[JFingleton]

I always thought a police state would demand identification at every street corner (perhaps I'm wrong?) and any minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice. The UK has always been against a "state ID" unlike a lot of European countries, so I'm not completely convinced the description of "police state" is accurate. In fact I think it's the opposite given people can freely break the law despite cameras being on every street corner.

The UK is basically an end-of-days advanced state: bureaucracy taken to the extreme, with a heavy dose of nanny-state "mind the gap" messaging.

Bureaucracy kills any kind of infrastructure project (see HS2), so don't expect any improvements any time soon.

We do have some nice cities: Manchester, York, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge. (I've probably missed a few from this list). London feels pretty far from 30 years ago - and not in a good way.

[snickerbockers]

>The UK is basically an end-of-days advanced state: bureaucracy taken to the extreme, with a heavy dose of nanny-state "mind the gap" messaging.

Reminds me the latter three dune novels. Frank Herbert had this idea he was exploring about how the inevitable end-state of society is this sort of stalemate between opposing bureaucratic factions which have become optimized towards preventing their own destruction to the point that they aren't capable of doing anything other than prolonging their own existence.

It reminds me of the Republicans and the democrats in America which have become utterly unresponsive towards their own voterbases because they have already rigged the political system to prevent any viable competitors from displacing them but in general it seems like the whole of western civilization has reached this point over the last 50 years or so, because just about any country which is referred to as 'western' has a set of very obvious problems on the horizon with very obvious solutions being stalled by a ruling class which is concerned with maintaining its own existence at all costs even if it has to bring down the entire nation with it.

[endymion-light]

> opposing bureaucratic factions which have become optimized towards preventing their own destruction to the point that they aren't capable of doing anything other than prolonging their own existence

This is the best 1 sentence explanation of how it feels like to live in the UK. Every institution feels more catered towards preventing it's end than to a goal.

[mywittyname]

> I always thought a police state would demand identification at every street corner (perhaps I'm wrong?) and any minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice.

Those cameras know exactly who you are, and the tracking device your carry around in your pocket serves as a secondary confirmation.

Checking IDs would be a superfluous and costly tertiary method of confirmation.

[jahewson]

> minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice

This is the case if you do anything that opposes the governments desired narrative. For example, by saying something “far right”. Multiple years in jail for a tweet.

But I agree, what you’re describing is I think best called anarcho-tyranny: not some (disturbed) utopian inspired police state, but a police state of gritty hypocrisy.

[vaylian]

> I always thought a police state would demand identification at every street corner (perhaps I'm wrong?)

The facial recognition technology for that already exists. And the UK has a sufficiently dense CCTV coverage.

[Xelbair]

you have very narrow definition of police state.

Over here under communist times it was definitely a police state - there were no ID checks, crime was rampant, but everyone could be observed at any moment and be arrested/dissappeared as needed.

UK evokes identical feeling now as a tourist.