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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On July 24 2013 23:52 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2013 23:39 GreenGringo wrote:On July 24 2013 23:03 bardtown wrote:On July 24 2013 22:53 GreenGringo wrote:On July 24 2013 22:44 bardtown wrote:
Did I say he was likely to do those things? No? Then why are you putting words in my mouth? Labour's economic policies are weak and Ed Miliband is a weak leader in a time where we need just the opposite. Labour's economic policies are weak? You do realize that the Tories haven't produced any meaningful growth since they've been in charge? And their sole response has been to blame the last government which produced 10 years of growth and balanced the books perfectly until the stimulus package that was advised by economic experts? But carry on, if you like, believing the unsupported doctrine that austerity without growth is strong economic policy. Carry on believing that the best way to tackle unemployment is to do nothing other than punish people. Carry on being dogmatic and assuming everybody who disagrees is an idiot. 'Economic experts' recommend policies in both directions. I'm sure their stimulus package was recommended by 'economic experts' - left wing economic experts. The IMF and other international organisations mostly support Conservative cuts, and Labour has admitted it would have had to make heavy cuts. You can ignore international events all you like and blame it entirely on domestic politics, but that's just plain ignorance. You have to bottleneck the services that are effective in order to reestablish growth. It must take an awful lot of faith to believe that the same policies that took a stock market crash into the Great Depression, which are observably failing right at the moment under your nose all throughout Europe, must be sound economic policy and something that only a weak man would question. But carry on believing that everything going bad under the Tory government must be the fault of the last government and continue judging economic policy by "fiscal consolidation" even though national debt as a percentage of GDP has been comparable to what it is now for most of the last 300 years. I'm no economist, but it does strike me as curious that the UK economy has recovered more slowly than many of our EU neighbours of comparable size. The nation by and large accepted that some degree of spending cuts and whatnot were necessary, but equally there was the expectation that there would be a positive effect of austerity in the medium/long term that hasn't really happened yet. There's only so much 'Labour fucked up before us' that people can accept hearing, especially as deregulation of the City was a process that the Tories enthusiastically underwent going even further back.
This crops up all the time. Deregulation isn't, as a concept by itself, a bad thing. Too much regulation can and does hurt. Just because the Conservatives deregulated it to a certain level and Labour deregulated it much further doesn't really mean you can go "well, Labour just carried on what the Tories started." It seems pretty obvious that Labour deregulated it too far, and yet there's no real evidence that the Tories deregulated banking too far. Connecting the two just because they both involve deregulation seems to be an error in thinking that's prevalent on the issue.
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On July 24 2013 23:58 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2013 23:52 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 24 2013 23:39 GreenGringo wrote:On July 24 2013 23:03 bardtown wrote:On July 24 2013 22:53 GreenGringo wrote:On July 24 2013 22:44 bardtown wrote:
Did I say he was likely to do those things? No? Then why are you putting words in my mouth? Labour's economic policies are weak and Ed Miliband is a weak leader in a time where we need just the opposite. Labour's economic policies are weak? You do realize that the Tories haven't produced any meaningful growth since they've been in charge? And their sole response has been to blame the last government which produced 10 years of growth and balanced the books perfectly until the stimulus package that was advised by economic experts? But carry on, if you like, believing the unsupported doctrine that austerity without growth is strong economic policy. Carry on believing that the best way to tackle unemployment is to do nothing other than punish people. Carry on being dogmatic and assuming everybody who disagrees is an idiot. 'Economic experts' recommend policies in both directions. I'm sure their stimulus package was recommended by 'economic experts' - left wing economic experts. The IMF and other international organisations mostly support Conservative cuts, and Labour has admitted it would have had to make heavy cuts. You can ignore international events all you like and blame it entirely on domestic politics, but that's just plain ignorance. You have to bottleneck the services that are effective in order to reestablish growth. It must take an awful lot of faith to believe that the same policies that took a stock market crash into the Great Depression, which are observably failing right at the moment under your nose all throughout Europe, must be sound economic policy and something that only a weak man would question. But carry on believing that everything going bad under the Tory government must be the fault of the last government and continue judging economic policy by "fiscal consolidation" even though national debt as a percentage of GDP has been comparable to what it is now for most of the last 300 years. I'm no economist, but it does strike me as curious that the UK economy has recovered more slowly than many of our EU neighbours of comparable size. The nation by and large accepted that some degree of spending cuts and whatnot were necessary, but equally there was the expectation that there would be a positive effect of austerity in the medium/long term that hasn't really happened yet. There's only so much 'Labour fucked up before us' that people can accept hearing, especially as deregulation of the City was a process that the Tories enthusiastically underwent going even further back. This crops up all the time. Deregulation isn't, as a concept by itself, a bad thing. Too much regulation can and does hurt. Just because the Conservatives deregulated it to a certain level and Labour deregulated it much further doesn't really mean you can go "well, Labour just carried on what the Tories started." It seems pretty obvious that Labour deregulated it too far, and yet there's no real evidence that the Tories deregulated banking too far. Connecting the two just because they both involve deregulation seems to be an error in thinking that's prevalent on the issue. How is that obvious? Why blame Labour for deregulation which the Tories have always heartily supported and which they even pioneered under Thatcher, not just in banking?
It just seems that you're desperate to blame Labour for something. It's funny how the buck stops with Labour, but the Tories are free to blame whoever came before or after them.
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Utter Bullshit. What is next, are they gonna ban all swearing on the interent?
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I think it's a fair enough concern to want to limit porn from minors, I'm sure it can have a huge impact on a lot of people. Having said that I'd be just as concerned about the effects of tons of things you can find on the internet on young people, 4chan, r/gore, chatrooms, etc...
The issue is like people say in parenting, there's no point blocking porn and letting a young person sit around in their private room all day thinking that there's no mischief they can get up to. Clearly not everyone will get in to trouble, but I think it's the wrong impression to give to the average parent.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
lol. Because it's so hard to find things Labour are culpable for, right?
You've basically just responded by saying the same thing that my post criticised. Well done.
As one example, Gordon Brown removed regulatory responsibilities from the Bank of England to the hands-off FSA, himself admitting later it was a big mistake: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13032013
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I think it would be helpful to actually explain to the majority of people where this is coming from in England. For a while now, papers have been full of comments from a certain collection of people writing in, usually I believe referred to as 'middle englanders' who like things to be like they were 'back in the day', essentially conservatives and most of them parents. They are in general horrified by even the idea of pornography and especially the idea of it being uncensored and freely accessible for their children. At the same time, there is a general feeling from people who were not necessarily raised on the internet like us, that it can corrupt sex education development - that before youngsters are taught sex education classes (which are, here, extremely uninformative, disinteresting and very awkward) and before their parents give them 'the talk', they are showing each other japanese tentacle porn, gangbangs and bestiality videos.
I was in the Apple store about a year and a half ago and I distinctly remember a group of boys and girls that could have been no older than 12 next to me as I looked at the iPad. They were going through a pretty crazy porn website and loading up some extremely hardcore videos and laughing at them. That's harmless fun but if these same teenagers then, in a few years time, start imitating what they have seen, a la 'wrestling', I can understand why there might be some tension from parents.
The basic idea is that a certain, very vocal, section of the public over a certain age happens to absolute despise the idea of internet porn and the difficulty of cutting their children off from all sources without being overzealous and completely barring them from internet access. It just so happens that most 'middle englanders' vote Tory, and therefore most of the people who get angry about internet porn happen to be standard Tory voters. And seeing as Cameron has really risked support by backing gay rights, he needs to remind middle englanders that he still 'has their back'.
FWIW, I am not sure about whether banning simulated rape porn etc is a good idea (apparently rapes go down in areas which get access to the internet at least I remember that evidence from somewhere but it might have been Cracked). But I am sure that what we as a country NEED to do is approach sex education better, more openly, and explain the difference between pr0n and real life. Which is right now, woefully ignored.
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On July 25 2013 00:35 marvellosity wrote:lol. Because it's so hard to find things Labour are culpable for, right? You've basically just responded by saying the same thing that my post criticised. Well done. As one example, Gordon Brown removed regulatory responsibilities from the Bank of England to the hands-off FSA, himself admitting later it was a big mistake: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13032013 Where the hell do you get off thinking the Tories have the high ground on deregulation at all?
This is the party that's fucking defined by deregulation. Deregulation is what they do. They want to lower taxes and allow free and open commerce and all that jazz.
So no, you don't have the high ground. Labour made a mistake and they have owned up to it. Nobody knew it would go the way it did, and the Tories certainly didn't know. Or let's face it: even if they did, they wouldn't have cared. It's led to the rich being made richer, which is exactly what they want and what their party is about.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On July 25 2013 00:50 GreenGringo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 00:35 marvellosity wrote:lol. Because it's so hard to find things Labour are culpable for, right? You've basically just responded by saying the same thing that my post criticised. Well done. As one example, Gordon Brown removed regulatory responsibilities from the Bank of England to the hands-off FSA, himself admitting later it was a big mistake: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13032013 Where the hell do you get off thinking the Tories have the high ground on deregulation at all? This is the party that's fucking defined by deregulation. Deregulation is what they do. They want to lower taxes and allow free and open commerce and all that jazz. So no, you don't have the high ground. Labour made a mistake and they have owned up to it. Nobody knew it would go the way it did, and the Tories certainly didn't know. Or let's face it: even if they did, they wouldn't have cared. It's led to the rich being made richer, which is exactly what they want and what their party is about.
I never said I had the high ground, in your maniacal ranting you're just putting words in my mouth.
I was simply pointing out the fallacy of saying "well the Tories did it" to what Labour did with deregulation.
Seriously, you need a drink/spliff/massage or something dude.
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On July 25 2013 01:00 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 00:50 GreenGringo wrote:On July 25 2013 00:35 marvellosity wrote:lol. Because it's so hard to find things Labour are culpable for, right? You've basically just responded by saying the same thing that my post criticised. Well done. As one example, Gordon Brown removed regulatory responsibilities from the Bank of England to the hands-off FSA, himself admitting later it was a big mistake: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13032013 Where the hell do you get off thinking the Tories have the high ground on deregulation at all? This is the party that's fucking defined by deregulation. Deregulation is what they do. They want to lower taxes and allow free and open commerce and all that jazz. So no, you don't have the high ground. Labour made a mistake and they have owned up to it. Nobody knew it would go the way it did, and the Tories certainly didn't know. Or let's face it: even if they did, they wouldn't have cared. It's led to the rich being made richer, which is exactly what they want and what their party is about. I never said I had the high ground, in your maniacal ranting you're just putting words in my mouth. I was simply pointing out the fallacy of saying "well the Tories did it" to what Labour did with deregulation. Seriously, you need a drink/spliff/massage or something dude. But it's obviously not a fallacy because Cameron went to the EU and opposed regulation of the banking sector, Tories are defined by deregulation and privatization and Thatcher started that in her first year. Best case scenario for the Tories is that they're the pot calling the kettle black.
That's not to mention that you're not even factually accurate. Thatcher's changes toward deregulation are known by bankers as the "Big Bang". She abolished fixed commission charges, or in other words allowed bankers' bonuses to become arbitrarily high, directly leading to the Gordon Geckoite culture in the decades to come. It's subjective rubbish to say what you did about Brown's deregulation being the grand-daddy.
The only maniacs here are the ones who parrot Daily Mail talking points.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
Ok dear, whatever you say. I can't carry on if you keep responding to things that I've not actually said, or contrary to what I've said (I understand Thatcher started deregulation, I basically said that in my first post, don't know why you're ranting about it)
How about going and getting that drink for yourself now?
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Wow our governments (US and UK) are horrible.
You can't use the excuse of protecting children for everything. And to be fair, until I started hitting puberty I had no interest in porn. If I saw it I'd have been like, "well what's that? Why does my penis feel funny?" It doesn't hurt people. There's no point for this law to exist.
But if we look at the progress of similar bans on porn in other countries (child porn in Germany), we start to see that's it's just a test law to see how strong public opinion is against the idea. As soon as the government realizes that they're in no danger they start censoring everything else including any sites that speak out against them.
"In Finland, for instance, a man who runs a website arguing that the blacklist approach is ineffective was called in for questioning last year after publishing "a list of a few hundred censored sites." His own site was then placed on the blacklist, which means that visitors from Finland are greeted by a message saying that the site they are trying to reach contains illegal images."
http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1irsvg/all_19m_homes_connected_to_the_internet_to_be/cb7s1bs
Violence and sex are natural parts of human nature. You can't remove them entirely from the human psyche. Creating individuals who repress their emotions will only lead to mental problems and instability within the state when these mental problems come out.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On July 25 2013 00:42 sc4k wrote:
I think it would be helpful to actually explain to the majority of people where this is coming from in England. For a while now, papers have been full of comments from a certain collection of people writing in, usually I believe referred to as 'middle englanders' who like things to be like they were 'back in the day', essentially conservatives and most of them parents. They are in general horrified by even the idea of pornography and especially the idea of it being uncensored and freely accessible for their children. At the same time, there is a general feeling from people who were not necessarily raised on the internet like us, that it can corrupt sex education development - that before youngsters are taught sex education classes (which are, here, extremely uninformative, disinteresting and very awkward) and before their parents give them 'the talk', they are showing each other japanese tentacle porn, gangbangs and bestiality videos.
I was in the Apple store about a year and a half ago and I distinctly remember a group of boys and girls that could have been no older than 12 next to me as I looked at the iPad. They were going through a pretty crazy porn website and loading up some extremely hardcore videos and laughing at them. That's harmless fun but if these same teenagers then, in a few years time, start imitating what they have seen, a la 'wrestling', I can understand why there might be some tension from parents.
The basic idea is that a certain, very vocal, section of the public over a certain age happens to absolute despise the idea of internet porn and the difficulty of cutting their children off from all sources without being overzealous and completely barring them from internet access. It just so happens that most 'middle englanders' vote Tory, and therefore most of the people who get angry about internet porn happen to be standard Tory voters. And seeing as Cameron has really risked support by backing gay rights, he needs to remind middle englanders that he still 'has their back'.
FWIW, I am not sure about whether banning simulated rape porn etc is a good idea (apparently rapes go down in areas which get access to the internet at least I remember that evidence from somewhere but it might have been Cracked). But I am sure that what we as a country NEED to do is approach sex education better, more openly, and explain the difference between pr0n and real life. Which is right now, woefully ignored.
You hit many a nail on the head there.
There's a rather lazy lack of self-reflection here. There are other more sexually open/mature cultures, including some of our neighbours in Europe that have lower rates of teen pregnancy for one, but yet pornograhpy is often listed as a contributory factor.
I mean this is entirely anecdotal, but one thing that has always stuck in my mind was something I read when I was pretty young, think it was the Guardian in which they were talking about the issue. There was some quote, akin to 'I'm 16, sex is fun and everyone should know it'. Now for me this was really illuminating, because despite my young age I was aware what sex was, but the pleasurable aspect of it was completely news to me.
There's such a woeful lack of open discussion about sex in our society. So much of public discourse is euphemistic or tongue-in-cheek, so is it any wonder that curious younger people turn to pornography to fill in the blanks?
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On July 25 2013 01:44 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 00:42 sc4k wrote:
I think it would be helpful to actually explain to the majority of people where this is coming from in England. For a while now, papers have been full of comments from a certain collection of people writing in, usually I believe referred to as 'middle englanders' who like things to be like they were 'back in the day', essentially conservatives and most of them parents. They are in general horrified by even the idea of pornography and especially the idea of it being uncensored and freely accessible for their children. At the same time, there is a general feeling from people who were not necessarily raised on the internet like us, that it can corrupt sex education development - that before youngsters are taught sex education classes (which are, here, extremely uninformative, disinteresting and very awkward) and before their parents give them 'the talk', they are showing each other japanese tentacle porn, gangbangs and bestiality videos.
I was in the Apple store about a year and a half ago and I distinctly remember a group of boys and girls that could have been no older than 12 next to me as I looked at the iPad. They were going through a pretty crazy porn website and loading up some extremely hardcore videos and laughing at them. That's harmless fun but if these same teenagers then, in a few years time, start imitating what they have seen, a la 'wrestling', I can understand why there might be some tension from parents.
The basic idea is that a certain, very vocal, section of the public over a certain age happens to absolute despise the idea of internet porn and the difficulty of cutting their children off from all sources without being overzealous and completely barring them from internet access. It just so happens that most 'middle englanders' vote Tory, and therefore most of the people who get angry about internet porn happen to be standard Tory voters. And seeing as Cameron has really risked support by backing gay rights, he needs to remind middle englanders that he still 'has their back'.
FWIW, I am not sure about whether banning simulated rape porn etc is a good idea (apparently rapes go down in areas which get access to the internet at least I remember that evidence from somewhere but it might have been Cracked). But I am sure that what we as a country NEED to do is approach sex education better, more openly, and explain the difference between pr0n and real life. Which is right now, woefully ignored. You hit many a nail on the head there. There's a rather lazy lack of self-reflection here. There are other more sexually open/mature cultures, including some of our neighbours in Europe that have lower rates of teen pregnancy for one, but yet pornograhpy is often listed as a contributory factor. I mean this is entirely anecdotal, but one thing that has always stuck in my mind was something I read when I was pretty young, think it was the Guardian in which they were talking about the issue. There was some quote, akin to 'I'm 16, sex is fun and everyone should know it'. Now for me this was really illuminating, because despite my young age I was aware what sex was, but the pleasurable aspect of it was completely news to me. There's such a woeful lack of open discussion about sex in our society. So much of public discourse is euphemistic or tongue-in-cheek, so is it any wonder that curious younger people turn to pornography to fill in the blanks?
Yeah, I agree totally, especially your last paragraph. It's too taboo and it shouldn't be. In many ways this move is going the wrong way, attitude-wise. Sensationalising/hush-hushing/hiding it is really the last thing we need.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
Incidentally I don't think that there should necessarily be a porn free-for-all, some of what Claire Perry says is legitimate. However in a culture where women are frequently utilised as eyecandy in advertisements, or if they happen to be famous their every 'wardrobe malfunction' scrutinised, perhaps pick other battles.
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I think there's a fault in an argument here.
People are saying this is just censoring sex. And sex is natural. That by itself is true. There is nothing really wrong with children seeing normal sex, depending on context of course. There is nothing wrong with sex, as in, a pair making love.
But porn is not merely sex. Porn is, in 99% of cases, a sort of sex that doesn't really happen in real life: a situation where the woman's role is to please the man, where the end of the scene is when the man ejaculates, because his pleasure is what matters; the woman's is inconsequential. But of course, in this male power fantasy the woman's senses are overloaded with pleasure simply from pleasuring him. If you can't see how damaging this is to the psychology and view of sex in young people, I don't know what to tell you.
There is no loss in censoring it. Good riddance, I say.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
Not all porn reflects that sexual power dynamic, albeit quite a lot does.
I just don't see the point in censoring porn given how rampant sexism is in many other forms of media, notably the tabloid press that are cheerleaders for this. Notwithstanding the blatant overreach from a party that frequently decries the nanny state.
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http://torrentfreak.com/uk-porn-filter-will-censor-other-content-too-isps-reveal-130726/
The Open Rights Group are reporting that they’ve had a nice little chat with some of the ISPs that will be expected to introduce Cameron’s porn filter. Unsurprisingly the list of websites and content to be blocked by default won’t stop at porn. ORG speculate on categories of content that might be filtered in future, but for a clearer idea of where we stand today we can take a look at the system currently being operated by ISP TalkTalk. The HomeSafe system, which was singled out for praise by David Cameron earlier this week as leading the way in this field, currently covers several categories as detailed in the image below. ![[image loading]](http://torrentfreak.com/images/talktalk.png) As previously noted, leave the third box ticked and not only will all file-sharing sites be wiped out, but TorrentFreak with them too. Leave the rest of them ticked (note: the government is promising “default on” for all filters) and it’s anyone’s guess what else will disappear. Just like when many novice (or even experienced users) install software, the chances of people simply clicking through, next after next, is extremely high. Furthermore, in news that’s unlikely to win the PM or TalkTalk many fans, it’s now been revealed by the BBC that HomeSafe is being run by Huawei, a Chinese company founded by a former China People’s Liberation Army officer. The UK government already knows about the connection, as an Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report released last month expressed concern over the “alleged links between Huawei and the Chinese State” as they “generate suspicion as to whether Huawei’s intentions are strictly commercial or are more political.” Whether Huawei is linked to the government or not (they insist not), it’s hardly encouraging to discover that even when TalkTalk subscribers turn filtering completely off, their traffic is still routed through Huawei’s system.
Haha, time for fearmongering!
Kind of scary that they're using the people who censor China's internet though.
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Some more speculation on what it may look like.
I like the eating disorder and suicide website bans. Nobody goes online for information to get help right? And the list will of course grow, they never shrink. Russia is getting a law banning bad words now. Sites don't remove them in 24 hours, poof, no more access to you from there. Kind of like Cameron's uninformed demands of Google et al come to think of it. And this will be bad words as defined by the government of course. Nothing could go wrong in that scenario I'm sure. Similarly, "well I don't watch porn". Lol. You play games don't you, being here and all? Didn't you know those turn kids into mindless killing machines?
This is retarded and it's got nothing to do with the children, it's about pandering and control. But maybe, if the children are what the government is so worried about, it's time for them to man the fuck up and tell people to take some responsibility in raising those. But of course "we'll get rid of the things you don't like" will always have appeal somewhere.
As for the Huawei thing.. there's a point but eh, would you trust a US company more atm? Because you should probably pick up a paper, you know, in case your internet is rigged up to protect the young ones or something.
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EPT
