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It's crazy how much this country has changed since I moved in the UK in 2010. I originally moved here because London was a city encouraging tolerance, freedom a

It's crazy how much this country has changed since I moved in the UK in 2010. I originally moved here because London was a city encouraging tolerance, freedom and respect for each other. Technology wise, this city was also the heart of Europe with a great pool of companies and engineers to achieve big things and counterbalance the hegemony of the Silicon Valley and the US. Every new proposal these days from the UK government is pushing an authoritarian government, and the Brexit has given them an excuse for more populism and isolationism. As a French man, I moved here because of all these reasons. I had a job in France, a good situation, but I wanted to discover, meet new people, enlarge my horizon. Today, I am not sure that London and the UK are the right places for that.

aquadrop 9y ago
Yes, looks like terrorists are winning... They made everyone's life to be worse, that was basically their goal. In the name of fight against terrorism power-hungry politicians propose mind-boggling useless and awful measures, and people don't stop them, because "how can you be against fight on terrorism?" So sad.
- userbinator 9y ago
  and people don't stop them, because "how can you be against fight on terrorism?" I would bet that if they tried, they might be considered terrorists too. It reminds me of this old Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- zabana 9y ago
  Terrorism is probably the best ally western governments have found to advance their authoritarian agenda. The sad thing is people are actually falling for it. You just have to look at the way the UK Government complained that they didn't have a backdoor to whatsapp's infrastructure because the "terrorist" was able to plan his attack using their service. What is it going to be next ? "London Horrified after Uber Driver blows up his car in Leicester Square. Theresa May to force Uber to share user's personal data with the government". I hate to sound Alex Jones-y but you've got to admit that there's a pattern here.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    In an interview during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Hermann Goering, the founder of the Nazi Gestapo, was discussing whether normal people ever want to go to war. He answered that obviously they do not, but that the leaders make the decisions and can drag the people along with them. When the interviewer suggested that in democracies the people have a say through their elected representatives, Goering countered that "The people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are in danger of being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Sadly, it appears that little has changed in the intervening 70 or so years.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      I think this works because of how the human mind works in its very basics.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - shams93 9y ago
    Exactly for a lot of wealthy people they live in terror of the regular people they are gradually starving to death. As we enter a post human economy we will see more and more mass internment more and more concentration camps. As machines eliminate more and more work the totalitarian state will simply eliminate the surplus humans.
    - pishpash 9y ago
      Astute point. Terrorists, at least the foot soldiers, are just the riffraff of the globe. To wealthy people, all the plebes look the same.
      - ajmurmann 9y ago
        To poor people apparently all the wealthy people look the same as well...
- Banthum 9y ago
  Well, terrorists are winning. But the goal of terrorists is not to make "everyone's life to be worse", it is to force political changes. In the case of the Islamic terrorism, their goal is to spread the authority of Islam. So, for example, since the Charlie Hebdo attack, nobody will publish any image of Mohammed. We are now all following that part of Islamic blasphemy law, because we're afraid of their enforcement squads. So in that spot they succeeded.
  - justavoice 9y ago
    Yep, and people get downvoted for pointing it out...
- swayvil 9y ago
  The terrorists were invented to justify this shit. The name of the game is putting the whole population into a juice-press. Always was, always will be.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    No, there are actual terrorists and have been for ages, though they used to be called anarchists. Attacks on targets by Northern Irish terrorists were a Real Thing. It's the scale and scope of the response that are disproportionate, not to mention the moral vacuity of same.
    - swayvil 9y ago
      Calling them anarchists makes them less invented? Calling them Northern Irish terrorists makes them less invented? No. It works like this. You are a rich fucker who wants to mug a country. To do that you need an army. So first you locate some traumatized people. Feed them money and motivational ideology. Point them at your target. Profit. Voila, you have invented a band of terrorists.
- vidarh 9y ago
  The Tories are winning. Their agenda has been authoritarian and nationalist for a long time. Terrorism is only a convenient excuse.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    To be fair, I don't think this is a partisan thing. The Labour government were getting pretty authoritarian towards the end of their tenure too. Remember the ID cards debacle?
legopelle 9y ago
Why do you consider secularism bad?
- moystard 9y ago
  I actually don't, it was a mistake on my side, I meant isolationism.
GuiA 9y ago
I'm also French, and moved to the US with similar aspirations right when Obama got elected. These days, I am starting to have the same disillusions as you; I feel like these tendencies have been present throughout the western world at large over the past few years. I am wondering where in the world I could move to and have good public services (healthcare, education, transportation, etc), a government that seems to be truly serving the interests of the people at large, and a rich culture open to differences & innovation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- faragon 9y ago
  From my side, you are very welcome to move to Spain, e.g. pick Barcelona for nice weather, good services, and many tech companies. You can work with just English in most mid/large companies. Salaries are lower than the US and the UK, but que quality of life is quite nice :-)
  - harperlee 9y ago
    As a spaniard, I agree that it is an overall nice place to be IF you have a decent job (hundreds of thousands of youngsters had to migrate for lack of it) and IF you are not bothered by politics and "mild" corruption. The grandparent stated: > a government that seems to be truly serving the interests of the people at large And I don't think Spain is good in that regard. English in large companies is not common, though, in my experience. But my wife is french and I have a lot of french friends on Madrid, and they are very happy to be there and with no plans of coming back! So, gp, definitely consider Spain!
    - faragon 9y ago
      Sure, Madrid is a lovely place, too. Regarding working in English in Madrid and Barcelona, definitely it is possible, specially in companies oriented to the international market. Also, people will do their best to make people comfortable, from my experience :-)
      - harperlee 9y ago
mahyarm 9y ago
I've had the impression that the UK has always been more pubically survelience happy than the Usa. I remember over 10 years ago everyone talking about CCTVs were everywhere and the law let the police use them way more than the usa ever could.
rizn 9y ago
I'd recommend you to vote with your feet (if you don't have too many family connections with the UK) and leave the British Isles for now. I lived in the UK for some time, but general atmosphere, even before EU referendum became unbearable for me. I moved back to continental EU. There are as many opportunities here as in London, even more. The UK is regressing and it's going to get worse. If you have a chance, don't get stuck there.
colanderman 9y ago
The UK has always felt it proper to invade individuals' privacy. TV detector vans date from 1952: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van and they've recently entered the digital age: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05/bbc-to-deploy-detection-vans-to-snoop-on-internet-users/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05/bbc-to-deploy-det... This type of casual invasion of privacy at least (nominally) requires a warrant in the US.
- lebrad 9y ago
  I'm constantly amazed that so many British people believe the fiction that BBC detector vans are able to detect license violations.
  - colanderman 9y ago
    I'm not British, and even if they're fake (why do you believe that?), they've still been purporting to invade privacy for over half a century.
anigbrowl 9y ago
I left the UK nearly 25 years ago because (among many other reasons) I was starting to find the omnipresent security culture oppressive. Sadly the US has gone down the same road and it's no longer the country it used to be. Some things have changed for the better but the fact that both countries currently have such authoritarian leaders is a Dangerously Bad Thing.
yks 9y ago
The UK is a setting of quite a few prominent dystopias (e.g. 1984, Brave New World) and that imprinted in my susceptible young mind that while the UK seems to have always been on the "free" side of the societal spectrum, it's not guaranteed to continue in the future.
darth_mastah 9y ago
I hear you. I moved to the UK ten years ago, because I fell in love with this beautiful, mature, tolerant country. It hurts to see what the populists are trying to do. It's neither good for the people of Britain, the economy, nor the rest of Europe. Shame on you, Theresa May. Shame on you. I say it while I still can.
darth_mastah 9y ago
I hear you. I moved to the UK ten years ago, because I fell in love with this beautiful, mature, tolerant country. It hurts to see what the populists are trying to do. It's neither good for the people of Britain, the economy, nor the rest of Europe. Shame on you, Theresa May. Shame on you. I say it while I still can.

aquadrop 9y ago

Yes, looks like terrorists are winning... They made everyone's life to be worse, that was basically their goal. In the name of fight against terrorism power-hungry politicians propose mind-boggling useless and awful measures, and people don't stop them, because "how can you be against fight on terrorism?" So sad.

userbinator 9y ago
and people don't stop them, because "how can you be against fight on terrorism?" I would bet that if they tried, they might be considered terrorists too. It reminds me of this old Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
zabana 9y ago
Terrorism is probably the best ally western governments have found to advance their authoritarian agenda. The sad thing is people are actually falling for it. You just have to look at the way the UK Government complained that they didn't have a backdoor to whatsapp's infrastructure because the "terrorist" was able to plan his attack using their service. What is it going to be next ? "London Horrified after Uber Driver blows up his car in Leicester Square. Theresa May to force Uber to share user's personal data with the government". I hate to sound Alex Jones-y but you've got to admit that there's a pattern here.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  In an interview during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Hermann Goering, the founder of the Nazi Gestapo, was discussing whether normal people ever want to go to war. He answered that obviously they do not, but that the leaders make the decisions and can drag the people along with them. When the interviewer suggested that in democracies the people have a say through their elected representatives, Goering countered that "The people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are in danger of being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Sadly, it appears that little has changed in the intervening 70 or so years.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    I think this works because of how the human mind works in its very basics.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- shams93 9y ago
  Exactly for a lot of wealthy people they live in terror of the regular people they are gradually starving to death. As we enter a post human economy we will see more and more mass internment more and more concentration camps. As machines eliminate more and more work the totalitarian state will simply eliminate the surplus humans.
  - pishpash 9y ago
    Astute point. Terrorists, at least the foot soldiers, are just the riffraff of the globe. To wealthy people, all the plebes look the same.
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      To poor people apparently all the wealthy people look the same as well...
Banthum 9y ago
Well, terrorists are winning. But the goal of terrorists is not to make "everyone's life to be worse", it is to force political changes. In the case of the Islamic terrorism, their goal is to spread the authority of Islam. So, for example, since the Charlie Hebdo attack, nobody will publish any image of Mohammed. We are now all following that part of Islamic blasphemy law, because we're afraid of their enforcement squads. So in that spot they succeeded.
- justavoice 9y ago
  Yep, and people get downvoted for pointing it out...
swayvil 9y ago
The terrorists were invented to justify this shit. The name of the game is putting the whole population into a juice-press. Always was, always will be.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  No, there are actual terrorists and have been for ages, though they used to be called anarchists. Attacks on targets by Northern Irish terrorists were a Real Thing. It's the scale and scope of the response that are disproportionate, not to mention the moral vacuity of same.
  - swayvil 9y ago
    Calling them anarchists makes them less invented? Calling them Northern Irish terrorists makes them less invented? No. It works like this. You are a rich fucker who wants to mug a country. To do that you need an army. So first you locate some traumatized people. Feed them money and motivational ideology. Point them at your target. Profit. Voila, you have invented a band of terrorists.
vidarh 9y ago
The Tories are winning. Their agenda has been authoritarian and nationalist for a long time. Terrorism is only a convenient excuse.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  To be fair, I don't think this is a partisan thing. The Labour government were getting pretty authoritarian towards the end of their tenure too. Remember the ID cards debacle?

legopelle 9y ago

Why do you consider secularism bad?

moystard 9y ago
I actually don't, it was a mistake on my side, I meant isolationism.

GuiA 9y ago

I'm also French, and moved to the US with similar aspirations right when Obama got elected. These days, I am starting to have the same disillusions as you; I feel like these tendencies have been present throughout the western world at large over the past few years. I am wondering where in the world I could move to and have good public services (healthcare, education, transportation, etc), a government that seems to be truly serving the interests of the people at large, and a rich culture open to differences & innovation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

faragon 9y ago
From my side, you are very welcome to move to Spain, e.g. pick Barcelona for nice weather, good services, and many tech companies. You can work with just English in most mid/large companies. Salaries are lower than the US and the UK, but que quality of life is quite nice :-)
- harperlee 9y ago
  As a spaniard, I agree that it is an overall nice place to be IF you have a decent job (hundreds of thousands of youngsters had to migrate for lack of it) and IF you are not bothered by politics and "mild" corruption. The grandparent stated: > a government that seems to be truly serving the interests of the people at large And I don't think Spain is good in that regard. English in large companies is not common, though, in my experience. But my wife is french and I have a lot of french friends on Madrid, and they are very happy to be there and with no plans of coming back! So, gp, definitely consider Spain!
  - faragon 9y ago
    Sure, Madrid is a lovely place, too. Regarding working in English in Madrid and Barcelona, definitely it is possible, specially in companies oriented to the international market. Also, people will do their best to make people comfortable, from my experience :-)
    - harperlee 9y ago

mahyarm 9y ago

I've had the impression that the UK has always been more pubically survelience happy than the Usa. I remember over 10 years ago everyone talking about CCTVs were everywhere and the law let the police use them way more than the usa ever could.

rizn 9y ago

I'd recommend you to vote with your feet (if you don't have too many family connections with the UK) and leave the British Isles for now. I lived in the UK for some time, but general atmosphere, even before EU referendum became unbearable for me. I moved back to continental EU. There are as many opportunities here as in London, even more. The UK is regressing and it's going to get worse. If you have a chance, don't get stuck there.

colanderman 9y ago

The UK has always felt it proper to invade individuals' privacy. TV detector vans date from 1952: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van and they've recently entered the digital age: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05/bbc-to-deploy-detection-vans-to-snoop-on-internet-users/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05/bbc-to-deploy-det... This type of casual invasion of privacy at least (nominally) requires a warrant in the US.

lebrad 9y ago
I'm constantly amazed that so many British people believe the fiction that BBC detector vans are able to detect license violations.
- colanderman 9y ago
  I'm not British, and even if they're fake (why do you believe that?), they've still been purporting to invade privacy for over half a century.

anigbrowl 9y ago

I left the UK nearly 25 years ago because (among many other reasons) I was starting to find the omnipresent security culture oppressive. Sadly the US has gone down the same road and it's no longer the country it used to be. Some things have changed for the better but the fact that both countries currently have such authoritarian leaders is a Dangerously Bad Thing.

yks 9y ago

The UK is a setting of quite a few prominent dystopias (e.g. 1984, Brave New World) and that imprinted in my susceptible young mind that while the UK seems to have always been on the "free" side of the societal spectrum, it's not guaranteed to continue in the future.

darth_mastah 9y ago

I hear you. I moved to the UK ten years ago, because I fell in love with this beautiful, mature, tolerant country. It hurts to see what the populists are trying to do. It's neither good for the people of Britain, the economy, nor the rest of Europe. Shame on you, Theresa May. Shame on you. I say it while I still can.

darth_mastah 9y ago