a desperate government. If they can start wars to divert attention, they can certainly force bad laws

To support this, see Turkey and Russia for current examples.

The usual dying government cycles between "we are now super nationalistic and everyone who doesn't join us are terrorists" and "but think about the children!!11" like clockwork.

The damage these cause lives much longer than the creators. It totally makes sense to tread with care.

[irthomasthomas]

The Royal Fam still screen every bill before it is proposed.

[gcthomas]

The Queen rubber stamps everything that comes from parliament - no screening happens, ever. Unfortunately.

[irthomasthomas]

Every bill is screened before it is debated. If it contains anything that may effect the royal family, personally, then they must consent before it is debated.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...

[wdb]

The most worrying thing about the political situation in the UK is that it is years ahead of other countries. I can see similar madness happen in the future in some EU countries, the script already exists. I think a country like NL can be a target. I think it's really worth the effort to analyse what happen in the UK over recent years and how we can learn from it

[alfiedotwtf]

The UK and Australia take it in turns. One will introduce a bill, get it slapped down, then the other country uses those learnings to tweak the bill until its within the Overton window... and then it's law.

[kybernetyk]

>More importantly this government will likely not be around long enough to actually introduce it

Don't worry. The next one is going to introduce it. Doesn't matter which party gets into power - one thing stays the same: The government/state always expands in scope.

[dekhn]

I honestly don't care if my politicians have parties during covid. that seems like a really weird thing to complain about.

[_-david-_]

I don't think anybody actually cares the politicians have a party. The average person cares that politicians didn't follow the rules they passed while enforcing / attempting to enforce the rules on the average Joe.

[dekhn]

Right answer! This is about signalling more than it's about the actual health details and people (rightfully?) are unhappy because leaders who make rules should follow them (right....?)

Frankly I think our politicians deserve a break and should be able to have a party to blow off steam once in a while, and I tolerate fairly modest violations of the lockdown policy.

[crtasm]

I think a lot of people in other professions were also working hard, deserved a break and wanted to blow off steam, are you advocating for them to be allowed to ignore the law set down during pandemic too?

How much harder is it going to be to convince the public to follow rules/guidelines if we announce that certain groups can ignore parts of them?

[benlumen]

Do you live in the UK? We had harsh, cruel, extended lockdowns. Like - no talking to friends on the street lockdowns. For like months at a time. Johnson, who subjected us to this, was having house parties the whole time. Most Brits would push the creep in front of a bus at this point.

[bennyelv]

My perception is that that's a position that most people would find weird.

The politicians in the UK have just slapped the harshest restrictions on people's liberties since (I assume) the world wars, and then they completely ignored them themselves.

People weren't able to attend loved ones funerals, but the politicians where having parties in their offices.

I'm intrigued to find out why you don't think this is a bad thing?

[irthomasthomas]

I don't think it's a bad thing, because it is what I expected. (Edit: what I meant is that it confirmed my belief in how things work, and did not assert a need to reexamine my mental model of politicians) And if this revelation goes some way to shaking people out of the naivety and blind conformity that were needed to support lockdowns, then that is ultimately a good thing.

For democracy to survive, people must sharpen their political antennae.

  "Evil in the modern world is done neither by monsters not by bureaucrats, but by joiners. That evil originates in the neediness of lonely, alienated bourgeois people who live lives so devoid of higher meaning that they give themselves fully to movements" Helen Arendt after watching the Nazi trials.

[rawTruthHurts]

I guess it boils down to how comfortable you are with hypocrisy and double standards.

[irthomasthomas]

What does your first point have to do with the second? Boris did a bad thing, so now everyone has to give Facebook their credit card? I don't get it.

[notch656a]

Seems pretty clear to me. Boris did something that offended a certain segment, so he makes amends by creating the perception he is going to do something that segment approves of. At least that seems to be what is implied.

The noted point here is it likely won't happen, but the underlying goal of creating such perception may be achieved.

[lamontcg]

I thought it was implied that this was a distraction.

Gets people on both sides engaged and takes over the headlines and the hope is that it wipes partygate off the headlines and short term memory loss sets in and everyone forgets about partygate by election time.

Trump would just say something completely insane every other day to keep the headlines thrashing on nonsense to distract away from whatever else was going on.

Also think this is similar to the way that Klopp whines about the length of the grass after losses to keep media attention on what nonsense he's saying in pressers and off the performance of his players on the pitch.

[irthomasthomas]

I think it's more likely that Facebook is pushing this, as a means to get users to register their card info.

[notch656a]

Well I'm not the one who made that assertion, I was just explaining what OP had wrote since the person above me didn't understand. I didn't mean to imply it was my opinion nor that it was likely.

Facebook still needs government's help to implement it, so there must be something in it for representatives if it's going to make it through. Seems doubtful Facebook can possibly pass a law on its own. And if Facebook wants to, they can easily require credit card without any law being passed; it's not illegal to require credit card to become a member of a website.

[makomk]

I'm pretty sure that it was the leader of the opposition who was photographed drinking beers with his colleagues during lockdown, and everyone seems to have bought the claim that was work related and therefore legal. Boris and his colleagues were drinking wine. The big reason that he's on his 9th and last political life is increasingly cynical attacks on him over the handling of Covid - for context, one of the most recent ones is accusing him of "wasting" billions of pounds on PPE because the government ended up buying more PPE than it actually ended up using and the price dropped since then. The consequences of undereestimating this or overestimating future availability are of course that doctors and nurses don't have the protection they need, and there were a bunch of earlier attacks on the government for not having a massive PPE stockpike (which would waste billions on PPE that'd just be thrown away). Even the nominally trusted and non-political BBC, which everyone thinks of as a government mouthpiece, ran with this and all the other attack lines, including stuff like lying about what South Korea had achieved with contact tracing to make the UK scheme sound like an expensive failure and Boris's bragging about it like lies. It's impossible to disentangle the anger over the parties from the misinformation people have been fed about the UK's Covid response; they seem closely intertwined in most people's thinking.

To give some further idea of how cynical all this is, the people who actually organised the supposed parties which are supposed to end Boris' career - the vast majority of which he doesn't even seem to have been involved in - are just scapegoats according to the media reporting, including the BBC. And at least one of the claimed parties Boris was involved was actually reported by a major newspaper the day after, back when lockdown was still on and people's relatives were still dying alone in hospital, and no-one seemed to conclude it was obviously an illegal party or even really care back then - and that was the one for Boris's birthday.

[raesene9]

As to your first point, the police have completed an investigation into the beer in question and found no offence committed, so it's not the same as the 12 (IIRC) parties that happened at 10 downing street, currently under investigation by the met.

[pvaldes]

"if it was another..." is political fiction. The fact is that the leader of the opposition wasn't caught partying like a teenager on Ibiza on those days. We'll never know what would happen so lets not assume a different outcome by default.

In any case, this partygate looks to me like an excuse to push the dead weight out of the car when is not useful anymore.

If he were acting as a serious PM at the same time and taking smart actions, the event could be sold easily as 'diplomatic work', hanging up with the people that counts in the public interest and so, and nobody would bat an eye. Nobody. Is just that the videos are too damaging and that damage control train has passed yet.

[netsharc]

> for context, one of the most recent ones is accusing him of "wasting" billions of pounds on PPE because the government ended up buying more PPE than it actually ended up using and the price dropped since then.

Ah, gotta love alternative takes on realities. Nah mate, the expensive PPE contracts went to friends and family of people in government. Ooh sure, these are just "cynical attacks" and in reality Boris and co are competent and non-corrupt people working so hard to serve the UK public.

[makomk]

No, it's in the fine print of some (though not all) of the media reporting - most of the "wasted" billions that made the news headlines in the UK was from the decrease in the market price of the stockpile: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60176283 The next highest was items "unusable in the NHS", which is to say they're functional PPE but don't meet normal NHS standards - most countries ended up intentionally buying a lot of this because medical PPE was in massive short supply and there were similar non-medical items that were a lot better than nothing.

Really, the UK PPE acquistion was unremarkable aside from its speed - the government ended up buying PPE from basically everyone who could sell it to them, just like every other government that was taking Covid seriously. Some of those contracts inevitably went to friends of people in government (they're the party of big business after all) but there's no evidence that played any role in them being awarded the contracts, those people weren't the ones deciding who to award the contracts to, and those contracts don't seem to have fared any worse than any of the other PPE contracts. The speed was also impossible to disentangle from the perception of corruption, a lot of which came from not putting the contracts out to bid as usual.

(There was a really weird - and as it turns out probably illegal - VIP fast lane where people who got referred via an MPs got priority for being evaluated for PPE contracts. The weird thing is that the effective criteria to get onto the fast lane just seem to have been phoning or emailing your MP and pestering them, and that the politicians doing the referrals don't seem to have known about the fast lane. The one friend and donor of a senior member of government who got on the fast lane was also somehow referred by someone else entirely...)

[uxcolumbo]

Johnson will go down as one of the worst PM's in UK's history.

Under his leadership UK suffered immense damage and he dragged down political standards to an almost Trumpian level.

The PPE that was sourced was unusable and the deals were handed out to some Tory mates. Where was the due-diligence?

The police looked into Steir Karmer's beer case and concluded he didn't break the laws.

Compare that to the Tory's multiple parties.

The PM is under criminal investigation for crying out loud.

Why didn't he stop those parties he was at. As the leader he could have easily said this is not on and needs to be stopped now. He sets the tone.

He's a disgrace to the UK and can't lead. He's a lying narcissist who only cares about what's good for him. It's all about 'winning' and not actually thinking about how to improve the lives of people living in the UK.

The Johnson administration is a joke and needs to be replaced asap.

[ben_w]

> I'm pretty sure that it was the leader of the opposition who was photographed drinking beers with his colleagues during lockdown, and everyone seems to have bought the claim that was work related and therefore legal.

Both were photographed with beer.

This is the photo of Keir Starmer: https://metro.co.uk/2022/02/07/keir-starmer-cleared-of-lockd...

The photo of Johnson is not AFAIK in public circulation; the police have it as part of the evidence they are currently investigating, in particular that this was part of his unlawful birthday celebration with his coworkers.

The picture in this article is not, I think, of this incident: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/04/police-have...

[nvarsj]

Starmer was having some drinks after a long day with his coworkers in the office - all was completely above board and vetted by the met police. This was a story thrown out by conservative outlets in a desperate attempt to distract from the real scandals of Boris going to full on Christmas parties that were prohibited under the laws his own government passed.

[uxcolumbo]

This is a good summary of the UK's Prime Minister's character.

Jonathan Pie: 'Boris Johnson Is a Liar' | NYT Opinion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS7kUqKeg_0