UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 621

On April 01 2025 15:11 Jockmcplop wrote:

I mean the problem they are trying to solve is a real one though.
They are just trying to solve it in an idiotic way.
If judges are being racist in how they hand out sentences, then surely there's some way to stop that that doesn't involve treating cases involving minorities differently by law. That's just stupid and weird.

On April 01 2025 23:12 WombaT wrote:

Aye people are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think good kid from a rich family who went to a good school is always getting the same sentence for that same offence for someone closer the bottom of the socioeconomic pile.

Or Preggers McGregor with another young kiddo gets treated exactly the same as WombaT. You know what, I’m somewhat alright with that one. Maybe a custodial sentence for a relatively minor non-violent crime isn’t the best course if it’ll rip up a nascent family unit,

It’s part of why judges have discretion in sentencing to begin with after all.

I think the problem with the framing here is, as tends to be the case, one of moving from something neutral and unbiased, to something that is not. Rather, and as is often usually the case being an attempted solution to problems of existing bias.

I’d also agree, in this case, a bad solution on the face of it. But, it’s not even a proposed solution that’s being implemented so, how much time does one even spend on it?

I’m really, really not inclined to defend Labour on much of anything these days. I do, however find it quite illuminating quite how much of the blame they’re getting for this, which they actively reversed and was never really their baby at all.

Which I think is interesting to consider in terms of Labour quite studiously trying to pivot away from ‘woke’. I’m not sure they can make that pivot because all it takes is folks who aren’t them to do something ‘woke’ and they’ll be blamed for it anyway.

Add to that ‘Austerity 2.0’ and, oh dear. I thought the precipitous collapse of the Tory Party, and the fatigue of their rule was such that Labour was a lock for a couple of cycles. With the proviso that they enacted some decent policies that meaningfully improved people’s lives.

They seem hellbent not to fucking do that for, some reason. Do they really think going Tory-lite while fucking over their traditional strong areas is going to work, and the Tory-adjacent aren’t just going to go back Tory?

Y’argh

On April 01 2025 23:43 Jockmcplop wrote:


Its an obscure bit of law that was nothing more than a proposal.
The fact that its being brought up by BlackJack here should tell you why its an issue at all.
It fits in very, very nicely with the agenda being floated around by Musk and Trump etc.
White people under attack.
Even the justice system favors those blacks and women!

It doesn't really matter whether it was ever going to be implemented or not, all that matters is another throwaway piece of information to add to the pile and grow that oh so important 'sense' that white people have suffered enough and now its time for revenge.

On April 02 2025 03:19 BlackJack wrote:


"Nothing more than a proposal" that would have came into effect *checks notes* today actually. This obscure "nothing more than a proposal" had the government scrambling in the 11th hour to pass emergency legislation hours before it would come into effect.

But you and Kwark have rightly identified the real problem. It's not that the UK was hours away from having a justice system where people were intentionally treated differently based on their race. It's that people like me were outraged enough to cause them to back down. Well done, lads.

having a justice system where people were intentionally treated differently based on their race.

On April 02 2025 03:19 BlackJack wrote:


"Nothing more than a proposal" that would have came into effect *checks notes* today actually. This obscure "nothing more than a proposal" had the government scrambling in the 11th hour to pass emergency legislation hours before it would come into effect.

But you and Kwark have rightly identified the real problem. It's not that the UK was hours away from having a justice system where people were intentionally treated differently based on their race. It's that people like me were outraged enough to cause them to back down. Well done, lads.

On April 02 2025 03:56 Dan HH wrote:

Unironically yes. Don't get me wrong, it's worthwhile and fine to criticize oversteps such as this proposal you brough up, but it's weird as fuck when it's all you want to talk about.

If these woke-gone-mad outrage stories were peppered between, I don't know, outrage about a student getting disappeared for wrongthink in the school newspaper or outrage about some guy getting dropshipped to an El Salvadorean gulag for having a football logo tattooed that ICE assumed was a gang tattoo - then I would have assumed you are a balanced person concerned about injustice in general.

The way you are posting though, the only assumption I can make is that you are being a useful idiot for the culture war algos.

On April 03 2025 04:56 BlackJack wrote:
I think you're way too caught up on the fact that they killed the policy right before it would take effect. They ultimately weren't successful in making these changes. So what? If a MAGA said "Trump wasn't even successful in overturning the 2020 election so why are you so caught up on something that didn't happen" what would your response be? For as long as I've been alive we've been in agreement that you should concede elections if you lose and we've agreed that we should try to treat everyone equally under the law. It's a pretty big deal that these ideas are under attack, regardless if the attacks are successful. The fact that people lose their shit over the former but shrug their shoulders with "here's BJ again railing about wokeism" on the latter says a lot more about your biases than mine.

On April 03 2025 09:55 Razyda wrote:
@jockmcplop and Wombat did you even read article linked?

"The law was unlikely to be passed in time to stop the guidelines before they take effect, officials said, but Mahmood is hoping to introduce it to the Commons as soon as Tuesday."

As it happens implementation of guidelines ha been halted till legislation comes out, so the problem is not solved at all.

Also regarding Vance free speech comments:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/toddler-suspended-nursery-transphobic-b2724495.html

Toddler was banned from nursery for transphobic comments.

another one:

seems one cant question school headteacher appointments?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo

but hey US is fascist.

On April 03 2025 14:02 BlackJack wrote:
There’s always worse problems

On April 03 2025 11:02 Jockmcplop wrote:


Yeah the problem with this idiotic American culture stuff occasionally finding its way over here to the UK is we end up getting lectured about our political system by people who have absolutely no idea about any of the context of the stuff they are bringing up.

These are tiny, tiny, insignificant incidences in relation to the day to day problems that people in our country face. Some idiot nursery head bans a toddler. Well that sucks for that toddler. Its not like its an institutional issue, its just a stupid thing that happened.
Meanwhile people in Birmingham can't get their trash taken away because the local council can't afford to pay its people, the treasury and the government are taking money away from the poor and most vulnerable to pay for their own mistakes and the mistakes of the wealthy, child poverty is on the rise etc. etc.

And we've got people here telling us that what we should care about is a headteacher on a power trip, because some stupid Republicans in America have decided that that's what would make a good distraction from their own massive freedom of speech problems at home.

The fake concern 'don't you care about freedom of speech'?

As if. Where were you when the tories spent a decade cracking down on people's right to protest in this country? An issue that affects millions of people, not just some parents whose toddler got banned by some moron?

On April 03 2025 21:07 Jockmcplop wrote:

The point is there are, and have been much, much bigger problems with regards to freedom of expression but they don't fit the 'the agenda' so they get ignored until someone can insert wokeness into the issue or make it solely about white people.

On April 03 2025 09:55 Razyda wrote:
@jockmcplop and Wombat did you even read article linked?

"The law was unlikely to be passed in time to stop the guidelines before they take effect, officials said, but Mahmood is hoping to introduce it to the Commons as soon as Tuesday."

As it happens implementation of guidelines ha been halted till legislation comes out, so the problem is not solved at all.

Also regarding Vance free speech comments:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/toddler-suspended-nursery-transphobic-b2724495.html

Toddler was banned from nursery for transphobic comments.

another one:

seems one cant question school headteacher appointments?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo

but hey US is fascist.

The school said it had "sought advice from police" after a "high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts" that it said had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors.

The county's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Jonathan Ash-Edwards, said: "There has clearly been a fundamental breakdown in relationships between a school and parents that shouldn't have become a police matter."

On April 03 2025 23:05 WombaT wrote:

Judges aren’t going to suddenly start judging according to these new guidelines (note, guidelines, not ‘law’) for a week, knowing that the government are introducing legislation that is a certainty to pass.

My ma has worked in my alma mater for a good 25 years now. Many a parent has been a massively aggressive prick. The police have, however never got involved.

Let’s just say I’m somewhat skeptical that these parents were as civil, reasonable and polite as they’re claiming.


My spidey tense is tingling. I’m not a betting man, but I’d almost 100% wager that these parents put this individual on blast on various public or semi-public forums. And said individual, and said school got a ton of blowback from people all over the country or beyond.

Now, maybe this was actually justified, that I have no idea on. However, I’m extremely skeptical at how they’re framing their interjections here.

But hey, let’s assume they weren’t doing that:


So the police ultimately didn’t do anything, and reviewed it, and said they shouldn’t have even been involved in the first place?

What’s the actual problem here?