[gambiting]

As a Brit - yeah it's horrendous, but to me it's like there's two completely disjointed realities. One online, where UK seems to be the most surveiled and invigilated of the "western" countries where your every action is tracked, and then the second one is out in the real world, where the police and in general various agencies are borderline useless, unwilling to investigate any crime, where I genuienly wonder what's the point of obeying the rules of the road, paying taxes, or in fact not just walking out of the store with a trolley full of groceries without paying since none of this seems to be prosecuted in the slightest. Reporting crime happening literally outside of my doors has zero effect. You had your house broken into, car stolen, bicycle nicked? It would be a miracle for a policeman to show up to even take your statement. Businesses saying they have persistent problems with criminals walking out with the merchandise, no action is ever taken, or it's completely ineffective. Or how I'm literally scared to walk around with my child or ride a bike on bike paths because groups of men riding surrons in balaclavas are a daily sight around what is a tiny town in North of England - I keep reporting them to 101 all the time and yet I see them every day(but somehow not a single policeman).

Or the whole meme of London having more cameras than people, but when a crime happens all of these cameras are impossible to access, in private hands, or broken - you could drive a stolen car through Oxford Circus and no one would stop you. Not to mention how every high street is now just a 50/50 mix of vape/phone shops, none of them ever have a customer in sight but somehow have a dude sitting there 24/7. But the sign changes every month to a new business. But no, the "most scary of western democracies" can't even prosecute organised crime properly.

I just wonder if the focus on online laws is because it's so much easier to focus on this than any of the above problems.