[crinkly]

If it was a police state, JD Vance wouldn’t be getting it on his holiday here from protesters and video vans driving around and being refused service in a pub.

It could end up that way but we’re not there yet. If we do get there we tend to make the French look like amateur protestors (look up poll tax riots).

I’m less worried about a police state than a corporate dystopia. The attendee list at Trump’s inauguration would be far scarier to me than the OSA is.

[GeoAtreides]

If it WASN'T a police state, 500 people wouldn't have been arrested for holding up a sign.

[crinkly]

Let's extrapolate on a simple point because it's not so simple...

A sign for a proscribed terrorist organisation, which its members are backed by a Russian plant (Fergie Chambers - now hiding in North Africa) and have damaged military aircraft, military facilities and attacked police officers with sledgehammer. Things that, in the US, you would have been shot for.

The protesters could have waved any other sign around in support for the cause without any problems, as hundreds more were doing, but not that specific organisation.

However the 500 people are at best naive victims of their own incompetence and being used as political pawns, not for the cause but instigators.

All this stuff is rather less black and white than it sounds.

[throwaway97202]

>If it was a police state, JD Vance wouldn’t be getting it on his holiday here from protesters and video vans driving around and being refused service in a pub.

"Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA?"

"Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished."

[runsWphotons]

A politician disliked by the state facing criticism doesn't mean anything. What matters is when people say something the state doesn't approve of.

[hopelite]

That is a very simple perspective. Nothing about the current British government would preclude being underhanded and manipulative, i.e., making sure that not only the current US government, but the next system’s candidate is made to feel discomfort and displeasure in order to manipulate.

People do this kind of underhanded passive aggressive thing all the time, why would it not be the case for the British government to basically “neg” the VP that has on several occasions now dressed them and all the Europeans down and embarrassed them? I could very easily see this being the very kind of manipulative and passive aggressive thing that the British government would facilitate as a spit in the face of the guy who admonished them for their thought/speech control.

You seem to have a “police state” model in your mind that is akin to a North Korea and less what it will most likely be in the west, far more manipulative and sophisticated, as depicted in Orwell’s 1984.

[crinkly]

I think you're overcomplicating it. Having actually worked for UK gov directly with politicians, they are mostly either trying not to look bad but way out of their depth in stuff and being propped up by civil service.

In that circumstance they'd stay out of it and blame it on the citizens while trying to get favour with Vance some other way.

Spend a few months in Azerbaijan if you want to experience a police state. I have :)